We asked the SEC to look into corporate global warming claims years ago.
Politico reports,
Greenpeace wants the Securities and Exchange Commission to stop TransCanada from claiming the Keystone XL pipeline would create 20,000 U.S. jobs.
The company “has consistently used public statements and information it knows are false in a concerted effort to secure permitting approval” of the pipeline, asserted Greenpeace Executive Director Phil Radford in a letter Thursday to SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro.
“In the process, it has misled investors, U.S. and Canadian officials, the media, and the public at large in order to bolster its balance sheets and share price,” Radford added.
Radford contends that the company is violating SEC rules governing the employing of manipulative and deceptive practices. “It is incumbent on [TransCanada] to immediately and publicly correct this information — or be forced to do so by the Securities and Exchange Commission,” Radford wrote.
Specifically, Greenpeace contends that the company asserts that each mile of the pipeline constructed in the U.S. “would create American jobs at a rate that is 67 times higher than job creation totals given by the company to Canadian officials for the Canadian portion of the pipeline,” Radford wrote.
TransCanada has said the Keystone XL pipeline would create 20,000 jobs — 13,000 in construction and 7,000 in manufacturing…
Click for the Greenpeace letter.
Here’s a 2008 petition from the Free Enterprise Action Fund. The SEC routinely ignores such petitions, regardless of merit. The SEC link for the letter is: http://www.sec.gov/rules/petitions/2008/petn4-563.pdf
Yeah, thumbs up too. But dream on.
Thumbs up!
Should SEC also investigate the verity of the many forecasts of impending doom that Greenpeace has spewed over the past couple of decades?
I’m guessing you’re guessing what I’m guessing – that there is a chance that this SEC will look into this. They are on record as concerned that companies account for the impacts of climate change/AGW notwithstanding the misrepresentations going the other way. And we all know that the Chairman is green and proud of it.
Give credit to Greenpeace though for one thing. They managed to raise a regulatorily investigatable issue by alleging that TransCanada relies on one set of assumptions in generating a projection in Canada and another set in the U.S.
The SEC can always say that they have to investigate first. The nexus of accuracy for a proposed project to balance sheets and share price is a matter of judgement. And judgement is opportunity for an activist regulator.