More than 2,000 Sierra Club members and supporters signed a grassroots letter this week urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to keep its 2024 climate disclosure rule. The public comment period on the SEC's proposal to scrap the rule closed on Tuesday, with the Sierra Club filing multiple objections alongside environmental and consumer advocacy groups.
The climate disclosure rule, officially called "The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors," was finalized in March 2024. It would have required companies to give investors standardized information about climate-related financial risks — things like how floods, fires, or new climate regulations might affect a company's bottom line. However, the rule never took effect because industry groups challenged it in court, and the SEC paused it pending legal review.
Jessye Waxman, who works on sustainable finance issues for the Sierra Club, said the SEC is putting politics ahead of investors. "Investors have spent more than a decade asking for consistent, comparable climate-related information because climate risk is financially material," Waxman said in a statement. "Rescinding this rule won't make climate risk disappear; it will just make markets less efficient, increase the mispricing of risk, and undermine investment in the resilient economy we need."
In its filings, the Sierra Club argued that climate-related financial risks are real and growing, and that investors need clear, comparable information to make smart decisions about where to put their money. The organization also emphasized that companies currently reporting (voluntary reporting) on climate risks has created a patchwork system where it's hard to compare one company to another.
The Sierra Club submitted four separate comments: one organizational comment, one grassroots letter with over 2,000 signatures, a legal comment filed with Earthjustice, Environmental Defense Fund, Clean Air Task Force, and Natural Resources Defense Council, and a coalition comment joined by dozens of other groups including Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and Public Citizen.
The legal comment argued the SEC has clear authority under existing law to require standardized climate disclosures and that scrapping the rule misreads the law and ignores growing evidence of climate risks to financial markets.
Although the Sierra Club originally pushed for stronger requirements than what ended up in the 2024 rule, the organization said it still established an important baseline that should be kept. The SEC voted in March 2025 to stop defending the rule in court, and in July 2025 the agency said it would not reconsider the rule at that time.
The filings collectively warn that without standardized requirements, investors will struggle to evaluate long-term risks, compare companies fairly, and direct money toward businesses prepared for a changing climate and economy.