Newsom Promises To Sign Emissions Disclosure Law That Could ‘Further Politicize’ Corporations

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared his intention Sunday to sign an emissions disclosure bill that passed the California state legislature this week while speaking at an event in New York City.

Newsom said that he will sign the Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act in an interview during the Climate Week NYC summit, pending potential revisions to specific alterations in the bill’s language. The legislation would require companies doing business in the state with annual revenues greater than $1 billion to publicly disclose the emissions generated by their operations, their supply chains and their consumers under rules devised by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), according to the bill’s text.

“I’m gonna directly answer that question. I’m not gonna do the politician thing,” Newsom said in response to a question from the interviewer about whether he will sign the bill, before briefly highlighting other climate-related policies in the state. “Of course I’m going to sign those bills, and California will continue to maintain that leadership, with a modes caveat, we have a cleanup on some little language, and I didn’t want to begin there.”

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Newsom has until Oct. 14 to sign the bill, and his Sunday comments marked the first time that he had publicly stated whether he would enact the policy.

“Carbon disclosures increase costs for consumers, hurt shareholders, and take the focus of businesses off of serving their customers,” Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation about the bill. “Financial disclosures are supposed to be about just that, finance,” he continued, adding that “climate disclosures are a way for far-left extremists to create a patronage system for their own ‘disclosure companies’ and further politicize corporate America.”

The bill could be a forerunner for future federal action from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which proposed its own emissions disclosure guidelines in March 2022 but has yet to finalize the standards.

“Climate change also poses a significant risk to companies’ long-term economic success and disrupts the value chains on which they rely,” the bill states. “Managing these risks requires investments in decarbonization strategies that unlock emissions reductions and provide economic benefits for Californians and the state economy.”

The California Chamber of Commerce has criticized the bill, saying that it “will burden California’s businesses by imposing onerous and unnecessary climate-related reporting requirements” and that it “is problematic because reporting emissions associated with a company’s entire supply chain will necessarily require that large businesses stop doing business with small and medium-sized businesses,” according to its website.

Newsom discussed his state’s responses to climate change more broadly during the interview, including the lawsuit that California filed Saturday against major oil companies alleging that the corporations engaged in intentional deception about their role in climate change and caused a delayed societal response to global warming, according to court filings. He also discussed how his 13 year-old daughter, her friends and other children like her have been forced to deal with “climate anxiety” during the interview.

Newsom’s office did not respond immediately to a request for comment.