Today: The fashion industry confronts its emissions reality over wool and methane; Exxon calls on mom-and-pop investors to fight activists; the SEC picks a battle with international accounting standards over ESG reporting.

Welcome back: Savvy shoppers looking for luxury often hunt for high-quality materials such as 100% wool or genuine leather. But the materials are responsible for an outsize share of the fashion industry’s methane footprint, reports WSJ Sustainable Business’ Clara Hudson.

Researchers at New York University and Cornell University, in collaboration with a nonprofit, Collective Fashion Justice, found that leather and wool are particularly harmful to the environment. The materials make up only 3.8% of the apparel industry, but producing them accounts for 75% of fashion’s methane footprint.

Methane traps far more heat than carbon dioxide; it’s 86 times more potent in contributing to global warming in a 20 year time frame than carbon emissions are, the report said. These emissions come mainly from ruminant animals such as cows, sheep and goats belching out the gas.

See also: Clothing Made of Cheap Polyester Is Driving Up Fashion’s Emissions

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ExxonMobil wants to enlist an unlikely ally in its clashes with activist investors—its mom-and-pop shareholders.

U.S. regulators on Monday allowed Exxon to ask its thousands of individual investors to sign up for a free program that would cast their votes on shareholder proposals in lockstep with the company,” the WSJ’s Collin Eaton and Lauren Thomas report. The green light from the Securities and Exchange Commission is the first for a nonfinancial public company pursuing such a plan and clears a path for other companies to follow suit.

It’s the latest example of big companies feeling more emboldened to take on activist investors, particularly with regards to social issues that have increasingly fallen out of favor.

Exxon’s fight with activist investors ramped up a decade ago. The company faced lawsuits from states claiming that it misled investors by publicly casting doubt on climate science, even though it had known for decades burning fossil fuels’ effects on the environment.

The chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission said the agency could block the use of international accounting standards in the U.S. if the standards setter continues to pursue a sustainability and climate agenda, Dow Jones Risk Journal reports.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins, who was appointed by President Trump in April, took aim in a speech at the International Accounting Standards Board for its backing of the International Sustainability Standards Board. The ISSB was established in 2021 to give investors more of a view of the financial risks and opportunities associated with climate change. 

Currently, foreign companies listed in the U.S. are able to use standards set by the IASB, known as International Financial Reporting Standards, when reporting in the U.S. instead of the American standard, the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

The IASB “must promote high-quality accounting standards that are focused solely on driving reliable financial reporting and are not used as a backdoor to achieve political or social agendas,” Atkins said in an address Wednesday before a roundtable of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

• Toxic fumes are leaking into airplanes, sickening crews and passengers (WSJ)
   
• EPA says companies shouldn’t have to report planet-warming emissions (WaPo)
   
• The capital of electric cars is turning to electric planes (NYT)
   
• U.S. weighs COP30 climate summit attendance for ‘Honest Dialogue’ (Bloomberg)
   
• Spanish schools to teach pupils how to cope with climate crisis disasters (Guardian)
   

• JBS pledged to be net-zero by 2040. It’s far off track (Trellis)
   

• Beef prices are at a record. The winners: cattle ranchers (WSJ)

WSJ Pro Sustainable Business gives you an inside look at how companies are tackling sustainability. Send comments to bureau chief Perry Cleveland-Peck at perry.cleveland-peck@wsj.com and reporters Clara Hudson at clara.hudson@wsj.com and Yusuf Khan at yusuf.khan@wsj.com. Follow us on LinkedIn at wsjperry, clara-hudson and yusuf_khan.