Anna Ringstrom and Gerard Wynn, Reuters 24 May 09;
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Industry should play its part in the fight against climate change by persuading governments to aid carbon cuts rather than lobbying against them, the U.N. Secretary-General told a business conference on Sunday.
Business leaders met in Denmark to try to unite behind a common call for long-term climate policies, ahead of a U.N. conference in December meant to forge a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol.
"For those who are directly or implicitly lobbying against climate action I have a clear message: your ideas are out of date and you are running out of time," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a meeting of more than 500 business leaders.
"The smart money is on the green economy," he said. "Leaders sometimes are weak because they are short-sighted to get the votes," he added, urging businesses to lobby for carbon cuts.
Danish Environment, Climate and Energy Minister Connie Hedegaard, who hosts the U.N.-led December conference, said Denmark's exports of wind power technologies were proof that fighting climate change could be lucrative.
"That's the message to businesses here: put pressure on governments, that this is not just about idealism," she said.
The May 24-26 World Business Summit on Climate Change brings together top executives from energy and technology companies and political leaders.
Ban, in an interview with Reuters, also said that a draft U.S. climate bill, which aims to cut U.S. greenhouse gases by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, did not go far enough.
Asked if he was urging Washington to do more, the U.N. chief replied: "That's what I have been doing and will continue to do."
CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM
Fossil fuel industries, such as oil and coal, may lose out from measures to boost low-carbon alternatives and want time and clear policies, for example on carbon prices, to invest. Other companies want to know what technologies to choose.
"We need clear direction and long-term leadership," said Philippe Joubert, president of Alstom Power, the electricity generation arm of the global French engineering firm Alstom SA which makes components for coal, gas and renewable energy power plants.
The aviation industry wanted a global approach to fighting climate change, said the head of the International Air Transport Association, Giovanni Bisignani. Businesses want global steps, so that polluting rivals elsewhere don't get an easier ride.
Environment experts and lobbyists argue that "green" spending to create jobs can help re-build leaner economies run on wind and solar power, helping to avoid a worse climate crisis.
"The climate crisis, economic crisis and energy security concerns will begin to unravel if we start a shift away from expensive, vulnerable and polluting carbon-based fuels," former U.S. vice-president and campaigner Al Gore told the conference.
Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, expressed cautious optimism ahead of the December conference. "I think there is a good chance that things will happen," he said.
China's official in charge of climate change policy struck a similar note. "I do believe that political wisdom can help us find solutions acceptable to all parties," said Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of China's National Development and Reform Commission. "I'm looking forward to the success of the meeting."
(Additional reporting by Karin Jensen and Peter Levring; writing by Gerard Wynn; editing by Mark Trevelyan)
Act now on climate change, Gore urges global leaders
Slim Allagui, Yahoo News 24 May 09;
COPENHAGEN (AFP) – Former US vice president turned climate campaigner Al Gore warned business and political leaders Sunday that the world was running out of time to reach a deal on how to fight global warming.
"It's time to act now... We have to do it this year, not next year," Gore told the World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen. "The clock is ticking because Mother Nature does not do bailouts."
"To save the future, we have everything we need except the political will," the Nobel Peace laureate said in his keynote address at the meeting of business leaders, academics and politicians.
The summit organisers, the think-tank Mandag Morgen, want to raise awareness of environmental issues before the Danish capital hosts the United Nations' crucial Climate Change Conference later this year.
"The business community and the leaders of the world must go together to safeguard the world," Gore told delegates.
The United Nations hopes to get a new global warming treaty approved to replace the Kyoto Protocol on cutting carbon emissions that expires in 2012.
Around 300 people took part in an anti-capitalist protest outside the summit venue, said police spokesman Flemming Steen Munch, adding that 71 youths were arrested for breaching the security barrier.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon opened the summit calling on big business to do more to shape a greener economy.
"I want to see you in the vanguard of an unprecedented effort to retool the global economy into one that is cleaner, greener and more sustainable," he said.
"We must harness the necessary political will to seal the deal on an ambitious new climate agreement in December," added Ban, who arrived earlier Sunday from war-torn Sri Lanka where he had been on a two-day visit.
Executives from leading companies such as Intel Corporation, BP and Siemens are meeting at the three-day World Business Summit to discuss ways companies can help reduce greenhouse gases without hampering economic growth.
The meeting, which runs through Tuesday, also aims to encourage businesses to invest in green technology and promote more efficient use of energy resources.
While the UN hopes to build on agreements struck under the Kyoto treaty, the European Union has already said it will slash emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and raise the target to 30 percent if others set similarly ambitious targets.
Former US president George W. Bush refused to sign up to the Kyoto treaty over fears it would harm his country's economy.
But his successor, President Barack Obama, has vowed that the United States would now take a leading role in the battle against global warming.
Lawmakers in the US Congress opened debate last week on a "clean energy" bill that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and create "green" jobs.
Last week former US president Bill Clinton called for more commitment and concrete action on climate change.
"You do not have the luxury of just debating what we are going to do and how much money we are going to spend on it," Clinton told a conference in Seoul, South Korea.
He warned that if the world fails to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050, it would pay a high price in food shortages, drought and public health dangers.
Gore, others urge CEOs to back climate change deal
John Heilprin, Associated Press Yahoo News 24 May 09;
COPENHAGEN – Climate-change heavyweights U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon and Nobel prize winner Al Gore urged more than 500 business leaders on Sunday to lend their corporate muscle to reaching a global deal on reducing greenhouse gases.
The CEOs of PepsiCo, Nestle, BP and other major world businesses began meeting in Copenhagen, where politicians will gather in December to negotiate a new U.N.-brokered climate treaty.
Despite the global financial crisis, both Ban and Gore said there was no time for delay in hashing out the specifics of how to cut greenhouse gases that contribute to warming the planet.
"We have to do it this year. Not next year. This year," Gore said. "The clock is ticking, because Mother Nature does not do bailouts."
The three-day World Business Summit on Climate Change is a precursor to the negotiations to determine what will succeed the Kyoto climate treaty that expires in 2012.
"Continuing to pour trillions of dollars into fossil-fuel subsidies is like investing in subprime real estate," Ban said. "Our carbon-based infrastructure is like a toxic asset that threatens the portfolio of global goods, from public health to food security."
A new global warming treaty would build on the Kyoto treaty's mixed success in requiring that 37 industrialized nations reduce greenhouse gas emissions an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
Gore said any of the ambitious treaty goals being discussed will depend on CEOs working out greener ways of doing business and governments reining in unrestricted pollution.
"The business community and the leaders of the world must go together to safeguard the world," he told a forum that even drew Queen Margrethe of Denmark.
Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of China's national development and reform commission, pledged to play "a positive and a constructive" role to reach a global climate treaty, and already is putting in place its climate plan for 2015 and beyond.
"During negotiations, developed countries always hope that a future China may do much better and greater efforts on addressing climate change issues," he said.
Rajendra K. Pachauri, head of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Gore, said already "we are perhaps at the upper range" of predicted higher temperatures this century.
"We have a very short window of opportunity," he said. "If we want to limit temperature increase to about 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), then emissions globally must peak by 2015."
About 300 anti-globalization activists marched Sunday toward the convention, heavily guarded by police. Some 40 teenage activists were handcuffed with plastic strips and detained after they were caught in woods nearby.
The police removed two water pistols from one of them; another was carried away by three officers.
Erik Rasmussen, the conference organizer, said business leaders are mulling specific and binding targets for reducing greenhouse gases within 10 years and 20 years that would be announced at the end of the conference.
Anders Eldrup, CEO of Danish state-controlled oil and gas group DONG Energy, said businesses face a big choice.
"There are two tracks being discussed now, one a tax on CO2 and a cap-and-trade," he said, leaning toward the carbon tax.
However, Connie Hedegaard, Denmark's climate minister, told The Associated Press the best solution is global limits on pollution blamed for global warming instead of a tax on carbon dioxide and other warming gases.
Hedegaard urged businesses to back such limits, called cap-and-trade, which require governments to issue pollution allowances, or permits, to businesses that could be traded.
"I would hope that they would sort of agree that some kind of cap and trade will be the most efficient tool to achieve what science tells us what we must achieve," she said. "A carbon tax — you can just pay that tax — but you must also have the caps so that you start innovating from there."
An emissions trading plan advanced in the U.S. Congress last week, increasing the likelihood that the full House of Representatives will for the first time address broad legislation to tackle climate change later this year.
Gore predicted it would pass the House, gain Senate approval and be signed into law by President Barack Obama.
The United States has said it is committed to reaching a deal in Copenhagen as long as other major polluters such as China and India do their part as well.
Associated Press Writer Jan M. Olsen contributed to this report.
