More than 100 corporate heads, international organisations and experts proposed a plan on 20 February for how the world should cut greenhouse gas emissions. The statement places a heavy emphasis on government action.
The Global Roundtable on Climate Change (GRCC) wants targets set for stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. It also urged governments to place a price on the carbon emissions released by power plants, factories and other sectors to discourage emissions, and warned that poorer nations would suffer most from climate change.
This was the Roundtable’s first major agreement since they began talks in 2004. The group includes executives from General Electric, Ford, Toyota Motor North America, investment bank Goldman Sachs, and Wal-Mart.
“Of course, addressing climate change involves risks and costs. But much greater is the risk of failing to act,” said Alain Belda, CEO of the world’s top aluminium producer, Alcoa, which signed the statement.
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“Unequivocal” evidence
President George W Bush’s administration has rejected mandatory caps on emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global warming. But the White House has recently been on the defensive, especially since the release of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on 2 February , which found “unequivocal” evidence of global warming, and a 90% probability that human activities are behind it.
“If we delay too long in beginning the changeover to increasingly de-carbonised energy systems, the eventual costs will only rise and the impact of climate change will only become more severe,” the GRCC wrote in its agreement.
The largest carbon-emitting sector is power generation, responsible for more than 40% of global emissions from the energy sector. Industry accounts for about 18% of emissions, transport contributes another 20%, and the residential and services sector roughly 13%.
The group estimates that technology to head off mounting CO2 concentrations would cost about 1% of global gross domestic product every year. Costs would fall as technologies become more established, it predicted.
Also on 20 February, the European Commission environment ministers endorsed a pledge to reduce Europe’s greenhouse gas emission to 20% below 1990 levels by 2020.
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