Catastrophic climate warnings for world business leaders

“We meet at a critical moment in human history. Our planet is warming to dangerous levels,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the opening session of the World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen on Sunday May 25.

Encouraging world business leaders to create a global economy that is “cleaner, greener and more sustainable”, Ban told 700 delegates from the business community that “climate change is the defining challenge of our time.”

“You and your colleagues have the ingenuity and vision to lead by example where others, including governments, are lagging behind,” he said. “With your support and through your example, we must harness the necessary political will to seal the deal.”

In Copenhagen in December, governments are expected to conclude negotiations on a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol, whose first commitment period for reducing greenhouse gas emissions ends in 2012.

“This will not be easy,” warned Ban. “Fundamental change never is. But if we get it right, we can reasonably look forward to sustained growth and prosperity. If we get it wrong, we face catastrophic damage to people, to the planet and to the global marketplace.”

“Our excessive reliance on a fossil-fuel based economy is destroying our planet’s resources, and impoverishing the poor, weakening the security of nations and it is choking global economic potential,” the secretary-general said.

The World Business Summit on Climate Change was organized by six of the most influential business initiatives on climate change: 3C – Combat Climate Change, the Climate Group, the UN Global Compact, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the World Economic Forum and the Copenhagen Climate Council.

Ban urged participants to mobilize their employees, partners and others to demand urgent action on the issue, as well as to continue finding private-sector methods to slash climate risks.

“Your children will thank you one day,” he said.

Indeed, former U.S. Vice President and Nobel Peace Laureate Al Gore told the business leaders that the test of what is right where the climate is concerned lies with the next generation.

“We hear the voices of the next generation now. They are ready for us to meet this challenge. They will live in the world shaped by the decisions made in Copenhagen less than seven months from now. And those decisions in turn will be shaped by the advice and deliberations of the world’s business community gathered here in Copenhagen this week,” said Gore.

“We have everything we need to do it with the possible exception of political will,” he said, “but we know that political will is a renewable resource.”

“But there’s not much time. We have to do it this year, not next year, this year,” Gore warned. “The risk of failure would be a risk that the political cohesion that has brought us this far would begin to fray.”

” Mother Nature does not do bailouts.”

Gore raised the expectation that President Barack Obama would work with other world leaders to conclude a successful agreement limiting greenhouse gas emissions in Copenhagen in December.

Gore reminded the business leaders that record droughts, fires, storms, flooding and tropical disease migrations are already occurring and are a taste of what is to come if greenhouse gases are not quickly brought under control.

“Every nation and business has a leadership role to play,” Gore said. “The time to act is now. The urgency that I sense in this room is felt all around the world. This is, properly understood, not a political issue but a moral issue.”

Yesterday, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso stated that “the Commission’s energy and climate change package was recently formally adopted, Europe became the first region in the world to implement such far-reaching, legally binding climate and energy targets.”

The results of the World Business Summit on Climate Change will be presented to the Danish government, host of the UN conference on climate change, and to world leaders negotiating the terms of the next international climate treaty.

Danish Minister of Climate and Energy Connie Hedegaard said, “We, the politicians of the world, have a responsibility to reach a truly global climate change agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009. But it is the business society that can deliver the tools to turn our vision into reality. Businesses can provide the clever solutions to make it possible to live in a both modern and sustainable society.”

 

Source: Environment News Service

Find out more: www.copenhagenclimatecouncil.com