Business Leaders Forge Climate Change Pact

By JAY AKASIE, Special to the Sun
February 21, 2007

The chairman of the Global Roundtable on Climate Change, Jeffrey Sachs, announced an agreement yesterday between multinational corporations and nongovernmental groups that calls for sweeping new gas emissions guidelines and a post-Kyoto Protocol framework aimed at reducing greenhouse gas levels.

The roundtable's agreement, signed by more than 100 corporations and groups such as the National Council of Churches, calls on the governments of the world to establish clear regulations that would cap carbon dioxide production in an effort to turn the planet back from what the roundtable calls an impending environmental calamity. "We are already approaching dangerous levels of greenhouse gas emissions," Mr. Sachs said. "We have to start acting now and start acting decisively."

Part of the roundtable's mission is to address the problems created by the largely ineffective Kyoto Protocol. "What the roundtable members agree on is that we need to move beyond Kyoto and look at where the world will be at midcentury," Mr. Sachs said.

He said the roundtable's statement is particularly important, as China will soon surpass America as the largest emitter of carbon dioxide gas in the world. Developing countries will widen the carbon dioxide gap between themselves and developed nations in the decades to come, Mr. Sachs said. "The key is that addressing climate change requires global action. Every part of the world will have to join together to find a solution," he said.

Mr. Sachs, who also leads the Earth Institute at Columbia University, said business leaders around the world are generally far ahead of the public sector in recognizing the dangers of climate change and resolving to face the problem head on. "Corporations have taken the lead," he said at a press conference on the Columbia University campus, surrounded by executives representing some of the companies who have endorsed the roundtable's agreement. "The business world wants a framework that spells out a sensible and predictable course of action. And we need globalization if we want to have global prosperity."

The roundtable meets once a year. Although this year's session is set for December in Indonesia, Mr. Sachs predicts the world's governments won't finish ratifying the agreement until well after the end of this year.

The announcement brought together executives from companies such as Volvo, Marsh & McLennan, Endessa, Alcoa, Air France, Citigroup, DuPont, and General Electric. "Environmental care is nothing new to us. We recognize that we are part of the problem, but we are also part of the solution," the president of Volvo Group North America, Tomas Ericson, said.