Even the most conservative corporate interests come around when they finally understand that this will effect the bottom line more than just about anything.
Even the Canadian Council of Chief Executives is calling for absolute emission reductions AND endorses “environment taxes” e.g., our carbon tax…
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071001.wrceos1001/BNStory/specialComment/
Climate change top issue, CEOs declare
From Monday’s Globe and Mail
October 1, 2007 at 1:52 AM EDT
OTTAWA — Canada’s top chief executive officers have reached an “unprecedented consensus” on the need to combat global warming and their obligation to do more to help.
Monday morning, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives is releasing a declaration calling climate change “the most pressing and daunting issue” today, and acknowledging the need for “aggressive” action including “absolute” emission cuts. It’s the clearest signal ever sent by a broad coalition of Canadian businesses that they embrace the fight against climate change and accept the need for emission cut targets.
Even more significant: the CEOs acknowledge a necessary part of the battle will be government intervention to raise energy prices as a means of influencing consumption. “We share the goal of slowing, stopping and reversing the growth of global greenhouse gas emissions over the shortest period of time that is reasonably achievable,” the 150 CEOs announce in a declaration obtained by The Globe and Mail.
They say they’re confident that technology investment – spurred by incentives – could help Canada become a leader in trimming emissions output. But the CEOs acknowledge that governments must step in with an emissions trading market or even something most of them don’t welcome: environment taxes.
They say even without government intervention in markets, consumer preferences are shifting toward more environmentally friendly alternatives, but market forces alone are unlikely enough to meet the challenge of climate change.”
The declaration is an attempt by the CEO group, whose companies generate more than $800-billion in revenue a year, to secure a greater role in the national debate on tackling climate change.
“It’s meant to go on the offensive in a positive way as opposed to being in a defensive position where I think the industry has been for the past [few] years,” said Thomas d’Aquino, Council of Chief Executives president.
A key goal in this public embrace of the battle against global warming is to forestall measures from current or future governments that would unduly penalize the Canadian economy.
Both Ottawa’s minority Parliament and provinces are divided over what sort of policies are best to reduce greenhouse gas output.
“Unless we pull together and get a degree of consensus in the country … Canada will continue to be mired in this highly destructive, non-productive debate that eventually will lead to – I don’t know – maybe Draconian regulations that make no sense whatsoever,” Mr. d’Aquino said.
However, there is still plenty of time to influence the direction of Canada’s climate-change abatement strategy because the Harper government is still in the process of assembling it.
After announcing that Canada could not meet the heavy emissions reduction obligations under the 1997 Kyoto treaty, the minority Harper government is trying to chart a new course to reduce greenhouse gas output over a longer period.
Once considered a global-warming skeptic, Prime Minister Stephen Harper appears more resolved to act now.
He told global leaders earlier this month that the “growing menace of climate change is one of the most important public policy challenges of our time.”
Is the author freaking kidding me? What a bunch of crap. No one in their right mind can actually think that Stephen Harper has any intention whatsoever of doing a damn thing about climate change.
The CEO task force that drew up the declaration, co-chaired by Alcan Inc.’s Richard Evans and Suncor Energy Inc.’s Rick George, also sounds the alarm about the lack of a coherent national strategy to combat climate change, saying it’s undermined by conflict between the provinces and Ottawa.
Finally, the CEO group cautions, if real gains are to be achieved on climate change, any long-term plan must include all countries that are major emitters.
on November 21, 2007 on 4:42 pm
I am writing to you on the subject of the Bali Conference on Climate Change. Few, if any, plans will come out of the Conference to cut CO2 levels drastically, but I have a plan that I would like to see adopted by all countries and would be most pleased if you could give some publicity to it. You can get more information from the above website, and do feel free to contact me.
A Plan to Make All Countries Near-Zero Carbon Emitters Within Ten Years
I have been campaigning for a government driven campaign to make the UK a Near-Zero Carbon Country since shortly after I invented the Buxton Geothermal Turbine Generator in the 1980s. Twenty years down the line the UK has done nothing, and I get the run around from various government departments. I am sure that these same people will give me the run around for another ten years, when it will be too late to stop global warming.
It is difficult to get hold of all the figures necessary to show that countries can become near-zero carbon countries. However, there is a simple explanation that adequately reveals how this necessary target can be achieved. All our power requirements are for lighting, heating, transport, and energy for such things as industry on down to exercise machines. To make things simple we can assume that each category is 25% of total power. The lighting can be zero rated by building Buxton Geothermal Turbine Generators, the heating can be near-zero rated by installing Starlite coatings, that prevents heat escaping, on the walls and ceilings of all premises, and by having electrical heating from renewable sources we cut heating CO2 emissions to zero. Transport can be made near-zero in terms of carbon emissions by ensuring that all vehicles use carbon zero electricity, instead of petrol. This may seem to be an anathema to ‘‘petrol heads’’ but this displeasure can be simply overcome. At the moment when inventors come up with new technologies for electrical vehicles Oil Companies buy and destroy the patents and designs. These patents have a shelf life of ten years so we could soon put together a group of past inventors in this field to reproduce their work legally, as an intergovernmental team. We still have the problem of transport by aeroplane and ship having to use fossil fuels. However, their carbon footprints can be at least halved by having their fuels mixed with water using an ultrasonic dibber. Finally, the power needed for energy can be made entirely of carbon free electricity. New ways of making industry work using electricity instead of the gas that they are used to will be needed, but these are not insurmountable problems given that the Governments of the world have ten years to achieve the target.
All Government Departments must be part of the solution to the greatest threat to life on earth. They must work together, there is no point in hoping that the ‘invisible hand’ of the market has the ability to pay for such a massive clean up. In comparison, the threat of terrorism is a minor side show, and we would not leave the market to this task. The £60 billion being spent on replacing Trident submarines would have solved CO2 emission problems in the UK. This does not mean to say that this was our last chance, just a step in the wrong direction. Funding can be found from elsewhere.
‘The Ecologist’ magazine estimates the true cost of mental illness to the UK is £100 billion per year. When all patients suffering from mental illness are passed on to their trained local practice nurse for a thirty second cure using the Kadir-Buxton Method then we have immediate and massive savings.(The alternative of expensive drugs which, in trials, have less success than no treatment at all, should be made a thing of the past). The money saved by the UK would clean up CO2 emissions in the UK using the above plan. As it could in any country.