Business leaders urge wealthy nations to take lead in global warming battle

[Jon_Irenicus]

The world’s developed countries should take the lead in the battle against global warming and push for halving global emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, a group of business leaders said Friday.

The World Economic Forum, in proposals presented to Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, also urged the Group of Eight countries — which are holding a summit in Japan in July — to set nearer-term reduction goals.

“Nothing less than a rapid and fundamental strategy to reach a low-carbon world economy is needed,” said the proposal, which was backed by 99 CEOs of global companies.

While the world’s richest countries should take the lead, emerging economies such as China and India will also have to be part of the reduction strategy in the long-term, the group said.

“Those countries who are currently developing fast will not be able to avoid their future responsibilities,” the proposal said.

Japan has pledged to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases, which are blamed for the rising of world temperatures, by between 60 percent and 80 percent by 2050, but has not set an interim target.

G-8 environment ministers last month said in a statement after a meeting in Japan that there was “strong political will” to set the 50 percent reduction target for 2050 at the upcoming G-8 summit.

Setting interim targets has been much more contentious. Many support a goal of reductions between 25 percent and 40 percent by 2020, but the U.S. government considers that unrealistic.

The business leaders’ proposals were modest compared to what environmentalists and the European Union are pushing for. For instance, the executives called the 50-percent reduction goal an “aspiration,” rather than a binding target.

The group also called for the setting of an interim “milestone” as part of a new international global warming pact scheduled to be completed in 2009, but mentioned a more modest range of cuts between 14 percent and 35 percent by 2030.

“The new framework should construct an ambitious, but achievable, emissions reduction strategy for the short to medium-term,” the group said.

The business group also called for encouragement of all clean technologies, long-term policies to provide a stable investment climate, and products and services to adapt to changes caused by rising temperatures.

Source.

B-b-but aren’t the eb1l corps just trying to destroy the planet!?!?!? [:O]

On a more serious note, I love how even that is not enough for the radical enviros and the EU.

-Jon

[Juan]

Isn’t that a textbook case of big businesses in bed with government, trying to cartelize and regulate things and stifle competition ?

Also, is GW a ‘scientifically’ closed case ? If not, what [the hell] are these ‘businesses leaders’ talking about ?

[Anonymous_Coward]

Should fit right in with California’s just unveiled cap and trade system billed as an ‘economic stimulus’ plan and, AND will save 300 lives between now and 2020.

From the absence of business leaders nailing themselves to crosses on the Gov’ner’s lawn they are also behind this plan according to the architects on a radio interview I heard last night.

It also will reduce the number of ‘smog days’ where kids are directed not to play outside by three times the amount of days existing between now and 2020 which I guess makes perfect sense if you’re a bureaucrat.

Clicky link.

[Andrew]

Am I the only person that thinks massive reduction of carbon emissions will cause more planetary havoc. We have been engaged in heavy industry for about 200 years. Co2 has been reacting with earth’s atmosphere throughout that time.

The Earth has probably reached stability( if it has affected it at all! ) by graduation of more emissions. So what will happen when that Co2 stability is changed dramatically over a decade? Wouldn’t that cause a severe change in the temperature and weather?

Has anyone thought to think that maybe having a lot of Co2 in the air is a good thing?

We’ll have to see what the EU thinks when Finland freezes over in the next ice age.

If government causes more intervention by its first intervention, and destroys the market economy, imagine what a puny species of self importance will do trying to intervene in the vast balance of nature trying to fix its first interruption with her? Man is so arrogant to think that we are the cause of astronomical changes that have been precedent for some 5 billion years in nature, regardless of the science.

[ChaseCola]

[H] Economic Suicide, its the cool new thing, everybodies doin it.[H]