Business calls for radical action on climate change ahead of Copenhagen

Meeting at the World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen over the weekend, seven hundred delegates from leading business called on politicians to take immediate, substantial and worldwide action to tackle global warming.

The call has come from the Copenhagen Climate Council (CCC) – a global collaboration between business and science founded by the Copenhagen–based independent think tank, Monday Morning. It is effectively business’s attempt to frame politician’s discussions ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) in December, urging them to be braver.

In a statement issued yesterday it has designated ‘The Copenhagen Call’, the CCC argues that a new global climate treaty must set bold targets for emissions reductions by 2020 and 2050, limiting the global average rise in temperature to a maximum of 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels.

"The ambition of the Copenhagen Call shows that business need not be a conservative voice on climate change. Many of the businesses represented at this significant event in the lead up to COP15 want brave decisions that will tackle this most wicked of problems," said Tim Flannery, chair of the CCC.

Although it acknowledges that the changes necessary to meet this target would have a profound affect on business in the short-term, the Copenhagen Call argues that this would be more than outweighed by the long term benefits.

Erik Rasmussen, founder of the CCC, explained: "Reducing the emissions that until now have been so linked to our economic growth and betterment will be an enormous, unprecedented global challenge but will also provide significant opportunities for sustainable growth, green jobs, development and innovation."

The Copenhagen Call was presented to the Danish Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, and Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the UNFCCC,and will be taken forward by them in to the last six months of negotiations before COP15 in December. The six steps which the Copenhagen Call states are crucial to ensuring a sustainable economic future are clearly intended to provide a framework for those discussions.

They call for: agreement on a science-based greenhouse gas stabilisation path with 2020 and 2050 emissions reduction targets that will achieve it; effective measurement, reporting and verification of emissions performance by business; incentives for a dramatic increase in financing low emission technologies; deployment of existing low-emission technologies and the development of new ones; funds to make communities more resilient and able to adapt to the effects of climate change; and means to finance forest protection.

The big question, of course, is will the politicians take any of this on board? Steve Howard, ceo of the Climate Change Group, which took part in the discussions that led to the Copenhagen Call, believes they must.

“This call is very direct, given to the new Prime Minister of Denmark and the UNFCCC’s Yvo de Boer, I expect it to be absolutely registered by negotiators,” he said. “But perhaps more importantly, is just the single message that progressive business – and a fantastic broad spectrum of progressive business – is behind a bold deal in Copenhagen [...]

“Seven hundred delegates from leading businesses in the world coming together and saying ‘we want action’. That’s really a message that can’t be ignored.”

He is not complacent, however. “Is it enough? No it’s not. And we need all businesses that are prepared to speak out on this [...] to actually talk to leading politicians and tell them: ‘You have got our backing for clear and decisive action in Copenhagen’,” he said, adding that it’s worth remembering: “There will always be businesses in this space that will be pushing another argument.”

Even within the coalition of businesses pushing for positive action, there is a wide diversity of opinion – which is why the Copenhagen Call is necessarily broad-brush in its approach.

Ahead of the World Business Summit on Climate Change some environmental groups had expressed concern that businesses attending the Summit included some of the world’s biggest polluters – like Shell, recently dubbed, on the back of new research, "the most carbon-intensive oil company in the world".

It was feared that the Summit would result in a “business as usual” approach to the problem of climate change. In the event, the Copenhagen Call appears to prove such fears groundless.

The Copenhagen Call was presented by the CCC, informed by discussions with the World Business Council on Sustainable Development; 3C; the World Economic Forum Climate Change Initiative; the UN Global Compact and The Climate Group, and deliberations among participants at the World Business Summit on Climate Change.