CURRENT MOON

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Maybe We've Reached the Tipping Point


Today's EEI newsletter reports that: "USA Today Examines Corporate Shift in Attention to GHG, Climate Change

USA Today examined in report published today how some corporate leaders are taking up the fight on climate change with potentially radical ideas. The report said that Duke Energy Chairman Paul Anderson wants the Bush administration to tax companies based on the amount of GHGs they produce – 'just the sort of big-government remedy the Bush administration says would hobble the economy,' USA Today wrote.

Wrote USA Today: 'But Anderson, 61, is no closet left-winger. He's a registered Republican, Bush backer and member of the president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. That such a Big Business stalwart is demanding federal action on climate change illustrates an unmistakable evolution in corporate thinking, motivated both by evidence that global warming already is affecting the economy and by the prospect of fat profits from new environment-friendly products.'

The newspaper quotes former Vice President Al Gore as saying: 'There's a sea change underway in American business. What's different in business audiences in the past year or so is a new and widespread receptivity, a keen awareness, an eagerness on the part of large numbers to find out how they can take a leadership position. And a recognition, too, that there are profits to be made.' (emphasis mine)

Wrote USA Today: 'It's not just power companies that are agitating for action. Institutional investors are demanding that companies disclose their financial exposure to future climate changes. Insurers are abandoning underwriting in coastal areas threatened by costly Hurricane Katrina clones, and companies such as General Electric and DuPont are gearing up to prosper from the transition to a carbon-constrained world. Last year, Goldman Sachs Chairman Henry Paulson, now Treasury secretary-designate, warned that the time needed to address climate change was running out.'
USA Today , June 1."

4 comments:

olvlzl said...

If the corporate dross is this far along in admitting global warming there are some mighty dire internal documents being read by the CEOs. I guess that a lot of the worst of those are predicting food shortages due to deceased grain production and extinct fish stocks.

The unseen hand is brainless and it won't do a damned thing until it has to if we're at the point where it has to then we are past the tipping point.

Anonymous said...

I have a small amount of GE stock and looking at their last annual report it appears that they are getting heavily into renewable energy resources so they can see which way the wind blows (pardon the pun).

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