On Monday, January 22, 10 major corporations announced their statement to Congress on cutting GHG emissions in order to stabilize CO2 concentrations at 450-550 parts per million (PPM). This is a landmark statement and may do much to spur on other big emmitters. The names on the list are:
Alcoa, BP, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, DuPont, FPL Group, General Electric, LEhman Brothers, PG&E, and PNM Resources.
These companies say they are worried about nation-wide patchwork regulation and want the federal government to act now. These companies have been working together and with NGO parteners Environmental Defense, Natural Resources Defense Council, PEw Ceter on Clobal Climate Change, and the World Resources Institute to create a set of principles for legislators to follow in creating federal climate policy that will act “agressively and sustainably to slow stop and reverse the growth of green house gas emissions.”
Their partnership is called the United States Climate Action Partnership, and they seek to help congress create policy for “mandatory reductions of GHG emissions from major emitting sectors, including large stationary sources, transportation, and energy use in commercial and residential buildings.” Their desire is to have a cap and trade proram to help businesses achieve these big cuts. More than anything this signals coporation’s acknowledgement that this policy will be coming down the road at sometime oranother, and that the best thing to do is to drive it in that direction and not be blindsided when the time comes. They have even come out with a statement against new building of conventional coal power!
This signals the begining of a new era in industry, and we need to make sure that the momentum keeps going. Read the full statement at: Natural Resources Defence Council
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This is indeed an important moment for the climate moement. Let’s see if the President, in his State of the Union speech tonight, shows that he understands that the political and business tides are really shifting.
Smell that? smells like a big load to me. If Duke Energy is concerned about climate change why are they pushing forward with new coal and nuclear power plants. (lest any nuclear apologists feel compelled to argue, let me here point out that nuclear energy is a contributer to global warming as it takes around ten years to get a new nuclear power plant online. this process is very energy intensive and the energy required to do so will of course come from machinery that runs on petroluem and on electricity from the general grid.) They say they want to address “patchwork regulation”. What a great buzz word. I like it already. I’m kind of singing it to the tune of a little radio jingle I heard this morning. They say they want comprehensive policy to address global warming but my suspicion is that they want uniform policy, and they want a heavy hand in drawing this up, so that they can ensure plenty of breathing room for them to do what they want to.
I maintain that big corporations are indeed very bad. Their interest is in shareholder returns, nothing else. As we strive to shift our world towards a sustainable paradigm, part of which being a just transition for workers, let us not confuse that with a “just” transition for the profiteers. All in all, they’ve got to go. This system must go. Bye bye capitalism, don’t let the door hit you on your way to hell. The only reason it is important for us to work with the bosses in instrumenting this shift is because they’ve got so much power. We have to work with it. But we don’t owe them anything.
Now maybe this really will result in something solid to curb global warming. But it’s going to reinforce the concentration of power. I’ve been thinking lately that maybe all these power companies’ plan is to get a ton of money from the people through their trusty ally (the companies’, not the peoples’) the government to build all these plants. Then their just going to sit forever and ever because the bosses know even they can’t enjoy their riches on a dead planet.
Let’s all remember why this has gone on for so long already - somebody’s been making a lot of money. The root of the climate change problem runs deeper than a coal seam. It’s in the economic and governmental systems, and the underlying paradigms, that measure value according to money instead of life. We need changes far deeper than policy can provide. We neeed systematic and paradigmic changes. Let’s continue working for the policy reforms that we’re after, but don’t loose sight of the truth here folks. We’re not trying to organizie students for LEED building and wind energy and then we’re done and we’ve won. This is all about building power for a much much deeper shift.
Willie makes some good points, and in an ideal world it would be great to say goodbye to capitalism in one fell swoop. Unfortunately it’s a several step process, and celebrating each victory in every step is important. Don’t lose sight of the ultimate goals (whatever they may be for you), but don’t let your vision get in the way of your action.
Word. John I feel like you’re saying the same thing as me - celebrate what we can get now, work for the incremental changes, but keep your eye on the prize.
the point of my post was to remind folks to accept and work with these shifts in practice of the corporations but to remind all of that deeper bigger change that must must must happen. i also wanted to provide that good ol’ anti-capitalist voice to this subject.
great post though. this is definitely an interesting development that we should all keep an eye on.
thanks John.
well, i guess a bunch of college students trying make their campuses greener are not going to stop climate change alone, nor will a bunch of activist blocking the entrance to energy plants. if we dont get industry on board -responsible for the majority of emissions globally-, we will be swimming soon