US CAP commits to 90% reduction by 2050 & coal moratorium!

[Editor's note: this US CAP announcement was in fact a hoax, the result of a campaign by international climate justice group, RisingTide. See this story for more]

Wow, this is pretty exciting! The US Climate Action Partnership, which is comprised of a number of big, companies who make most of their money on dirty energy (like BP, Duke Energy and others), in partnership with some large national environmental groups like National Wildlife Federation and The Nature Conservancy, has committed to 45% reduction in GHGs by 2020 and 90% reduction by 2050! They also announced a coal moratorium today in conjunction with the opening of the UN Climate Negotiations in Bali. for more check out their website, this article in the Dallas Morning News, and US CAP’s press release, which is also below.

For Immediate Release
December 3, 2007

Contacts:
Joan Adams, Parsons & Fischer, 202-684-8097, jadams@parsonsfischer.com
Jack Escobar, Parsons & Fischer, 202-683-8451, jescobar@parsonsfischer.com

Information at www.climateactionpartnership.org

MAJOR US BUSINESSES ANNOUNCE COMMITMENT TO REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS BY 90%

Washington, D.C., Dec. 3, 2007 - The U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a consortium of 33 prominent businesses and organizations, announced today a commitment amongst its members to a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The announcement was timed to coincide with the opening of a major United Nations climate summit in Bali.

“In an effort to encourage decisive action in Bali this week, USCAP’s members have committed to a 90% reduction in their greenhouse gas emissions by 2050,” said Matt Leopard, a spokesperson for the consortium. “This commitment should send a strong message to the assembled countries and businesses about the type of reductions needed to stop global warming.”

USCAP’s members include many US market leaders such as Alcoa, BP, Caterpillar, ConocoPhillips, Dow, DuPont, Ford, General Electric, General Motors Corp., Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo, PG&E, Shell and Xerox. USCAP’s goal is to further public policy that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the climate.

The announcement from USCAP’s members also includes a mid-term commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 45% from 1990 levels by 2020. Following the leads of NASA’s top climate scientist James Hansen, as well as bi-partisan political leaders, USCAP is also calling for an immediate moratorium on the construction of new coal-fired power plants.

Toward this end, USCAP is urging the US and other industrialized nations to enact a policy framework for mandatory reductions of greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors of the economy. USCAP has produced a comprehensive set of principles and recommendations for scientifically effective, socially responsible climate policy. This document, titled A Call to Action , has been released by USCAP to underscore the urgent need for a comprehensive policy shift on energy and climate.

USCAP is the first consortium of major businesses to make such a commitment in hopes that it will yield to policy decisions to accelerate the deployment of zero-emission technologies and energy efficiency. In particular, USCAP is promoting landmark legislation for a government funded “Sustainable Job Corps.” This politically popular program would create 5 million jobs building a new public utility grid based on renewable technologies, with a goal of producing 50% of the US energy supply by 2020.

“USCAP has offered a plan for the US to lead by example in efforts to protect the climate,” said Matt Leopard. “The world governments assembled in Bali this week should begin a rapid transition to zero-emission energy sources and commit to a 90% reduction from 1990 levels by 2050”.

USCAP’s website is www.climateactionpartnership.org.

About Liz

While at the University of North Carolina, Liz led one of the first successful campus renewable energy campaigns in the southeast and won the Morris K. Udall scholarship in both 2002 & 2003. She organized the first Southeast Student Renewable Energy Conference April 2-4, 2004, to engage other Southern schools beyond UNC in energy and climate work. In the summer of 2004 she became a co-founding member of Energy Action Coalition, which she has been actively involved with since then. She is now co-chairing the Energy Action Coalition Steering Committee and coordinating the Southern Energy Network, which works with students in the Southeast on clean energy and climate initiatives as part of Energy Action Coalition's Campus Climate Challenge. In late fall 2005, she attended the UN Climate Negotiations in Montreal and helped start www.itsgettinghotinhere.org .

13 Responses to “US CAP commits to 90% reduction by 2050 & coal moratorium!”

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1 Calvin Dec 3rd, 2007 at 1:50 pm

Was it a joke?

The website is down, and it’s not the website of US-Cap anyway…i think that this might have been ‘the yes men’ or someone similar?

I`d like to hear more if you find out.
2 Calvin Dec 3rd, 2007 at 2:00 pm

It was a joke, if you go to the website of the name given for contacts, its obvious the PR company website is not for real. It’s scare on content. A whois domain enquiry shows that someone caliming to live in LA set up the site about a week back!
3 Evan Dec 3rd, 2007 at 2:29 pm

sounds like a Yes Men style prank
4 lizveazey Dec 3rd, 2007 at 2:45 pm

yep, it’s a hoax, check out Guardian article for more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/dec/03/oil.bp
5 Scobar Dec 3rd, 2007 at 2:45 pm

As everyone should know by now, this press release is a fake. I got a call from U.S. CAP this morning asking the press to find out why someone is writing false press releases misrepresenting their policy position. The Dallas Morning News apparently ran with the story before the hoax was figured out.
You know, folks in the press work really hard to get the news out and get it right. When people lie to us, we get stuck with the blame for these mistakes. This is really unfortunate.
6 lizveazey Dec 3rd, 2007 at 3:34 pm

here’s more news on the hoax from NYTimes: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/more-climate-fakery/
7 Judith Miller Dec 3rd, 2007 at 9:59 pm

Yeah, kinda like they figured out the whole hoax behind the WMDs in Iraq or the Iraq/Al Qaaeda connection? The corporate media currently exists a cheerleader for the Bush Administration and their patrons in the fossil fuel industry. If they media had done their job then, maybe we’d be spending more time on reversing global warming instead of trying to stop an endless war in the Middle East.

Right now we are at a critical point in history as far as war and the environment goes and the media should be picking apart institutions like USCAP instead of being outraged by Rising Tide actually having to do their job for them by highlighting USCAP’s greenwashing.

I hope when USCAP called you, you responded “WHY AREN’T YOU COMMITTING TO REDUCE 90% by 2050?!!”

Probably not, they most likely buy advertising time.
8 Chris B Dec 4th, 2007 at 1:14 pm

Way to do a good job of reporting! Last time, I’m going to this blog for news…. Couldn’t you have done a little bit of research?
9 Escobar Dec 6th, 2007 at 5:30 pm

Gee, Judith, don’t you just have the media pegged?
Look, it’s easy to make statements about the “corporate” media when you don’t see how it works from the inside, so ignorant statements such as yours are forgivable. The truth is that in general, we go with the best information we have at the time we have it and we — unlike the rest of the world, unlike you — don’t have the luxury of letting our political opinions about WMDs or climate change or anything else skew our reporting and the information in front of us.
And might I remind you of my previous point about when people lie to us? As in how the administration lied to us about WMDs? Of course the media got it wrong, we often do when people lie to us.
A lie is a lie is a lie. But one thing you, these “activists” and the Bush administration have in common is that you all seem to think it’s okay to lie to the press if it helps you meet your goals.
And by the way, how exactly does lying to the press help the cause when it comes to climate change? Because as a reporter, I gotta say it almost makes me a little more wary of dealing with folks on the activists’ side of the issue. As in, if you’re willing to lie to once, how do I know you won’t do it again. In fact, how do I know you’re not doing it all the time?