Bold Climate Action! CEOs Talk About Having Republicans Talk About Collapsing Global Climate

[hatrack]

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY’S global-warming denial is becoming the fringe view it always deserved to be. It is not just environmentalists who want to move on climate change. Big corporations — even oil companies — are increasingly calling for action, too.

Declaring that “climate change is a major threat to the U.S. economy,” a group of chief executives on Wednesday teamed up with several prominent environmental groups to call on President Trump and Congress to “put in place a long-term federal policy as soon as possible to protect against the worst impacts.” The group, called the CEO Climate Dialogue, endorsed cutting the country’s planet-warming greenhouse-gas emissions by 80 percent or more by 2050. That goal is too modest; the United Nations warns that world governments must get to net-zero emissions by mid-century. But just reaching the 80 percent goal would require a huge transformation in the U.S. economy — and also on the part of some of the big companies calling for it. These include BP, Royal Dutch Shell, DuPont, Dominion Energy and Ford.

The environmentalist groups that joined these firms, including the Environmental Defense Fund and the Nature Conservancy, risk criticism for associating with big energy companies calling for an emissions goal that falls short of the U.N. target — not to mention the extreme demands of the Green New Deal advocates. But those who really care about the problem should not turn away would-be allies, if their desire to move in the right direction is sincere.

The CEO Climate Dialogue is not the first corporate group to demand tougher government climate policy, nor is its proposal the most detailed out there. But the fact that the group’s rollout seems almost worth taking for granted is itself notable. “The fact that there are several business coalitions working to advance federal climate legislation demonstrates that demand for U.S. climate action is growing, and that a wide range of companies are keen to drive progress in Congress,” the group argues.

EDIT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/wake-up-republicans-even-corporations-are-calling-for-action-on-climate-change/2019/05/15/7c07e918-7745-11e9-b3f5-5673edf2d127_story.html?utm_term=.e274e909a255

[lunasun]

1. Good read