Act now on climate change, business leaders told
Reuters is reporting Act now on climate change, business leaders told.
Business leaders must tackle climate change now before it is too late and not leave the issue to the environmental lobby, an executive at one of Germany’s leading utilities told a conference on Wednesday.
Speaking at a meeting to explore what businesses can do to minimize the negative effects of climate change, Juergen Hogrefe, senior executive at Germany’s third-largest power supplier Energie Baden-Wuerttemburg, said businesses needed to be much more pro-active.
“It is not just the job of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) to raise awareness of global warming,” said Hogrefe. “If a utility like ours doesn’t pause to consider the consequences of our activities, we will harm our customers, our business and the climate itself in the long run.”
The business leaders I have been meeting lately have all agreed with this. Everyone thinks something needs to be done, but many people have no idea what to do, and they really don’t see how their actions could count. But, like voting in a democracy, every little bit does count. In Australia each person emits an average of 28 tonnes of CO2e each year. In the US it’s 24 tonnes per person per year. In the UK it’s more like 12 tonnes per person per year. If even 1 person in 100 would simply pledge to offset their emissions and bought genuine carbon credits from accredited sources, that’s half a billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent removed from the atmosphere.
It won’t happen now, and it won’t happen overnight, but it has to happen quickly, within 9 years by some estimates, or there will be irreversible trouble. That’s what I call the “Destination Mars” scenario, and it’s not a happy one. We can avoid this path by being heros basically. When a building catches fire most people run away but some people will run into the flames to save as many people as they can. Not all of us can be physical super heros, but we can be moral super heroes by taking responsibility for our pollution and doing something proactive about it. A CO2 free life is a good life to lead. — DS
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