The Daily Climate: Five Corps. Flex Muscles to Fight Global Warming

by Emily Gertz

Published November 19, 2008 @ 11:15AM PST

Five major U.S. corporations are calling for immediate and effective clean energy and global warming legislation from Congress in 2009. This new "BICEP" coalition -- Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy -- includes Levi Strauss & Co., Nike, Starbucks, Sun Microsystems, The Timberland Company, along with non-profit CERES, which advocates for corporate social and enviornmental responsibility.

Via press release, they've released a multi-point platform that includes: reducing greenhouse gas pollution at least 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050; establishing greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system that auctions 100 percent of carbon pollution allowances (rather than alloting a percentage of allowances to various industries for free); mandating capture-and-storage technologies for coal-fired power plants; and generating 30% of the nation's energy from clean renewables by 2030; and more.

My quick and dirty web search -- perhaps someone can check my numbers and update us in the comments -- suggests that in 2007, the five companies in "BICEP" had combined revenues of over $45 billion. This is roughly 3% of the total U.S. gross domestic product in 2007 of $13.84 trillion. Translation: That's a significantly sizable percentage of the GDP. Insert "flexing their muscles" joke here.

What do you think of corporations, and these corporations, pressuring Congress to solve the climate crisis? Tell us in the comments.

Meanwhile, African environmental ministers met today to hash out a common platform on global warming to take to next month's international climate treaty talks in Poznan, Poland, reports Agency France-Presse. One position they're likely to take is that African nations should not be held accountable for emissions in the same manner as other countries tagged as "developing nations," such as China -- which produces most of the world's human-caused carbon dioxide, compared to a collective 2% by the nations of Africa. By some assessments, global warming is at least partly to blame for the the droughts and desertification that are causing massive suffering in Africa. As my fellow Change.org editor Dave Bennion posted yesterday on the Immigrant Rights blog, "We know from tragic experience that drought can initiate or intensify conflict, especially in underdeveloped regions like Darfur...It's time for the public to take a closer look at how the issues of migration and environmental degradation are linked, and formulate policies that address the issues together."

Back in the U.S., young activists are organizing around the goal of no coal. The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina reports that increasing numbers of young adults, many of them college students, are "attending hearings and engaging in demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience reminiscent of the protests their parents might have seen in the 1970s against nuclear plants." The reporter highlights 20-year-old Sara Tansey, who took a year out of her education at the University of South Carolina to fight the coal industry. "There are lots of young people who got engaged on the climate and energy issue during the election," she told The Courier. "I think young people are really awakening to injustice of the whole life cycle of coal."

Beset by a head cold and nasty cough today, so things are likely to be a little slower than usual at Stop Global Warming.

Image: Timberland's "nutritional" product label "offers data on two aspects of Timberland's environmental impact -- the energy used to produce the shoe and the company's purchases of renewable energy -- and three aspects of its community impact -- the number of hours served by Timberland employees in community service, the percentage of its factories "assessed against a code of conduct," and the child labor employed in making the shoe. It also tells where in the world the shoe was manufactured." Source: Worldchanging.com