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[Editor's note: This article was authored by BSR, a global business network and consultancy focused on sustainability.]
As 2010 begins, there are looming questions about climate change action: Will the political agreement made in Copenhagen in 2009 be developed by the next "COP" meeting to include detailed targets and rules? Will those targets and rules be binding?
What will happen with the U.S. Senate's vote on cap-and-trade? Will U.S. public opinion about climate change -- which has a major impact on how the Senate votes -- ever begin to converge with science?
There's no doubt that the year's most interesting stories could turn out to be "black swans" that we can't currently foresee. But even amid the uncertainty, there are some clear trends that will significantly shape the business-climate landscape.
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1. A Better Dashboard
Carbon transparency isn’t easy -- it takes science, infrastructure, and group decisions about standards to allow for more accurate information. We have started moving in that direction. Web-based information services provide illustrations: country commitments needed for climate stabilization, indications of where we are now, and the critical path of individual U.S. policymakers.
Meanwhile, more attention is being paid to real-time atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, remote sensing technology that tracks atmospheric GHGs, and a new climate registry for China. As these data tools become more available, business leaders should begin to see -- and report on -- a clearer picture of their company’s real climate impacts.
2. Enhanced Attention to Products
There are signs that more consumers will demand product footprinting -- that is, a holistic, lifecycle picture of the climate impacts of products and services ranging from an ounce of gold to a T-shirt or car. Fortunately, a new wave of standards is coming. The gold-standard corporate accounting tool, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, aims to issue guidance on footprinting for products and supply chains late in the year, and groups like the Outdoor Industry Association and the Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition plan to publish consensus-based standards for their industries in the near future.
3. More Efforts to Build Supplier Capacity to Address Emissions
With more attention on products comes an appreciation of product footprinting’s limitations. Many layers of standards are still needed, from the micro methods of locating carbon particles to time-consuming macro approaches defining common objectives through group consensus. Accurate footprinting that avoids greenwashing requires statistical context, especially related to variance and confidence levels, that companies often think stakeholders don’t want to digest.
Progressive companies such as Hewlett Packard, Ikea, Intel, and Wal-Mart are therefore pursuing partnerships with suppliers for carbon and energy efficiency, and they are focusing their public communications on the qualitative efforts to build supplier capacity--as opposed to pure quantitative measurements, which can imply more precision than really exists.
4. Improved Literacy About the Climate Impacts of Business
The bulk of companies’ climate management falls short of directly confronting the full scale of effort required to address climate change. That’s partly because organizational emissions accounting tends to treat progress as change from the past, as opposed to movement toward a common, objective planetary goal. But companies are becoming more aware of the need to be goal oriented. Firms such as Autodesk and BT have begun bridging this gap by illustrating that there is a common end--which is measured in atmospheric parts per million of emissions--and that company metrics can be mapped to their share of their countries' national and international policy objectives toward them.
5. More Meaningful Policy Engagement
Related to the previous item, more companies realize that pushing for the enactment of clear and durable rules to incentivize low-carbon investment is one of the most direct things they can do to stabilize the climate. Therefore, more companies are engaging earlier -- and in more creative ways -- in their climate "journey." There is growing realization that you don't have to "reduce first" before getting involved.
Trends on Climate - is business action and networking with citie
When the national political sector not respond with enough encouragement the role of business need to be strong and looking for new networking partners. The partners will be possible to find on the local level in cities. Learn from Malmö and Stockholm on how to reduce emission and create Sustainable City structures. Read more - kajembren.wordpress.com
Link to Copenhagen Accord is invalid
A Link to Copenhagen Accord PDF seems to invalid for downloading, please check.
Global Warming????
For those of you who may not have seen this, John Coleman, staff Meteorologist at KUSI, San Dioego had a one hour show January 14th about his views fo the Global warming issue. He thinks that the climatologists are skewing the data in favor of a warming scenario, when in fact the ice caps have been growing in some areas. Apparently the sources of 6,000 measuring stations in the Arctic and Antarctic and around the world have been reduced to 1,000 which mainly are located in more urban areas.
If this IS the case, then the public and congress have been hoodwinked. Coleman most assuredly thinks so, in light of Al Gore's presentations on global warming and "an inconvenient truth" which were backed by Roger Revelle. Revelle, before his death was beginning to discount his original beliefs about global warming in that CO-2 increases were not in the advance of the temperature increases on the planet.
I guess, for me, the one good side of all of this is to keep on a path allowing technology to give us cleaner air and water. The bad side is that this may be an expensive cost to business.