Isramart : GE, BP Join Industry Demands for Carbon Regulations

Isramart news:
General Electric Co. and BP Plc are demanding governments enact regulations to cut emissions blamed for global warming to create new investment opportunities and stave off the growth in pollution.

GE, the second-biggest maker of wind turbines, and BP, Europe’s second-largest oil company, joined other multinational manufacturers and service providers demanding leaders agree at UN climate talks to cut emissions 85 percent by 2050, they said in a statement. They also want a global carbon market created.

“These are difficult and challenging times for the international business community and a poor outcome from the UN climate-change conference in Copenhagen will only make them more so,” the companies said. “Delay is not an option.”

About 100 heads of state are meeting this week at United Nations headquarters in New York to discuss ways to cope with and slow climate change. The UN is leading negotiations in Copenhagen in December to forge a global treaty to reduce CO2 from coal plants and cars and limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of this century.

“This is the first and only time that world leaders are meeting before a new deal on climate change has to be agreed in December,” Yvo de Boer, head of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, said yesterday in an interview.

The companies that signed the statement, which include Siemens AG and Rio Tinto Plc, are also demanding rules to keep

developing countries from logging tropical forests and money to help the poor adapt to a warming planet.

‘Affects Daily Lives’

“Not addressing this issue, which affects the daily lives of people all over the planet, would be extremely risky and I fear lead to wars over water, land, immigration and trade,” said Tim Flannery, chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council, a group of businesses and scientists trying to draw attention to the importance of the UN climate talks.

Disagreements over who should pay and how much developed and developing countries should reduce emissions remain hurdles in reaching a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

The world needs to limit greenhouse-gas emissions to 35 billion tons by 2030 to avoid temperature increases of 2 degrees Celsius, former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said yesterday. That’s down from about 50 billion tons at present.

Without a global agreement, industry will suffer from “uncertainty,” the companies said in the e-mailed statement. More “ambitious” targets will be matched by greater efforts by companies, they wrote.

Coca-Cola Co.,Starbucks Corp.,British Airways Plc and BASF SE also signed the statement.