After three bumpy flights and one nauseating cab ride (solved with a doughnut) AND one inadvertently canceled hotel room (solved with begging), I set up camp in New York City to report out from the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting.
CGI was started by former President Clinton in 2005 to help “turn ideas into action” – too often, he saw commitments by governments and business to a particular cause or issue, but rarely did he see follow-through or hear reports on progress. So, CGI was founded to foster public and private sector collaboration on education, environment/energy, health and economic empowerment – with an emphasis on measurable progress.
BILL CLINTON ON DAVID LETTERMAN
With a bias for the energy and the environment topic, I was excited to hear what was being done and what new commitments would be made this year at CGI. I also had some skepticism that I was going to hear the same buzzphrases like: “public-private collaboration,” “building partnerships,” or “the time for action is now.”Read on
By Jigar Shah: This week, business and non-profit leaders will meet in New York, forClimateWeekNYºC, calling for bold climate action to secure a cleaner, greener, more prosperous future. As they gather, this much is evident: Government and the general public do not believe that climate change solutions can scale to meet the problem, nor do they accept that reducing our carbon emissions by the 17 gigatons necessary to stabilize global temperatures won’t harm economic growth. So, to build the political will and garner public consensus, we need to convince them that it isn’t a choice between the economy and the environment. As CEO of the Carbon War Room, I see ClimateWeekNYºC as a tremendous opportunity for us to convene as a community, identifying the best path for a transition towards a low-carbon economy.
By expanding our efforts to focus on new financial and economic tools we can capitalize on the largest wealth creation opportunity of our lifetime. Today, there are cost-effective climate change solutions capable of reducing 17 gigatons of carbon from our atmosphere which at the same time save people money and stimulate the economy. In fact, as reported by McKinsey & Company, 50 percent of all carbon reductions can be achieved without adding any undue burdens to consumers. Unfortunately, market failures are preventing capital from flowing to more sustainable low carbon solutions. Read on
Rob Dunbar‘s research looks at the earth and ocean as an interconnected system over time. With his group at Stanford, he makes high-resolution studies of climate change over the past 50 to 12,000 years.
Where does 12,000-year-old climate data come from? It’s locked in the skeletons of ancient corals from the tropics and the deep sea, and buried in sediments from lakes and other marine environments. His lab measures the chemical and isotopic makeup of these materials, and looks at how they’ve changed in response to changes in the solar and carbon cycles.
Dunbar’s also studying the reverse equation — how climate change is affecting a modern environment right now. He’s working in the Ross Sea of Antarctica with the ANDRILL project to study the ocean’s ability to take up carbon, drilling for ice cores to uncover the history of the climate of Antarctica. See his research and video
Defenders of dirty energy like to pretend that having smarter climate policies (and more support for clean energy) would cost Americans jobs. Not only are they wrong, but – according to prominent business leaders this week [and a new study] – their “deny and delay” tactics are now turning out to be the true job killers.
Business leaders appearing in a town hall style panel this week at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada said that they don’t fear new rules to better control carbon pollution. What they fear is uncertainty about what those rules will be President and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donohue, was joined by billionaire investor T. Boone Pickens, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and John Podesta, the President and CEO of the Center for American Progress. One word was repeated the most throughout the entire afternoon session: certainty.
“We’ve got to get certainty,” Donohue said. “People want to invest and make money. Tell us what the deal is, and let’s get on with it!” Every panelist agreed that certainty was the name of the game for businesses and business owners who are struggling in a most uncertain time of national recession. Investors want certainty as well, so they know what businesses and industries to pour their private capital into, and what kinds of prices they can expect in the medium and long-term. Unfortunately, America is getting the opposite of certainty – even in places where issues related to climate and clean energy were thought long-settled.
Watching and reading the reports from UN World Climate Summit in Copenhagen I was reminded of BattleField Earth, the movie based on Scientology leader L. Ron Hubbard’s book of the same name. The movie had an all star cast including John Travolta, Barry Pepper and Forrest Whitaker. The film was not well received and didn’t live up to Hollywood Box office standards. In fact some critics had predicted this would spell the end to John Travolta’s career.
Set in the year 3000 humans are all but extinct, save for those that have been enslaved by the Psychlo’s, a beyond greedy, twisted, manipulative race of aliens who are stripping the earth clean of its natural resources. These are some vile villains who turn on each other with such ease you have to wonder how the species even survives. Humans are seriously beat down until a “Greener” (someone always looking for greener pastures) played by Barry Pepper challenges them to fight back.
Who knows what really went on behind the scenes at Copenhagen. It is difficult for large scale projects to meet expectations. Both before, during and after the conference reports were coming in that were so negative towards everything and everybody you’ve got to imagine Norman Vincent Peale, author of Success through a Positive Mental Attitude was turning over in his grave. Big business, big organizations and banks seem to have difficulty being responsive and embracing change. When troubled their legions will claim they are too big to let fail. However, the issue may very well be that they are too big to succeed!
The good thing about the green movement as we move into 2010; is that citizens around the world are beginning to question the sustainability of our lifestyles including politics and profits. The battle for a better smarter existence maybe slow moving – yet it may be too soon to claim a complete failure in Copenhagen. A couple of things are certain, John Travolta is still acting, Forrest Whitaker has won an Oscar; and both of them got to wear some cool dreadlocks and bizarre battle uniforms.
After three bumpy flights and one nauseating cab ride (solved with a doughnut) AND one inadvertently canceled hotel room (solved with begging), I set up camp in New York City to report out from the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting.
