CBI—Confederation of British Industry
From Lauraibm
In the Press
Summaries
Full article: Let’s avoid climate change hijacking (14-Aug-07)
The CBI is joining the fight against global warming, perhaps a little late, but better than never. Its Director General has urged world leaders to set aside their disagreements: "The Stern Review has set out a compelling economic case for international action.” The CBI has set up a climate change task force consisting of Chairmen and Chief Executives from some of the UK’s biggest companies. Its Chairman is BT's Ben Verwaayen.
Surely adding the voices of a couple of non-aligned professors, maybe an independent lawyer or a senior journalist would have lent weight to the proposals? And certainly some engineers would have helped guide discussions in the right direction. The real rub is that huge amounts of technology to tackle global warming already exist, but they are massively underused. The capital outlay for their installation has not been made available – withheld by people very like those on the CBI task force.
We can draw an analogy with the UK fishing industry, which is all but gone because we couldn’t find the right way forward with the limited resources. Instead of protecting our fish stocks, the various sides of the industry used them as a weapon to leverage commercial advantage. If we do the same with climate change, the results will be disaster in 10 or 20 years.
