These And Ten Other Giant Companies Make The Business Case For Addressing Climate Change
We are getting excited about next week’s expected release of the Clean Power Plan from the Obama administration. And it looks like we are not the only ones. Yesterday, thirteen of the world’s biggest and most powerful companies committed $140 billion in low-carbon investments and joined the Administration’s “Act on Climate” initiative.
This pledge, ahead of next week’s announcement and the United Nations climate talks in Paris at the end of the year, shows that tackling climate change is not just a moral and public health issue, it’s also an economic issue. The companies committed to a range of actions to help curb their contribution to climate change: Apple will build 140 MW of renewable energy; Bank of America will increase green investment from $50 billion to $125 billion; Google will continue on its path to 100 percent renewable energy; Berkshire Hathaway Energy, of Warren Buffett’s investment conglomerate, will close 75 percent of its coal-fired power plants in Nevada by 2019.
The full list of companies is as follows: Alcoa, Apple, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Cargill, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Google, Microsoft, PepsiCo, UPS, and Walmart. Click here to read more about the announcement.
The companies’ announcement also further marginalizes conservative opponents who continue to deny man-made climate change, claim they are “not scientists,” and refuse to take action to combat the warming of the climate. Since many of these self-proclaimed pro-business politicians have not yet taken to the overwhelming evidence already presented proving that climate change is real, maybe the folks running some of the world’s most successful businesses can help change their minds. But we aren’t holding our breath.
BOTTOM LINE: Over a dozen multi-national corporations announced their commitment to address climate change yesterday. The public pledge comes at an important time in the efforts to stop man-made climate change: it is just days before the Obama administration issues its final version of the Clean Power Plan to limit the levels of carbon emissions in states. And the announcement is just another piece of evidence to demonstrate that conservatives are being disingenuous by ignoring the climate reality – and are being dangerous by failing to act.
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