http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090524/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_denmark_climate_conferenceGore, others urge CEOs to back climate change deal
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 19 mins ago
COPENHAGEN – Climate-change heavyweights U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon and Nobel prize winner Al Gore urged more than 500 business leaders on Sunday to lend their corporate muscle to reaching a global deal on reducing greenhouse gases.
The CEOs of PepsiCo, Nestle, BP and other of the world's major businesses began meeting in Copenhagen, where politicians will gather in December to negotiate a new U.N.-brokered climate treaty.
Despite the global financial crisis, both Ban and Gore said there was no time for delay in hashing out the specifics of how to cut greenhouse gases that contribute to warming the planet.
"We have to do it this year. Not next year. This year," Gore said. "The clock is ticking, because Mother Nature does not do bailouts."
The three-day World Business Summit on Climate Change is a precursor to the negotiations to determine what will succeed the Kyoto climate treaty that expires in 2012.
"Continuing to pour trillions of dollars into fossil-fuel subsidies is like investing in subprime real estate," Ban said. "Our carbon-based infrastructure is like a toxic asset that threatens the portfolio of global goods, from public health to food security."
A new global warming treaty would build on the Kyoto treaty's mixed success in requiring that 37 industrialized nations reduce greenhouse gas emissions an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
Gore said any of the ambitious treaty goals being discussed will depend on CEOs working out greener ways of doing business and governments reining in unrestricted pollution.
"The business community and the leaders of the world must go together to safeguard the world," he told a forum that drew even Queen Margrethe of Denmark.
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