Govts may not be key players in Rio+20 talks - reneweconomy.com.au : Renew Economy
“This is no way to run a planet,” wrote Todd Stern, American chief negotiator on climate change in a letter to former President George W. Bush in 2007. He stressed that just like you can’t run a company through large meetings in which every opinionated shareholder participates, you can’t solve global challenges by inviting roughly 200 countries to a conference, each with their own extensive agenda. But that’s exactly what’s happening in Rio. At a meeting at Copenhagen University earlier this month, John Kornerup Bang, climate chief adviser at the global shipping company AP Moller Maersk, correctly identified the biggest challenge at Rio+20: “The biggest challenge is not lack of technical solutions or lack of knowledge about the situation. The biggest challenge is the ability of countries to reach agreement,” said Kornerup Bang. He also stressed the need for companies to take initiative themselves. In the face of the inaction of governments across the globe, companies are taking matters into their own hands and creating their own sustainability agendas. For example, starting on July 1, Microsoft will start to tax itself. For every ton of carbon dioxide that the main global offices and data centers produce, they will pay a tax that will be used to buy carbon dioxide certificates, which will make Microsoft carbon neutral. As Microsoft’s climate chief Rob Bernard, says: “While governments have an important role to play, we hope that there is an advantage to moving faster than them.”
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