World Biz Leaders to Call for "Massive" Climate Investment
Next week, executives from some of the world’s largest corporations plan to get behind a call for an international treaty that would include “strong incentives for massive investment in new technologies and new climate solutions.” The Copenhagen Climate Council has dubbed this planned set of recommendations for policy, business strategies, and models for public-private partnerships the “Copenhagen Call,” and will deliver it at the end of the World Business Summit on Climate Change taking place May 24-26.
Many of the panels on the summit’s agenda are supposed to focus on innovation: “Shaping the New Green Economy,” “Innovative Business Perspectives on Climate Change,” and “Rapid Transformation to a Low-Carbon Economy” are just a few of the discussion topics. But innovative startups generally won’t be leading the talks. A large number of the speakers will be coming from investment or environmental groups, plus megacorps like BP, PepsiCo, Unilever and Duke Energy. However, Alan Salzman, the CEO of VantagePoint Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley firm that has backed cleantech startups Better Place, Tesla Motors and BrightSource Energy, will lead a working group on “radical mobilization of as yet untapped sources of funding.”
We asked Salzman what points he wanted to get across to the summit-goers, who will include UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Director General R. K. Pachauri, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. In an email, he emphasized an important role for venture capital-funded startups:
We are not going to spend our way out of this economic mess. We are going to have to invest our way out and in so doing create the transformative companies of the 21st century and accelerate a new energy economy. The best vehicle for such investment is venture capital because its purpose is and always has been industry transformation.
If you had the stage at the World Business Summit next week, what would you want to say? Here’s the video that will greet summit goers at the kickoff on Sunday:
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Nothing like spending a lot of consumer’s money for nothing. The implausibility that something as insignificant as carbon, which comprises less than 1/2 of 1 percent of the greenhouse system, can determine future climate apparently has never dawned on these would-be Earth saviors. What they are reallytrying to save is their bottom line – hoping more excessive govt spending will revive their faltering business. What a dopey world. No wonder there is always a war going on somewhere. idiot humans – gullible as hell as long as their beliefs don’t require them to do anything other than talk and complain. What a useless and incompetent generation
of failures. Another opportunity for the Chinese to kick arrogant Western butts. Ha, ha, ha, ha.
И придратся не к чему, а я так люблю покритиковать…
Довольно интересно конечно. Я немогу подписаться под каждым вашим словом, но в общем соглашусь.