If it’s good for business then do it right? In an interesting twist, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore are urging chief executives to push politicians to agree to an ambitious global deal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and combat climate change. Their contention? That its going to be in their companies' best interests.
"With your support and through your example we must harness the necessary political will to seal the deal in December," Ban told participants at the World Business Summit on Climate Change, which included hundreds of business executives as well as Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. "A strong message from the business community to governments worldwide may make all the difference."
Copenhagen will host negotiations in December aimed at forging a new U.N.-backed climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. The World Business Summit will issue a two-page recommendation on Tuesday which will be presented to the Danish government to take to the December talks.
Gore said, "We have a very short window of opportunity. If we want to limit temperature increase to about 2 degrees Celsius, then emissions globally must peak by 2015."
Ban said some companies have understood the challenge and have sought to turn it into a business opportunity, but he sharply criticized other companies that have not yet committed to dealing with climate change.
"Too many are sitting on the fence, waiting for others to act or waiting for the clear policies that will signal a level playing field," he said. "For those who are directly or implicitly lobbying against climate action, I have a clear message: Your ideas are out of date, and you are running out of time.
"Sooner or later there will be a higher price on carbon, imposed either by policy or by market forces. Any multinational business that doesn't have a strategy in place to deal with climate change will end up on the losing side of history."
Yesterday, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso told the conference a climate deal would bring big economic opportunities, with investments in green technologies estimated to produce a million new jobs in E.U. countries alone.
This approach may be just the thing we need to turn the tables and get the deal done. I applaud Gore and U.N. Secretary General Ban for their efforts in discussing an element of the issue that few focus on: the business opportunity. Throughout the history of U.S. industry, it has been these methods that have worked best – talking more about the positive changes and less about the cost to business. The benefits will far outweigh any investment. All the visionaries and those who know the issue can see that. And we’ll have a viable mother earth as well. | 
