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Call for 20% EU cut in greenhouse gas emissions
Staff and agencies, Guardian
The EU must cut greenhouse gases by at least 20% from their 1990 levels by 2020, the European commission said today.
The commission said a global decrease of 30% was needed to prevent damage from climate change.
In unveiling its new energy strategy, the EU’s executive arm said cuts of 30% for the whole world would help ensure temperatures rose by no more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
The report – which echoed warnings contained in Sir Nicholas Stern’s analysis, commissioned by Tony Blair – said there would be billions of pounds of damage if action was not taken.
(10 Jan 2007)
We have a bit of a PR problem on global warming, ExxonMobil admits
Terry Macalister, Guardian
ExxonMobil has promised investors it will “soften” its public image in an attempt to rid itself of a reputation as the green campaigners’ public enemy number one.
However, the chairman and chief executive, Rex Tillerson, made clear to a select group of Wall Street fund managers and analysts that the oil company would not be changing its position on global warming, it would just try to explain it better.
The world’s biggest publicly quoted oil company has funded research that took a sceptical line on global warming and faces a long-running boycott campaign against its Esso petrol brand by environmental activists in Europe. A pugnacious personal style and uncompromising stance on warming by its former boss, Lee Raymond, left it compared unfavourably with Shell and BP, which have courted the green lobby.
Mr Tillerson, who took over in January 2006, is said to have told the small meeting of analysts and major investors that the company accepted it had a public relations problem. “We recognise that we need to soften our public image. It is something we are working on,” he told them, according to one of the analysts.
The oil group has not only upset environmentalists, it has also crossed swords with the Royal Society in Britain which accused it of misrepresenting the science of climate change.
(9 Jan 2007)
Swiss Re Global Risks 2007 Report Highlights Increasing Threats
Insurance Journal
Swiss Re’s newly issued “Global Risks 2007” report highlights “a growing disconnect between the power of global risks to cause major systemic disruption, and our ability to mitigate them.”
The report – published by the World Economic Forum in cooperation with Citigroup, Marsh & McLennan Companies, Swiss Re and the Wharton School Risk Center – “suggests that many of the 23 core global risks explored in the report have worsened over the last 12 months, despite growing awareness of their potential impacts,” said Swiss Re’s bulletin. “In addition to specific risk mitigation measures, institutional innovations may be needed to create effective responses to a complex risk landscape.”
The report suggests two such innovations: “The appointment of Country Risk Officers and the creation of flexible ‘coalitions of the willing’ around specific global risk issues, providing crucial momentum to mitigation efforts.”
Swiss Re said the “first would provide a focal point in government for mitigating global risks across departments, learning from private-sector approaches and escaping a ‘silo-based’ approach.
…In addition, the report cites “a number of key needs for addressing specific global risks,” which it detailed as follows:
- Linking energy security with considerations on climate change
- Urgently beginning work on a successor to the Kyoto agreement with three central principles:
- Involvement of the United States and major developing countries (particularly China and India);
- Differential responsibilities for future emissions’ reduction dependent upon past emissions and stage of economic development; and,
- Common overall responsibility for climate change.
The entire report can be downloaded at: www.weforum.org/globalrisks; or on the Swiss Re web site at: www.swissre.com.
(11 Jan 2007)
