Eighteen years ago, on this day, April 10th, 2006, business groups split on climate action.
New research on global warming has caused a split at the top end of town, writes Deborah Snow.
WESTPAC chief executive David Morgan had an interesting story to tell at an invitation-only breakfast for a handful of journalists in Sydney last week.
The anecdote concerned a recent private conversation with the head of the giant General Electric Company in the US, Jeff Immelt.
“He said to me he was virtually certain that the first action of the next president of the United States, be it Republican or Democrat, would be to initiate urgent action on climate change. And he wasn’t saying that as a casual political comment … he is [allocating] billions of dollars worth of investment in the confidence of that development.”
Snow, D. (2006) Business warms to change The Sydney Morning Herald 10th April , page 10.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Kyoto Protocol had been ratified and become international lore, sorry, law. The European Emissions Trading Scheme had come into effect. And the big banks were looking at all the money that might be made from carbon trading, and thinking “we’d like a piece of that.” There was already a failed history of getting a Futures Exchange going or getting Australian Prime Minister John Howard to listen to insurers and banks from like 2003. But it’s always worth another roll of the dice, another go. And that’s what happened here.
What we learn is that a lot of what’s driving their alleged philanthropic efforts is actually about sniffing out new markets, especially if the international environment, for want of a better phrase, is changing.
What happened next, the Westpac thing went nowhere. But it added to the load and in September of the same year, the issue broke through and in November 2006, Howard was forced to create this Shergold Report process to look at emissions trading.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
April 10th, 2010 – activists hold “party at the pumps”
April 10, 2013 – US companies pretend they care, make “Climate Declaration”