Plugged in to climate concernsSIX big European oil and gas firms called on June 1st for a globally co-ordinated price on carbon-dioxide emissions, to restrain the impact on the climate of burning fossil fuels. It was a bombshell, in its way. Five years ago no one would have expected the move: as producers of much of the world’s dirty fuels, their industry was disinclined to join forces and advocate accelerating the switch to cleaner ones. “It is a sort of revolution,” says Patrick Pouyanné, the boss of one of the six, Total. And it is not just the energy firms. As world leaders prepare to meet in Paris in December to produce an agreement on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, attitudes towards climate change have altered profoundly among businesses of all kinds.
In 2009, when a global conference in Copenhagen failed to come up with a new agreement to replace the Kyoto protocol, many businessmen were not much worried about either the failure or global warming itself. They saw Europe’s host of related regulations—along with a carbon-trading system of limited impact—as little more than a burden on firms’ competitiveness...
from The Economist: Business http://ift.tt/1IlcXg0
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