Fahrenheit 2013: five years ago it would have been impossible to predict the impact that global warming has had on business practices today. Ruth Prickett considers the key drivers that will affect the corporate response to climate change over the next five years.
| Author | Prickett, Ruth |
| Position | THE GREEN GAMEPLAN |
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Publicity about climate change is often negative. If it's not wails of "we're all doomed" from one side, it's screams of outrage about draconian legislation from the other. Environmentalists warn that millions of people will starve as the world fries. Captains of industry complain that their businesses will suffer from the costs of increased regulation. Sometimes it seems as though you're caught between the devil and the melting ice-caps.
It's reassuring, therefore, to find Hilary Benn, UK secretary of state for the environment, in an upbeat mood. "The successful economies and businesses of the future are going to be low carbon," he declares enthusiastically.
And Benn's not only talking about the UK. "I have just got back from the US, where some very interesting things are happening," he says. "I visited Wisconsin and Michigan. The mid-west states contributed significantly to the first US industrial revolution and now they are coming together to talk about how they could operate a cap and trade system. I think this is really significant."
He has a point. We're used to hearing that X multinational is "going green" and banning plastic bags or covering its HQ in solar panels. This is all good stuff, but we expect the bigger companies to take a lead and appreciate the benefits of the favourable publicity this can generate. When the Iowa Farm Bureau seems keen to get involved, things must be progressing to another level.
But does Benn really believe that we can prevent runaway climate change? After all, whatever targets the government proposes, the critics always complain that it's too little too late. Whom should we believe?
"None of us is certain about what will happen when," he says. "But the greatest risk is that we fall into despair. I'm more interested in getting on with doing things. I don't believe we're all doomed, but we certainly have less time than we thought."
Five years may be a very long time in politics, but it's starting to look even longer in environmental terms. Where can we expect to be in 2013? The instinct for self-preservation does at least mean that consumers, governments, investors and organisations should all agree that preventing runaway climate change is A Good Thing. Unfortunately, we're all adept at burying our heads in the sand and only a few of us carry our virtuous intentions to the point where they cost us money or cause us discomfort.
The Carbon Trust identifies four main drivers for change. The first is legislation, followed by reputation, market dynamics and physical impact. All of these can be measured and costed--and all carry an element of risk, according to Hugh Jones, solutions director at the Carbon Trust.
Regulation is easy to spot, if harder to comply with. International agreements--from the Kyoto protocol and the UN framework convention on climate change to EU directives and scientific reports such as Sir Nicholas Stern's review of the economics of climate change--have already had an impact on national policies. In January 2005 the EU greenhouse gas emission trading scheme was introduced, immediately becoming the largest international, multi-sector scheme of its kind in the world.
The climate change levy was introduced in the UK in 2001, along with a package of measures including the establishment...
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