Business leaders agree action on climate change

Reversing global warming is crucial to save the polar ice caps.

More than 100 corporate heads, international organisations and experts set out a plan on Tuesday to cut greenhouse gas emissions, calling on governments to act urgently against global warming.

"Failing to act now would lead to far higher economic and environmental costs and greater risk of irreversible impacts," the Global Roundtable on Climate Change warned in a statement, announcing their first major agreement since they began talks in 2004.

The group, which includes executives from a range of industries including air transport, energy, and technology, called on governments to set targets for greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

The agreement urged governments to place a price on the carbon emissions released by power plants, factories and other sectors to discourage emissions.

"Of course, addressing climate change involves risks and costs. But much greater is the risk of failing to act," said Alain Belda, chairman and CEO of the world's top aluminum producer Alcoa, who signed the pact.

The group includes General Electric, Ford Motor Co., Toyota Motor North America, investment bank Goldman Sachs, and Wal-Mart among its major corporations.

President George W. Bush's administration has rejected mandatory caps on emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases in the United States that contribute to a documented rise in world temperatures -- which is linked to more severe storms, worse droughts, rising seas and other ills.

But the White House has recently been on the defensive, especially since the Feb. 2 release of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which called global warming "unequivocal" and said with 90 percent probability that human activities help cause it.

The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is about 30 percent higher than in 1900 and nearly half of this increase has occurred since 1980.

Given fast-rising emissions from developing nations, the group estimated that a "business-as-usual" path could put the planet at three times the carbon dioxide levels seen before 1900.

The largest carbon-emitting sector is power generation, responsible for more than 40 percent of global energy-related emissions.

Industry accounts for more than 18 percent of emissions, transport contributes another 20 percent, and the residential and services sector roughly 13 percent.

The group estimates that technology to head off mounting carbon dioxide concentrations would cost about 1 percent of global gross domestic product. Costs would fall as technologies become more established, it predicted.

"If we delay too long in beginning the changeover to increasingly de-carbonised energy systems, the eventual costs will only rise and the impact of climate change will only become more severe," the group wrote in its agreement, warning that poorer nations would see the worst impact from climate change.

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