Climate activists seek bold action
87 firms vow to cut gas emissions
GENEVA: Young climate change activists demanded a greater role in decision-making on Saturday as they met leaders at UN headquarters, saying that their growing voice on the streets had yet to earn them a seat at the political table.
“The decisions about our future are still being made largely without us,” said Marina Melanidis, a Canadian delegate at the gathering, held ahead of a UN summit today aimed at accelerating action to tackle global warming.
At Saturday’s summit, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, a figurehead of the youth movement, described it as “unstoppable”.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres recognised the leading role of young people in street protests that have pushed the urgency of curbing global warming up the political agenda.
Meanwhile, We Mean Business, a coalition of advocacy groups said yesterday that that almost 90 big companies in sectors from food to cement to telecommunications are pledging to slash their greenhouse gas emissions in a new campaign to steer multi-nationals towards a low-carbon future
We Mean Business said dozens of companies had joined the initiative which aims to spur faster action on climate change.
“Now we need many more companies to join the movement, sending a clear signal that markets are shifting,” Mr Guterres said in a statement.
The coalition was launched in June with a call to action by the United Nations, business and civil society leaders. The first 28 companies to join announced the following month. We Mean Business said 87 companies are now involved, with a market capitalisation of US$2.3 trillion (70 trillion baht).
Some companies in the coalition have agreed to slash their carbon emissions to net-zero by 2050, including Swiss food company Nestle, French building materials company SaintGobain, and French cosmetics maker L’Oreal.
Others have stopped short of committing to go carbon neutral but say they will align their operations with a goal of limiting the increase in average global temperatures to 1.5C enshrined in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
This group includes Finnish telecoms company Nokia, French food group Danone and British drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc.
As climate impacts from melting ice caps to sea-level rise and extreme weather outpace climate models, scientists say the world needs to halve its greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade to avoid catastrophic warming.
With fossil fuel companies developing new oil and gas fields and many developing countries expanding coalfired power, the coalition’s pledges are minuscule relative to rising emissions.
Some experts have questioned whether publicly traded companies committed to maximising shareholder returns will be able to make the sweeping investments required to fight climate change. Yet many investors have been pressuring companies to act on climate risks, and chief executives also face pressure from an upsurge in youth-led activism, which mobilised millions around the world on Friday.
We Mean Business believes pledges by mostly European, North American, and Asian companies, to commit to independently-verified emissions targets will prompt others to follow suit.