The statement includes bold targets for emissions reductions by 2020 and 2050, limiting the global average rise in temperature to a maximum of 2 degree Celcisus compared to pre-industrial levels.
“The ambition of the Copenhagen Call shows that business need not be a conservative voice on climate change. Many of the businesses represented at this significant event in the lead up to UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) want brave decisions that will tackle this most wicked of problems,” said Chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council and Australian writer Tim Flannery.
Presented to the Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Yvo de Boer, the Copenhagen Call will be taken forward by them in the last six months of negotiations before COP15 in December.
The Call outlines the following six steps to ensure a sustainable economic future:
- Agreement on a science-based greenhouse gas stabilisation path with 2020 and 2050 emissions reduction targets that will achieve it;
- Effective measurement, reporting and verification of emissions performance by business;
- Incentives for a dramatic increase in financing low emissions technologies;
- Deployment of existing low-emissions technologies and the development of new ones;
- Funds to make communities more resilient and able to adapt to the effects of climate change, and
- Means to finance forest protection.
The Copenhagen Call was informed by discussion with the World Business Council on Sustainable Development; 3C; the World Economic Forum; the UN Global Compact and The Climate Group, and deliberations among participants at the World Business Summit on Climate Change 24-26 May 2009.
Actress Cate Blanchett addressed the summit, urging business to show strong leadership in order to prevent a 'climate crisis'.
"Political failure at Copenhagen in December is quite simply unacceptable and this powerful room must play a major role in preventing this failure," said Blanchett.
The Call comes as a new report was released by the Copenhagen Climate Council to coincide with the business summit, finding that a firm commitment to low-carbon energy sources will create millions of sustainable new jobs in the United States alone. The Green Jobs and the Clean Energy Economy report concluded that renewable energy investment and energy efficiency measures can generate 2 to 8 times more jobs per unit of energy delivered than the fossil fuel-based sector. The report found that in the United States alone a national renewable portfolio standard of 25 per cent in 2025 coupled with a 0.5 per cent annual electricity growth rate would generate more than 2 million jobs. Further increasing low-carbon sources by around 50 per cent would generate more than 3 million jobs. This would result in a massive 90 per cent of U.S. electricity supply coming from renewable or low-carbon sources.
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