UN Climate Change Summit: Companies And World Leaders Pledge Money, Promise Action On Climate Change

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
While US President Barack Obama and Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio attracted much of the press coverage for the 2014 UN Climate Change Summit on Tuesday, behind the scenes more than 120 world leaders met together to debate policy and commit resources to solving the growing issue.
According to The Guardian, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened the event by calling climate change the “defining issue of our age” and said that the world’s response to it would “define our future. To ride this storm we need all hands on deck. That is why we are here today.”
“We need a clear vision. The human, environmental and financial cost of climate change is fast becoming unbearable. We have never faced such a challenge, nor such an opportunity,” he added. “There is only one thing in the way: us. That is why I have asked you to be here today… I’m asking you to lead. We must cut emissions. Science says they must peak by 2020 and decline sharply thereafter. By the end of this century we must be carbon neutral.”
Among those who answered the Secretary-General’s call was French president François Hollande, who in his statement said that his country would commit $1 billion (750 million euros) “over the next few years” to a global fund designed to help poor nations adapt to the effects of global warming, according to Reuters reporter Valerie Volcovici.
Hollande joins German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who also pledged $1 billion over four years in July to the Green Climate Fund, and South Korean President Park Geun-hye pledged to contribute up to $100 million to help the UN battle climate change – a contribution that includes $50 million currently being paid to the fund. Volcovici said that developing countries are seeking contributions of $15 billion before the end of the year.
Also at the climate summit, more than two dozen countries and as many as 100 corporations (including McDonald’s and Wal-Mart) and organizations signed the “New York Declaration on Forests” – a pledge aimed at cutting deforestation in half by 2020 and completely ending the practice worldwide by the year 2030. However, also noteworthy is Brazil’s unwillingness to sign the agreement.
“Trees store carbon dioxide but when cut down, they release the heat-trapping greenhouse gas to the atmosphere,” said Wendy Koch of USA Today. “If the goal is met, the U.N. estimates the impact would be equivalent to taking every car in the world off the road. The participants, including dozens of environmental and indigenous groups, also pledge to restore more than one million square miles of forest worldwide by 2030.”
Koch said that the declaration has the backing of most developed countries, including the US, Canada, France and the EU. However, Brazil – which is home to the Amazon rainforest – opted against signing the pledge, telling reporters that it was because officials there were not included in the preparation process. While the country itself did not sign the pledge, however, USA Today reports that three Brazilian states (Acre, Amapa and Amazonas) did.
The Guardian also reported that Chile committed to a 20 percent reduction of CO2 by 2020 at the summit, as well as a tax on carbon emissions; that Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe said that his country has delivered $16 billion in climate aid over the past three years, as promised; and that Switzerland and Denmark promised to contribute a combined $170 million to the aforementioned Green Climate Fund.
“It’s not just countries and world leaders pledging to cut back on emissions – a few leading oil and gas companies are saying they will, too,” noted Brian Ries of Mashable. Among those companies are: ENI of Italy; Petróleos Mexicanos or Pemex; the US gas company Southwestern Energy; Norway’s Statoil Group; BG Group, the former British Gas, and Thailand’s oil and gas company, PTT, launched on Tuesday the Oil & Gas Methane Partnership, which pledges to cut the emissions of methane, he said.
“I am so glad to see concrete initiatives that will help reduce the release of short-lived climate pollutants into the atmosphere,” Ban Ki-moon said in a statement. “These announcements show how governments, corporations and civil society can work together to reduce emissions.”