Posted on 01/22/2007 2:04:44 PM PST by kcvl
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The chief executives of 10 major corporations and business groups, on the eve of the State of the Union address, urged President Bush on Monday to support mandatory reductions in climate-changing pollution and establish reduction targets.
"We can and must take prompt action to establish a coordinated, economy-wide market-driven approach to climate protection," the executives from a broad range of industries said in a letter to the president.
snip
But the 10 executives, representing major utilities, aluminum and chemical companies and financial institutions, said mandatory reductions are needed and that "the cornerstone of this approach" should be a cap-and-trade system.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
I wonder what is keeping these CEO's from doing something themselves instead of asking the President to do it?
It makes me wonder how they became CEO's in the first place if they are falling for this crap.
These are the CEO's:
Members of the group, called the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, include chief executives of Alcoa Inc., BP America Inc., DuPont Co., Caterpillar Inc., General Electric Co., and Duke Energy Corp.
Who will be first to give up the ol' gulfstream 5?
1. Public Relations
2. They became CEO's because they're intelligent fellas. Maybe they know what they're doing.
And 3: Yet another burdensome government mandate is a lovely barrier to entry for those annoying upstarts seeking some of your market share.
The Anasai Indians who lived in the Southwestern part of the United States some 900 years ago thought exactly the same thing. They didn't have SUVs and heavy industry. The moved out of the region because climate change made it necessary.
Climate change is natural; and, there is nothing anyone can do about it. Of course, politically correct and stupid leadership will not prevent stupid and ineffectual things from being forced upon the people. The climate will change nevertheless.
Didn't anyone in power go to the first grade? Back in the early 1960s we were told that we'd just come out of an ice age. The climate would steadily get warmer until the cycle naturally reverses.
I've been in the industry for overy thirty years. I've never seen ANY evidence of this.
At least three of these companies are not US owned. I don't know about the rest.
"Back in the early 1960s we were told that we'd just come out of an ice age. "
Yup....Thanks for pointing that out.
These doom-and-gloomers are getting tiresome.
"Follow the money, Larry"
Hysteria knows no bounds. We all need to figure out how to make money off the masses on this. If there's no way to stop the tide we might as well surf the wave.
Paleoclimate records show that in multiple prior warming (deglaciation) cycles, temperature increased for 800-1200 years *before* CO2 began to increase.
Thus, rising CO2 is an effect, not a cause of global warming.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1770600/posts
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20061121_gore.pdf
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/11/gavin_schmidt_on_the_acquittal.html
I think they make a good point. First thing is first though. All subsidies and money given to theses industries by the government will be taken away and be used instead to support cleaner technologies.
It's going to be tough getting to a carbon-free society but we must do it if we want the planet to survive.
If they are so intelligent, why do they think the government should force them to do something they want to do? Do they think there is a law preventing them from cutting there energy use or engaging in some "carbon-cap" scam voluntarily? They want a market driven approach!? Ha, ha, ha. If it was market driven, it doesn't need the government subsidies. They are just trying to jump on a wagon of PR to try and make themselves look good. At our expense I might add.
My guess is that they are going on public record against "global warming" to minimize the wrath of the RAT Congress against their respective companies. These guys are smart. They know that there is no such thing as global warming.
Alcoa and DuPont have facilities near me. They are constantly fighting off the enviros lawsuits and this is them trying to suck up. Nothing more.
Did any of these CEO's offer to give up their corporate jets and start flying commercially in economy?
"My guess is that they are going on public record against "global warming" to minimize the wrath of the RAT Congress"
I think I read this group was formed in 2003. This is a concerted effort by companies who catch hell from enviros to placate them. What they don't realize is a snake is still a snake, whether he is striking at you or not.
It all really distills down to a method of SUCKING MONEY OUT OF THE GOVERNMENT. Big industry will get grants, academia will get grants, small groups of unemployable and otherwise useless scientific people will get grants ---
That is all it is about. Create a problem to make money off of...plain and simple.
Regards, Ivan
And let it begin with the rich and powerful selling their 68 foot yachts and their Gulfstream 5's and buying a 22 ft boat and flying commercial...perhaps even in....gasp!...coach!
One of the "partners" is Environmental Defense, aka Environmental Defense Fund, founded in 1967. The EDF has 500,000 members. (Not a huge contingency).
From their website Snip
half of the 25 billion dollars in the current farm policy spending this year will subsidize the income of only 5% of America’s farmers. Not only is this an unfair allocation of funds to America’s farmers, but most of this spending does little to benefit consumers or the environment.
another website snippette from a anti coal power plant writing campaign
I strongly urge you to withdraw your support for new pulverized-coal power plants in Texas and the executive order to expedite the permitting process. The new plants proposed by TXU will emit more carbon dioxide annually than 21 different states.
You can also choose a anti global warming commercial that will be aired sometime soon.
I would suspect this so called partnership is more like a environmentalist extortion of major business Jesse Jackson style.
Another snippette from the EDF website
The first days of the new Democratically controlled Congress have seen a rush of legislation introduced to address climate change, all of which have some variation of a cap-and-trade approach to dealing with climate change.
Among those pushing cap-and-trade climate bills are two leading presidential aspirants, Sens. Barack Obama, D-Illinois and John McCain, R-Arizona.
Alcoa?!
The company that has strip mined entire ecosystems for the last um, what 8 decades?
The company that used slave prison labor as late as the early 1980's?
Bwahahaa.
Rent-seekers a-poppin'!
Those 4 words explain it all.
The bandwagon is rolling, and they want to hop on board before they get demonized. The leftists always pick out a few specific companies to demonize, and nobody wants to be it. Haliburton. Enron. Walmart.
Probably they're also saying to the politicians, work together with us on this, and we'll give you some nice fat campaign donations. We'll say you're heroes of the environment, and you'll say we're heroes of the environment, and we'll all screw somebody who doesn't hop on board fast enough.
And, as usual, big companies will work together with the regulators to shut out the small companies and startups.
United Rent-Seekers and Barriers-to-Entry Builders of America.
Why bother spending money to make money producing energy when you can be paid just as much or more for not producing it?
Just what we need, a bunch of executives to promote more government B.S. such as more regulations to protect "their turf". One rhetorical question, why do many executives support the liberal side such as the democrats ?
In a way, it's funny to see commie enviro-whackos being duped into supporting measures that will put billions and billions of dollars into the pockets of their hated corporate enemies such as GE...
Big business and big government aren't all that different.
CEO's are used to trusting on the intelligence of staff people to do the proper research. CEO's usually are savvy when it comes to making decisions in the areas directly related to their companies. They must rely on other research resources once they venture out of their area of expertise.
I doubt that it would take much work to find 10 CEO's who were just lazy enough to
(1) rely on Gore as a resource
(2) allow themselves to be intimidated by a vocal minority who espouse global warming views at stockholder meetings and/or
(3) [and this is a BIG one] see global warming as a means of lining their corporate pockets from government subsidies.
Ping me when they move out of their 10,000 sq foot homes into nice little ranches, replace their limos with VW bugs and put their Leer Jets in drydock.
Particularly since we're carbon-based life forms.
There must be a profit in it. Somehow the federal government will be footing the bill and these guys will be making money off of it.
--------------------------------
Considering that society didn't create the carbon, how exactly are we supposed to get rid of it??? And if we really decided that we wanted to kill the planet with its own carbon, how do you think we could do it?
Obviously, I'm having a little fun at your expense. But your statement was not very seriously thought through......
That has been the case, sadly enough. My observations tell me that even the companies I have not worked for are shackled with the very same malady. It is certain that those CEOs are not smarter than I by the same proportion that our salaries differ.
All those people seem to accomplish is the making of spectacular "golden parachutes".
Beat you by 3 minutes 22 seconds.
Gee, I wonder how many of these CEOs have personal jetplane transportation, the kind that burns hundreds of gallons of fuel an hour? The bigger the hypocrite, the bigger the carbon footprint.
DuPont screwed us during the R-12 scare back in the early 90's. It turns out that the Freon royalties were about to expire and "suprise" DuPont has the only R-12 replacement called R-134A.
I googled the EDF, one of the so called partners and came up wih some goodies. Here is the link to the EDF
http://www.environmentaldefense.org/home.cfm
They are pretty stupid for CEOs. Maybe Scott Adams is right. The higher up they are, the dumber they are.
If it looks like it's going to happen, they might as well get on the horse rather than be drug by it. An "economy-wide market-driven" approach is probably less damaging than some of the ideas being floated around out there. Doesn't mean the thing's smart.
Yes,you did indeed!
(Poster hangs head in shame and vows to do better) ;-)
The Democrats have promised tax breaks for companies which actively work to reduce climate change, GE and BP were mentioned as examples. But in order to remain competetive, the companies want the gov't mandated reductions. It's what you call fascism at work.
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