Scoreboard Documents $1.25 Trillion of Private Investments in Renewables and Clean Tech Since 2007

With the Kyoto Protocol set to expire in 2012 and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations currently underway in Copenhagen, some people insist that the post-Kyoto international treaty should be even tougher. While many people and organizations want to set higher Greenhouse Gas emission reduction targets, there remains considerable resistance to this idea.

Political efforts to curb pollution, protect forests, and avert climate change have thus far been inadequate, United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner (2008) says. Steiner points out how huge banking bailouts had been mobilized in just four weeks, while the response to climate change remains slow after two decades of steadily increasing scientific evidence of global danger, documented by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and many other institutions. From 1981 to 2005, the global economy more than doubled, but 60% of the world's ecosystems-for example, fisheries and forests-were either degraded or overused. "That's the balance sheet of our planet right now," Steiner stated.

"We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate," said Yann Arthus-Bertrand, photographer and activist in a 2009 video made for Copenhagen Climate Conference entitled "I Have Hope."

As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in a speech from 2004, tells us, the idea that economic prosperity and environmental protection are opposites is simply untrue: "One hundred percent of the time, good environmental policy is identical to good economic policy-that is, if we want to measure our economy (and this is how we ought to be measuring it) based upon how the policies produces jobs, and the dignity of jobs, over the generations, and how it preserves the value of the assets of our communities. If, on the other hand, we treat the planet as if it were a business in liquidation, convert our natural resources to cash as quickly as possible, and have a few years of pollution-based prosperity-then we can generate an instantaneous cash flow and the illusion of a prosperous economy. But our children are going to pay for our joyride. Environmental injury is deficit spending. It's a way of loading the cost of our generation's prosperity onto the backs of our children. And they're going to pay for it with denuded landscapes, poor health, and huge cleanup costs."

"We have the power to change, so what are we waiting for? It's time to stop drilling the Earth and start looking to the sky. Where on Earth does the wind not blow? In addition, the sun gives more energy in one hour than the world uses in one year, " Bertrand said. Today, 80% of energy produced and consumed comes from oil, natural gas, coal, and other fossil fuels. Today, 80% of energy produced and consumed comes from oil, natural gas, coal, and other fossil fuels.

An international model suggests that an unprecedented public-private partnership is a solution to address the issues in the time available to avoid dangerous climate change. In the Global Climate Prosperity Scoreboard, (see Scoreboard below for details) the Climate Prosperity Alliance and Ethical Markets Media have made an important link --and a way to track that the private sector is making money by investing in energy and resource efficiency, renewable energy (including solar and wind), and clean and green technologies.

The Global Climate Prosperity Scoreboard tracks all private investment worldwide, including in the developed nations where most of it is now happening. It is designed to encourage public policy and private sector support for expanding such market-rate, for-profit investments, and is also linked to the Global Climate Prosperity Agreement that is being advance by the UN Secretariat as part of the Copenhagen climate negotiations (see proposed Agreement, and Frequently Asked Questions, for details).

"The focus of the Global Climate Prosperity Agreement is on private investment in developing countries to enable them to grow their economies, expand jobs, and raise incomes through sustainable industrial and agricultural economic development, without increasing greenhouse gas emissions," said Dr. Marc A. Weiss (2009), Chairman and CEO of Global Urban Development and Chair of the Climate Prosperity Alliance. "This will help generate a huge economic boom not only in the developing countries but also in the developed nations where much of the clean and green technologies will be manufactured over the next decade. And some of the private investment in developing countries will come from investors in those countries, not just from the developed world," Weiss stated.

Fundamentally, the Global Climate Prosperity Agreement encourages national government officials and diplomats currently meeting in Copenhagen to devote modest public resources for providing financial incentives, regulatory security, and other key policies that will help leverage a very large amount of private sector resources devoted to investing in renewable energy and clean technologies. Such coordinated public action will promote jobs, business opportunities, and income growth worldwide while at the same time helping solve global climate, energy, natural resource, and environmental challenges.

To view the Scoreboard: http://www.climateprosperity.com/

To view the Global Climate Prosperity Agreement: http://www.globalurban.org/projects.htm

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References:

Kennedy, Jr. Robert (2004). Tearing Pages from the Bible; Why environmental destruction is an offense against God. Excerpted from a speech given in New York at the Omega Institute's "Living a Fearless Life" conference on April 2, 2004.

Steiner, Achim . (2008) . "New Deal" approach needed for climate change: U.N. Wynn, Gerard, Roddy, Michael. Rueters. 10/22/2008.

Weiss, Dr. Marc A. (2009). Chairman and CEO of Global Urban Development and Chair of the Climate Prosperity Alliance.

Yann Arthus-Bertrand, photographer and activist. (2009). I Have Hope [HQ] Lord Ivan Emiro Canas-Gutierrez (videos) 2009.