Business leaders call for clear climate policies

I am at the World Business Summit on Climate Change and with a little help from Reuters would like to share some views from the UN secretary General

Industry should play its part in the fight against climate change by persuading governments to aid carbon cuts rather than lobbying against them, the U.N. Secretary-General told CEOs in Copenhagen today.

Business leaders met in Denmark today at the World Business Summit on Climate change to try to unite behind a common call for long-term climate policies, ahead of the U.N. conference in December designed to forge a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

“For those who are directly or implicitly lobbying against climate action I have a clear message: your ideas are out of date and you are running out of time,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the meeting of more than 500 business leaders.

“The smart money is on the green economy,” he said. “Leaders sometimes are weak because they are short-sighted to get the votes,” he added, urging businesses to lobby for carbon cuts.

Full coverage of the speech can be found here or a written version on the UN Global Compact web site.

MCI is the event logistics and sustainability consulting partner for the World Business Summit on Climate Change, the UN Climate Change Conference, the World Mayors Summit on Climate Change and the UN Global Compact leaders summit