Author: Stephen Stretton

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HSBC pledges $100m to combat climate change

HSBC pledges $100m to combat climate change

Hilary Osborne
Wednesday May 30, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Sir David Attenborough: Humans have “no alternative” but to try to
stop global warming. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

HSBC today pledged $100m (=A350m) to a fund to tackle climate change, in
what it said was the biggest ever donation made by a British company.
The HSBC Climate Partnership brings together the Climate Group,
Earthwatch Institute, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and WWF
– four organisations that seek to address the global causes and
effects of climate change.
Over the next five years, the money will be used to fund a range of
projects including schemes to protect the Yangtze river and the
world’s rainforests, and work to identify how the world’s largest
cities can adapt to climate change.

Speaking at the launch of the partnership, broadcaster Sir David
Attenborough said HSBC had recognised the problem of climate change
and responded in a “spectacular way”.
He said climate change was threatening vital eco-systems and humans
had “no alternative” but to try to stop global warming.
“The complexity of the problem is so great, the dimension of the
problem is so great that the only way we can do something about it is
to join together,” he said.
HSBC’s group chairman Stephen Green said the partnership was
“profoundly important”.
The bank has already committed to becoming carbon neutral and Mr Green
said it was working with clients in “un-green” business sectors to
help them become environmentally sound.
Mr Green said not all companies would find this as easy as HSBC,
because of the nature of their work.
He said HSBC’s 300,000 employees were behind the partnership and many
would benefit from taking part in volunteering projects with
Earthwatch.
The bank chose its four partners from 10 groups who had put forward
proposals for what they would do with the funds.
The HSBC pledge represents the largest donation made to each of the
charities involved.
Those who receive money are expected to report on their progress
throughout the five-year period.
Mr Green said: “I don’t want to get to the end of five years and find
we have wasted the money and have nothing to show for it, but at the
same time I don’t expect to get to the end of the five years and say
the work is finished.”
The biggest beneficiaries of the donation are WWF and Earthwatch, who
will each receive $35m to spend on projects.
WWF will use its funding to focus on rivers, particularly China’s
Yangtze, to mitigate the impact of climate change on freshwater
supplies and help communities adapt to the problem of water scarcity.
It said the money would help it protect 25% of the world’s freshwater
and benefit 450 million people who depend on the Yangzte, Amazon,
Ganges and Thames for their water supplies.
Earthwatch will focus on helping people research and understand
climate change, including HSBC staff who will be offered online
education and the chance to see projects first-hand.
It will also develop eight new climate change research projects in
five forests around the world.
The organisation’s executive director, Nigel Winser, said: “With the
help of our four partners we want to create a ripple effect, reaching
millions.”
The Smithsonian Institution, which will receive $8m from the fund,
said it would use the money to fund projects that would give a new
perspective on how the world’s forests work.
It will examine how the composition of forests affects how they store
carbon, and establish how important rainforests are to the planet, as
well as undertaking work to see what impact the planned expansion of
the Panama canal will have on the area’s rainfall.
The fourth partner, the Climate Group, works with businesses and city
and state leaders to promote action on climate change.
Its $17m slice of the money will go towards making Hong Kong, London,
Mumbai, New York and Shanghai greener.
Asked why the focus was on some of the world’s richest cities, the
organisation’s CEO, Steve Howard, said they had been chosen for the
influence they would have over the regions.
He said his organisation was looking to “lead a ‘coalition of the
willing’ against global warming.”

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BP cancels CO2 sequestration project

On the same day the White Paper was published, [BP] announced that it
was scraping a £31bn plan to build a coal plant that would capture all
its carbon emissions and pump them under the sea bed. The company said
a delay in deciding whether the ambitious project deserved state
subsidy until 2008 meant that it was not worth pursuing

http://news.independent.co.uk/business/comment/article2586551.ece

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The BBC Reith Lectures 2007 – Jeffrey Sachs – Contents

Lecture 1:
Bursting at the Seams

The 21st century will be marked by severe natural resource limits, the
rise of new economic powers and the threats of failed states. These are
tectonic changes with the potential to unleash global-scale upheavals.
Global cooperation of an unprecedented depth and scale will be needed
but we are not yet prepared for such cooperation.

Lecture 2:
Survival in the Anthropocene
The biggest challenges that we face – climate change, alleviation of
hunger, water stress, energy – are translated in the shadow of ignorance
into “us versus them” problems, with only the weakest links to
underlying scientific principles and technological options.

Lecture 3:
The Great Convergence

Power and America have seemed synonymous for the last fifty years. No
longer. Power in the 21st Century is shifting to the East: to India and
above all to China. Facing up to the end of centuries of North Atlantic
dominance – first Europe then the U.S. – will pose huge challenges.

Lecture 4:
Poverty in the Midst of Plenty

This lecture considers the challenges of extreme poverty and the extreme
worry of the rest of the world which fears for its own prosperity. It
spells out the limits of the free market to solve these problems and
proposes a plan of action which presents choices to those listening.

Lecture 5:
A New Politics for a New Age

The key political novelty of our age is mass political awareness and
mobilization. Mass mobilization has brought the Age of Empire to an end,
and accounts for the failures in Iraq. No society any longer tolerates
being ruled by another. Social mobilization can be a dramatic force for
positive change.