PUNE, India -
July 31, 2013 -
PRLog -- Barack Obama made a landmark speech in June, a long-awaited call to arms in the fight against climate change. His rallying cry (“As a president, as a father and as an American, I’m here to say we need to act”) was addressed to a domestic audience, but it willresonate far beyond the US’s borders.For too long, we — individuals, communities,governments and industry — have let thiscritical issue drift. And as we looked away, the litany of extreme climate events continued to grow, at an increasing cost. As the White House points out, climate and weather disasters in 2012 cost the American economy more than $100bn — and that’s not counting the appalling toll of what Obama called “lost lives and lost ivelihoods, lost homes, lost businesses”
. “Farmers see crops wilted one year, washed away the next,”
he said. “Sea levels in New York, in New York Harbor, are now a foot higher than a century ago... 2012 was the warmest year in our history.”
And, he added, “firefighters are braving longer wildfire seasons”
. At the time, it seemed like just another line in a list, but within six days of their president’
s words, 19 Arizona firefighters had been killed battling a blaze of frightening ferocity. To tackle this monumental problem, Obama laid out a clear vision based on three simple pillars: using less dirty energy; using more clean energy; and wasting less energy. I believe this simplicity is essential, to break down the argument into undisputable facts and to avoid turning this into a subjective debate about “climate science”
again. We don’t have the luxury of an endless debate. Mankind faces a threat to its very existence, and we need to act urgently. The global economy and the geopolitical landscape have passed through enormous turbulence in the past few years. The world’
s economic engines are still struggling to pull us back towards sustainable growth. As a result, the focus on climate action eased, plans remained unexecuted, targets were missed. believe we lost sight of the forest for the trees. Climate change mitigation and adaptation has the potential to become the impetus for the growth of the world’
s economy. This stands true for every business and, ultimately, for every individual, in the West and across the developing world.
Polluting less, harnessing more clean, sustainable energy sources and using our precious resources more responsibly and efficiently makes solid business sense. In this case, a penny saved is not just a penny earned, but one that is invested in
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