David Yarnold, today’s guest blogger, is Executive Vice President of Environmental Defense, and co-chair of the USCAP Communications committee.
Today the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) announced it has doubled its membership. This was no small feat for a coalition comprised of busy corporate CEOs.
USCAP is a coalition of businesses and environmental organizations advocating national legislation for mandatory reduction of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. New members such as General Motors (the coalition’s first automaker) and The Nature Conversancy speak to how mainstream the issue of global warming has become.
I act as co-chair of USCAP’s Communications committee with Peter O’Toole of GE. We worked with the Membership committee to set the goal of doubling the coalition’s size, and to create a sense of urgency around it. Mark Brownstein, Managing Director of Business Partnerships at Environmental Defense, was a major source of outreach on the Membership committee. John DeCicco, Environmental Defense’s Michigan-based car expert, played a vital role in discussions to welcome General Motors into the coalition.
Our goal in recruiting new members was to broaden economic actors and interests, diversified by industry and geography. A given: members agree to support all the recommendations and principles of the partnership’s Call For Action [PDF]. Support at the CEO level aids us in working with Congress; there can be no doubt about the company’s commitment when the CEO is involved.
We met our goal. The new members – all leaders in their industry sectors – include AIG, Alcan, Boston Scientific, ConocoPhillips, Deere & Company, The Dow Chemical Company, General Motors Corp., Johnson & Johnson, Marsh, PepsiCo, Shell Oil, and Siemens, plus The Nature Conservancy and the National Wildlife Federation. USCAP companies now have total revenues of $1.7 trillion, a collective workforce of more than 2 million people, and operations in all 50 states.
Our new broader membership base will spark richer and deeper discussions as we work out policy details. And most importantly, it will send an even stronger signal to Congress that wide support exists for enacting comprehensive legislation to protect the climate. For more analysis, see our expanded article on the news.
2 Comments
If G.M. had half the brains that God gave a gnat, They’d be jumping all over hydrogen, and we could be REVERSING global warming. They could make billions by simply offering a hydrogen conversion package to be installed at their dealerships. You drive in and in the time it takes to tune up the car you roll out, with the ability to run on either gasolene or hydrogen. When you run on hydrogen you get minus emmissions. meaning your cleaning up the air while you drive around. But what about the infrastructure? Make the hydrogen highways NOW. Create corridors around our biggest city’s and have hydrogen available to motorists around town. Have G.M. fund it and pull the strings to make it happen. Then start converting anybody’s car reguardless of make or model at thier dealerships. Then start selling them the hydrogen that they will need to run their cars on at the dealership owned gas stations around town. G.M. would be creating their own market. Give the people this option to help save the planet as well as get cheaper fuel that is better on their engine is a slam dunk. Not to mention G.M. would be laying down the foundation for the infrastructure needed to accomodate the arrival of their fuelcells. If they don’t jump on this somebody will and make a killing. More power to anyone who does it. They’ll get filthy rich and we’ll start to turn the tide on green house emissions. It is time for Roy Mcalister’s vision of the solar hydrogen civilization to take place. This simple idea could be the spark that is needed to get the ball rolling. Anybody who hasn’t read Roy’s book The Solar Hydrogen Civilization needs to read the blueprint to the hydrogen economy. With hydrogen we all will win in the end. Give us hydrogen now! Make it available to the masses and everything else will fall in place.
I’m not sure you’ve got all your facts right, from a technological standpoint, but it would be nice if it worked that way!