Business Community and the Bali Communique

Interesting statement released in advance of the Bali sessions taking place this week. Over 150 companies agreed to the following principles:

• Climate change is real, presents significant risks and "demands an urgent global response".
• Costs of action are manageable
• Any delay will require steeper emissions reductions will be required in future
  
• Shift to low-carbon economy is a business opportunity and "tackling climate change is a pro-growth opportunity"
• Business needs certainty of legally-binding UN agreement to reduce GHG emissions, which must incorporate a carbon market
• Agreement needs to be in place by 2012
  

This is a pretty heavy set of statements, especially considering the tone of the business community a few years ago (especially in the U.S.)

No specific emission targets are called for (just that they "must be guided primarily by science"). I'm not surprised, although the individuals leading the Communique effort believe this statement to be a significant enough step to promote it on their home page.

A lot of obvious European signatories, but given the strength of the statements, a few corporate names jumped out at me:

• Shell (next to Statoil, the only O&G company)
• GE and United Technologies (both well-publicized environmental "converts" but even so, these are powerful statements to support)
• eBay (the only online company)
  
• News Corporation (I can only imagine the shock on the Fox News set).