The green economy can enable global decarbonisation according to former Mexican president and now head of a green business initiative, Felipe Calderon.
Mr Calderon has revealed plans for a major new campaign to highlight the benefits of the green economy and the urgent need for international action to tackle climate change.
In a wide-ranging interview with British environmental website BusinessGreen, Mr Calderon, who chaired the 2010 UN Climate Summit in Cancun, detailed how the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate that he now chairs will publish a major new report on the green economy.
That report will come ahead of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s climate change summit in New York in September.
Mr Calderon told BusinessGreen a team led by McKinsey director Jeremy Oppenheim was developing the New Climate Economy report.
He said the aim was to provide “independent and authoritative evidence” on how climate change can be tackled without jeopardising economic success and policy alleviation.
“I believe, and a lot of people believe, science has rested its case,” he told BusinessGreen.
“Climate change is clear, it is happening. Climate change is demonstrably associated with global warming, and global warming is associated with human behaviour.
“And all of those points are facts that have been demonstrated on a scientific basis. It begs the question that if these issues are so clear why are countries and businesses not taking action?
“The point of the commission is to address this question.
“And it comes down to the expression used in President Clinton’s first campaign: ‘it’s the economy, stupid’.”
BusinessGreen reports Mr Calderon said the report was likely to explore how clearer and more ambitious climate policies would reduce the cost of decarbonisation by providing investors with certainty and accelerating clean tech innovation that has already slashed the cost of low carbon energy.
He added that the commission was likely to put forward a series of specific policy recommendations on areas such as energy, forestry and agriculture that he hoped would serve to inform the UN’s long-running negotiations ahead of next year’s summit in Paris.
Mr Calderon stressed that emerging green technologies and business models meant that it was possible for the world to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
However, he voiced concerns that without urgent action countries such as Mexico faced an increasingly challenging future thanks to escalating climate risks.
