Royal Dutch Shell, Adidas and Unilever are among 70 global companies urging world governments to cap cumulative carbon emissions since the industrial revolution to one trillion tonnes in an effort to contain rising temperatures.
The emissions cap is needed to stabilise the increase in temperatures since the 19th century to two degrees Celsius, according to an e-mailed statement.
This is the emissions cap needed to avoid catastrophic impacts of climate change, according to the latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which for the first time calls for a trillion tonne cap.
The world has already surpassed the halfway mark and are somewhere around 578,935,750,000 tonnes of carbon at the moment.
If the current rate of emissions keeps up, the limit will be passed within three decades.
That’s the level beyond which scientists say the rising seas, more intense storms and melting glaciers caused by global warming may become dangerous.
“The threat of climate change is real and urgent,” Skanska Chief Executive Officer Johan Karlstrom said in the statement.
“From a business point of view, it is already a competitive advantage to be a leader in green but governments can speed up the progress substantially by setting up a level playing field that rewards the leaders in low carbon technology and energy efficiency.”
Governments from 194 nations are working to devise an emissions limiting treaty by the end of next year that will keep a two-degree lid on temperature rises.
They’ll be guided by the UN’s most comprehensive report yet on climate change, which in September said the world has already emitted more than half the carbon compatible with the temperature target.
“We call on governments to set a timeline for achieving net-zero emissions before the end of the century,” the 70 companies said in the statement.
“This needs to be done on a pathway which keeps cumulative emissions below one trillion tonnes of carbon from CO2.”
It also stated; “we will have to reformulate our relationship with energy and completely transform our energy system, including energy used in transport and heavy industrial processes.”
The global business leaders cited President Barack Obama’s call to end United States public financing for new coal-fired power plants overseas, along with similar announcements from the World Bank and the European Investment Bank, as evidence of a growing international effort to limit emissions.
The companies also urged governments to transform the current energy system and create a plan for what to do with fossil fuels, including examining carbon capture and storage.
The communique is the seventh by Prince Charles’s Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, a club of companies brought together by the heir to the British throne and managed by the University of Cambridge.
In November 2012, they called for a clear, global carbon price.
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