WORLD BRIEFING / DENMARK
Climate-change heavyweights U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Nobel laureate Al Gore urged more than 500 business leaders to lend their corporate muscle to reaching a global deal on reducing greenhouse gases.
The chief executives of PepsiCo, Nestle, BP and other major world businesses began meeting in Copenhagen, where politicians will gather in December to negotiate a new U.N.-brokered climate treaty.
Despite the global financial crisis, both Ban and Gore said there was no time for delay in hashing out the specifics of how to reduce greenhouse gases that contribute to warming the planet.
“We have to do it this year. Not next year. This year,” Gore said. “The clock is ticking, because Mother Nature does not do bailouts.”
The three-day World Business Summit on Climate Change is a precursor to the negotiations that are planned for December to determine what will succeed the Kyoto climate treaty that expires in 2012.
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