As conversations of weather occurrences and suggested anomalies become more frequent and mainstream in the scientific community, as well as at the grass-roots-level, the need to embrace and index substantive information into an authoritative conduit to encourage more research and development~~~IS IMPERATIVE.
Pertinent themes as Global Warming, Climate Change, and Melting Ice Caps has stimulated discussions, seeded forums, and spawned additional research, all to foster consensus, and recommend courses-of-action.
The intent of CLIMATE; THE CONVERSATION, is to be The Bulletin Board, The Platform, The Podium, and The Credible Source & Bibliography for such astute, sincere, and scholarly considerations.
Sincerely;
Administrators:
Andrew M. Marconi
Lou Marconi
Forty companies, among them Kellogg, L’Oréal and Nestlé, signed a declaration on Tuesday pledging to help
cut tropical deforestation in half by 2020 and stop it entirely by
2030. They included several of the largest companies handling palm oil,
the production of which has resulted in rampant destruction of
old-growth forests, especially in Indonesia.
At
a United Nations climate summit in New York this week, companies are
playing a larger role than at any such gathering in the past — and
issuing a blizzard of promises.Several environmental groups said they were optimistic that at least some of these would be kept, but they warned that corporate action was not enough, and that climate change could not be solved without stronger steps by governments.
The
corporate promises are the culmination of a trend that has been
building for years, with virtually every major company now feeling
obliged to make commitments about environmental sustainability, and to
report regularly on progress. The companies have found that pursuing
such goals can often help them cut costs, particularly for energy.
Technology
companies are at the forefront of this week’s announcements, in part
because their own employees have been demanding action on climate
issues.
Apple,
Google and Facebook, which did not sign the forest pledge as their
industries have little connection to deforestation, have all made strong
commitments to power their huge, electricity-hungry data centers with
renewable power. They sometimes build their own solar or wind arrays,
but have also demanded that power companies in places like Iowa and
North Carolina generate and sell them renewable power as a condition of
putting new facilities in those states.
Mr. Cook, in his most forceful statements yet
about the environment, rejected the idea that society must choose
between economic growth and environmental protection. He pointed to a
huge solar farm his company built in North Carolina to help power a data
center there.
“People
told us it couldn’t happen, it couldn’t be done, but we did it,” Mr.
Cook said. “It’s great for the environment, and by the way it’s also
good for economics.”
In
another indicator of how focused the companies have become on
ecological issues, Google said this week that it would withdraw from the
American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative-leaning group
that has urged repeal of state renewable power standards and other
pro-renewable policies.
In
a radio interview, the company’s executive chairman, Eric E. Schmidt,
said that people opposed to climate action “are really hurting our
children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place.
And so we should not be aligned with such people — they’re just, they’re
just literally lying.”
In a statement, Lisa B. Nelson, chief executive of the legislative council, said it was “unfortunate”
that Google would withdraw, adding that the decision was “a result of
public pressure from left-leaning individuals and organizations who
intentionally confuse free-market policy perspectives for climate change
denial.”
Many
of this week’s promises focused on the supply chain for major
commodities like soybeans, beef and palm oil, often produced on cleared
forest land in the tropics. The destruction of these forests imperils
some of the earth’s richest biological regions, endangering animals like
tigers, elephants and orangutans. The trees are generally burned,
sending vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the air, which worsens
global warming.
Brazil
has made progress in slowing the destruction of the Amazon, but
deforestation in Indonesia remains an acute problem, in part because the
production of palm oil there is so lucrative.
Tuesday’s
declaration on forests was also endorsed by 32 governments, by numerous
advocacy groups and by organizations representing indigenous
people. Among corporations, it also included consumer goods companies
that have pledged to impose tough standards on their suppliers of the
oil, an ingredient in thousands of everyday products.
Cargill, the huge American commodity processor, went even further, extending a previous
no-deforestation pledge that it had made on palm oil and soybeans to
cover every commodity the company handles — one of the most sweeping
environmental pledges ever made by a large agricultural company.
“We
want to make sure we are treating the environment with respect,” David
W. MacLennan, the company’s chief executive, said in an interview. “It’s
the right thing to do for the planet, for indigenous peoples, for our
customers and for our employees.”
The
major Indonesian palm oil processors, including Cargill, issued a
separate declaration on Tuesday pledging a crackdown on deforestation,
and asking the Indonesian government to adopt stronger laws. Forest Heroes,
an environmental group, called the declaration “a watershed moment in
the history of both Indonesia and global agriculture. We should not
underestimate the significance of what is happening.”
Perhaps
the leading company in trying to clean up the palm oil business has
been Unilever, which took action several years ago after being targeted
in demonstrations by Greenpeace, the environmental group. Unilever,
which owns brands like Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Dove soap, Lipton
tea and Hellmann’s mayonnaise, has pledged that it will be able to trace
all its palm oil to known sources by the end of this year.
In
another major commitment, five large refrigeration companies said on
Tuesday that they would form a global coalition to seek improvements in
the huge refrigerators used in grocery stores, fast-food chains and the
like. One goal will be to phase out a type of refrigerant that acts as a
powerful greenhouse gas when it escapes to the atmosphere.
In an interview in New York, Kumi Naidoo, the executive director of Greenpeace International, said that his group and others would be watching to see that the corporate promises made this week were kept.
Mr.
Naidoo said he believed the leaders of some companies were sincere in
wanting to tackle global warming, singling out the head of Unilever,
Paul Polman. But he added that their efforts would only go so far
without stronger action by governments.
“We cannot just depend on the good will of corporate leaders,” Mr. Naidoo said. “The situation is too urgent now.”"""""""""""""""""
Being
at the TIPPING-POINT that these actions are having, it becomes necessary
to access their impacts and once having recognized the negative affects
on the environment, the land that we are farming, our commercial and industrial endeavors, the atmosphere that
we are breathing, it is critical to recognize that WE MUST REVERSE THESE
TRENDS. Then, given the time
and place to implement actions and practices to have a cause-and-effect
impact in a positive
way, will influence implementation, and at least retard further
deterioration of our environment and our climate. On a larger scale,
reversing the trends of deterioration should always be----the ultimate
objective.
Its impact on the economy, pollution, and the focus on Climate; The Conversation---makes this worthy of continued enthusiasm and consideration
Lou Marconi (SuiteLou0819)
Its impact on the economy, pollution, and the focus on Climate; The Conversation---makes this worthy of continued enthusiasm and consideration
Lou Marconi (SuiteLou0819)
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