Big business is actively encouraging U.S. government involvement
in the realm of climate change. Why? Two reasons.
One, CEOs recognize that global warming is a real problem that
will affect their bottom lines. In May 2008, the U.S. Climate
Change Science Program released its assessment of the effects of
climate change on this country.1 This assessment paints
a fairly grim picture of the impacts from anthropogenic climate
change on industry—this from the Bush administration,
which had long been reluctant to admit that human activities cause
global warming.
Two, they see the way the wind is blowing on a regional level
with regard to greenhouse gas regulation. Regional initiatives,
such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a 10-state
consortium that will regulate carbon dioxide emissions from certain
electricity-generating sources, and state initiatives, like
California's Assembly Bill 32, known as the Global Warming
Solutions Act of 2006, are in various stages
