MARRAKESH, Morocco — More than 365 companies of varying sizes Wednesday sent a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump, calling for continued U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement on climate change. “Implementing the Paris Agreement will enable and encourage businesses and investors to turn the billions of dollars in existing low-carbon investments into the trillions of dollars the world needs to bring clean energy and prosperity to all,” the group wrote.
The letter comes just over a week after billionaire real estate mogul Trump won the U.S. presidential election on a Republican ticket. Trump has opposed U.S. involvement in international climate efforts, including the Paris Agreement, which establishes a legal framework under which nations are to pursue domestically determined actions to address climate change. The president-elect has reportedly begun looking for quick ways to pull out of the accord, to which the U.S. is bound for the next four years.
The involvement of the United States, the world’s No. 2 emitter of greenhouse gases, was key in securing the agreement’s early into force on Nov. 4, less than a year after its adoption in December 2015. While No. 1 emitter China and other nations have made clear their intention to proceed with the deal no matter what happens in Washington, U.S. withdrawal would be a setback.
Announcing the letter here Wednesday at the 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Mariana Panuncio-Feldman, senior director of international climate cooperation at the World Wildlife Fund, said the timing of the message is significant: “To me the fact that over 360 companies came together wanting to speak right away about the important work that they are intending to continue doing, and they signed the letter in just so few days, shows how much momentum there is for this new clean economy.”
Signing the letter was an easy decision for Mars Inc, said Kevin Rabinovitch, global sustainability director at the candy and pet food maker. Mars has committed to eliminate 100 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from its operations by 2040 and to pursue more renewable energy projects like the 200-megawatt windfarm brought online last year. “The reason more than 360 companies were able to so quickly say, yeah, of course we’ll sign on to this letter, is because it’s what we’ve been saying for at least a year in some case much longer than a year.”
Mars’ actions on climate will not change even if the United States withdraws from the Paris Agreement, Rabinovitch said. “For us as a business, it wouldn’t really change our commitments and targets,” he said. “We made our original commitments to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent in 2015 and 100 percent in 2040 starting from a 2007 base, we made those commitments in 2009, which maybe someone had an idea of the Paris Agreement back then, but we certainly didn’t know about it,” he said.
However, having the whole world on the same page on climate change is good business sense, according to the letter. “We want the US economy to be energy efficient and powered by low-carbon energy. Cost-effective and innovative solutions can help us achieve these objectives. Failure to build a low-carbon economy puts American prosperity at risk,” the letter says.
Signatories include General Mills, Gap, HP, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Starbucks, Levi Strauss, Tiffany & Co., eBay, and Nike.