Murdoch calls for climate deal

Peter Alford and Matthew Warren
November 07, 2006
The Australian

RUPERT Murdoch has called for the Kyoto Protocol on climate change to be replaced by a new international agreement that can be endorsed by the US and the emerging industrial giants China and India.

And the chairman of News Corporation, publisher of The Australian, said that while he had until recently been wary of the global warming debate and apparently far-fetched assertions about its causes, he now believed business must lead the search for solutions.

"What is certain is temperatures have been rising and we are not entirely sure of the consequences," he told a Tokyo conference last night. "The planet deserves the benefit of the doubt."

But he did not favour the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse emissions, which the US and Australia have refused to sign and which does not bind the major emerging industrial nations.

"I think we should certainly have a protocol and probably a new one," he said, noting the Kyoto pact was impossible for the US to accept and also unlikely to be adopted by the biggest emerging economies.

Any agreement on global warming was useless unless it was adopted by the US, Japan and Northern Europe, but also by China and India: "Whatever is done must apply to all countries."

Mr Murdoch, probably the world's most influential media businessman, described the debate on global warming as an example of the beneficial effects of globalisation.

"Without globalisation, the debate on climate change would be meaningless and without the active support of business, there will be no meaningful solution to the problem of global warming."

He singled out the chief executive of British satellite broadcaster BSkyB, his son James Murdoch, as a leader in the direction the News Corp group now intended to take.

James Murdoch's plan to make BSkyB a carbon-neutral company "is not sentimentality, it is sound business strategy that reduces costs and reassures carbon conscious governments" the group is not complicit in global warming.

Mr Murdoch's comments came as it emerged that a group of blue-chip Australian companies was looking to fast-track commercialisation of low-emission technologies as the basis of an evolving business policy response to climate change.

This new coalition follows the Business Roundtable on Climate Change, which released a report in April to lobby government for early action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The evolving new business policy group has held a number of preliminary discussions and last week formed a work plan to look at which policy tools might accelerate and deepen the commercialisation of low-emission technologies such as clean coal and energy efficiency in Australia.

Companies involved in the discussions include BP Australia, Westpac, Visy, Anglo Coal, ANZ, Insurance Australia Group and Rio Tinto subsidiary Comalco.

Visy Industries was the foundation member of the first business roundtable, and last night a spokesman said the packaging giant was considering if it would participate in the working group.
Visy spokesman Tony Gray said the first roundtable had triggered greater action by corporate Australia to consider how it might respond.

"If we don't sign up it won't be because we don't think it's a good idea, it will be because we're glad more companies are doing it and our efforts are best spent somewhere else," he said.