I talked about the carbon market, and others, in the post from April 19 aptly named Markets. There's a pretty big event coming up next week in Cologne: Carbon Expo. This is billed as a "Global Carbon Market Fair and Conference." It runs from May 2 to 4. One of the keynote speakers is the EU Environment Minister, Stavros Dimas. (See the cool picture.)
The other keynote speaker is Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC. They are billing more than 140 Speakers in 8 Plenary Sessions and 22 Workshops, divided into 3 streams , "Project," Traders," and "Global" , and over 35 Exhibitor Side Events. Here's the conference program. This is going to be a really comprehensive, interesting, stimulating important event. As I have indicated in several posts along the way here, we are in a whole new ball game. Frankly, I have seen the future and it works.
Here's something useful from the expo website: a glossary of carbon finance terms. (See also the Conservation Finance Guide, a joint project of the Conservation Finance Alliance.)
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Let's also quickly look back here at another big event that's just passed: "B4E, the Global Business Summit for the Environment." This took place April 19-20 in Singapore and was sponsored by UNEP, the UN Global Compact, and Carbonfund.org. The website for the conference says: "Fortunately, there is an increasing number of companies around the world that are facing the realities of this crisis and are leading the way by embracing environmental responsibility."
When this sort of gathering happens, and when corporate bigwigs like the CEOs of Dupont and PG&E, and the Vice Chair of BP America come to the Senate to testify on behalf of a cap-and-trade system for GHG emissions, and an organization like the U.S. Climate Action Partnership is out in front on creating legislation, then we are seeing a paradigm shift.
"O brave new world
That has such people in't!"
