(Corporate) environmental economics at the World Economic Forum

(Corporate) environmental economics at the World Economic Forum: "

The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting wrapped up on Sunday (1/29). Here are some environmental highlights.
From the Environment and the Bottom Line session:
Faced with very real environmental risks, Annual Meeting participants sought to tackle concern for the environment as a bottom-line issue. “We know what the problems are, but how are we going to bring them down to this bottom line?" noted John Elkington, Chairman, SustainAbility, United Kingdom.Klaus T?pfer, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Nairobi, advocated price regulation as a possible solution, specifying that “If there is no price regulation, then you have overuse.” Environmental standards should be linked to law enforcement because of presently insufficient accountability, according to Paul J. Ostling, Global Chief Operating Officer, Ernst & Young, United Kingdom.
From the Climate Change session:
The business leaders, academics, scientists and government policy-makers in this session reached the same "painful" conclusion on the state of the world: society is in a race against time to stop climate change and the inevitable damage to the environment – and more importantly the world's economy. The overarching goal has to be to become "carbon-neutral" in the way the world lives. ... Panellists called for a diversification of energy supplies, ranging from geothermal, wind, solar, biofuels and cleaner coal. The world's economy must wean itself from its dependency on oil, given the impact the burning of fossil fuels is having on the environment and the growing insecurity of oil supplies largely from an extremely limited number of sources: the Middle East, Russia and West Africa.
From China as a Green Lab:
Participants generally agreed that, in China, there has been, as Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director, Asia Studies, Council on Foreign Relations, USA, put it,"a sea change in the central government's commitment"to environmental protection."The Chinese government regards environmental protection as a basic state policy,"Zhu Guangyao, Vice-Minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration of People's Republic of China, asserted. The government, he explained, is implementing a multifaceted programme to promote environmental protection that includes strengthening environmental legislation, increasing public awareness, reducing pollutant emissions and implementing preventive measures. While China must maintain high growth to create adequate jobs, it does realize that it must do so in a sustainable way."We are trying to build a resource-saving society,"Zhu added. Gone, he vowed, is the"old approach of 'pollute first, repair later'.""