Jon Robson, the President of Reuters Americas, attended January's World Economic Forum in Davos to join a meeting of some of the world's leading companies that have pledged to do what they can to stop global temperatures from rising to dangerous levels.
The Combat Climate Change (3C) initiative, a group Reuters joined late last year, together with 49 of the world's largest companies, including Citibank, General Electric, Tata Power, and the China National Offshore Oil Corp., met to support and discuss plans for innovations and actions that aim to fight global warming.
Compared to a number of the 3C member companies, Reuters is not a large emitter of greenhouse gases, but nonetheless it does have an impact.
John said: "I don't think we are in the environmental red zone as a company, but that doesn't mean we can't use this opportunity to take part in the debate on global warming and understand our responsibilities."
As the debate over whether human actions are warming the earth gained momentum last year, with the UN's science panel and former US Vice President Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize, many companies began to think of how they could reduce their own impact on climate change.
"Responsible businesses are demonstrating corporate-led efforts to reduce their impact on climate change as part of their sustainability agenda," said Robson. "Together with our initiatives addressing diversity, supply chain ethics and community engagement, the environmental agenda shows Reuters to be a company aware of our responsibilities."
Last year Reuters put in place an Environmental Management System to help calculate its carbon footprint. This year it plans to establish targets to reduce its footprint further.
As a member of 3C, Reuters will meet at least once a year with the other member companies to share concerns and knowledge about ways to keep emissions low. To avoid severe environmental and human impacts of climate change, 3C companies will make recommendations to the world's politicians on cost-effective methods to cut emissions that aim to help prevent global temperatures from rising, and how to make cost-effective reductions targets for 2030 to 2050.
Jon said participating in the group gives Reuters good access to potential leaders in the fight against climate change.
"The hope is members will put commercial motivations aside for a moment and innovate cooperatively to develop more immediate solutions."
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