The Sky is Not the Limit: - Carbon Trade Watch

transnational corporations such asDow, Shell, Eskom, and BP. 7 Thegroup has been a pioneer of corporateenvironmentalism, and has been oneof the most dominant business voicesin international deliberations onenvironment and development. TheWBCSD favours a global treaty onclimate change, though notnecessarily outright calling forratification of the Kyoto Protocol,mostly due to reluctance by its USmembers.It has lobbied aggressively toundermine many of its provisions,preferring voluntarism versusregulation. 8 The WBCSD has been sosuccessful in promoting itself as agreen business coalition that manyNGOs have succumbed to theirrhetoric and formed alliances with thecorporate lobby group. Even campaigngroups such as Greenpeace, whoyears before used to directly campaignagainst the WBCSD, have recentlyforged partnerships with them. 9The group has used its carefullycrafted green image and the power ofits corporate leaders to influence UNagencies and government institutionsto accept WBCSD recommendationsof market-based corporatistapproaches to environmental andsocial policy. It has championed theflexible mechanisms of the KyotoProtocol, and has been heavilyinvolved in influencing thedevelopment of rules on emissionstrading, such as accounting standardsthrough a ‘Greenhouse Gas Protocol’,which is envisioned to be a global setof accounting standards andguidelines for emissions reporting.It cooperates with other businessgroups such as the ICC and the IETAto coordinate business ‘input’ into mostclimate policy negotiations on theinternational, national, and local level.Its central demand for emissionstrading is for nothing less than globalfree trade in greenhouse gases with aslittle government and regulatoryintervention as possible.33