Nike, Starbucks urge new climate policies

Nike Inc., Starbucks Corp., Levi Strauss & Co. and two other U.S. companies called Wednesday for aggressive policies to limit global warming to help rescue the country from an economic crisis.

The coalition appealed for steep cuts in U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, investment in renewable energy from the wind and sun, and limits on polluting coal-fired power plants. Congress and President-elect Barack Obama should take action on the matter early in 2009, they said.

The proposals would place a cost on carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for rising temperatures and sea levels, said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmental activists. That will encourage capital markets to invest in job-creating technologies, she said.

“Rather than ignore risk, address the risk and turn it into an opportunity,” Lubber said Wednesday in a conference call. “We need to send the right and honest market signal. Carbon pollution has a cost.”

The group of companies, which includes Sun Microsystems Inc. and Timberland Co., announced its goals Wednesday with Ceres, whose more than 70 institutional investors control assets of at least $7 trillion. Ignoring the effects of climate change will increase operating costs, said Ben Packard, vice president at Starbucks.

“Starbucks relies on an agricultural product: coffee,” Packard said. Global warming will trigger “significant impacts to the regions and most importantly to the people who grow our coffee.”

The firms called for cutting heat-trapping emissions 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 and limiting the construction of coal plants that do not capture emissions. Existing plants that release carbon pollution should be phased out by 2030.