NAMED: 78 New U.S. Companies Who Have Signed on to Obama’s Environmental Pledge

2nd Vote is out with the names of 78 corporations (it says 81 — more on that below) that have signed on to the White House’s “American Business Act on Climate Pledge.”

The “Pledge” states that “…No corner of the planet and no sector of the global economy will remain unaffected by climate change in the years ahead. Climate change is a global challenge that demands a global response, and President Obama is committed to leading the fight.” It commits the signatories to:

Cheer on countries who have already put environmental agendas in place; Aim to continuously reduce emissions, increase low-carbon investments, deploy more clean energy, and take other actions to build more sustainable businesses and tackle climate change; Put company-wide policies in place that aim to reduce emissions by almost half; Reduce water usage by 80 percent; Reduce waste-to-landfill to nothing; Purchase 100 percent renewable energy; and Pursue zero net deforestation in supply chains.

Many of these non sequitur proposals would do immense harm to the poor and nothing to help the environment, as explained by George Will in his response to Pope Francis’s advocacy of left-wing environmentalism:

“People occasionally forgive, but nature never does.” The Vatican’s majesty does not disguise the vacuity of this. Is Francis intimating that environmental damage is irreversible? He neglects what technology has accomplished regarding London’s air (see Page 1 of Dickens’ “Bleak House”) and other matters. …

Francis deplores “compulsive consumption,” a sin to which the 1.3 billion persons without even electricity can only aspire. He leaves the Vatican to jet around praising subsistence farming, a romance best enjoyed from 30,000 feet above the realities that such farmers yearn to escape.

The saint who is Francis’ namesake supposedly lived in sweet harmony with nature. For most of mankind, however, nature has been, and remains, scarcity, disease and natural — note the adjective — disasters. Our flourishing requires affordable, abundant energy for the production of everything from food to pharmaceuticals. Poverty has probably decreased more in the last two centuries than it has in the preceding three millennia because of industrialization powered by fossil fuels. Only economic growth has ever produced broad amelioration of poverty, and since growth began in the late 18th century, it has depended on such fuels.

Matt Ridley, author of ‘The Rational Optimist,’ notes that coal supplanting wood fuel reversed deforestation, and ‘fertilizer manufactured with gas halved the amount of land needed to produce a given amount of food.’ The capitalist commerce that Francis disdains is the reason the portion of the planet’s population living in ‘absolute poverty’ ($1.25 a day) declined from 53 percent to 17 percent in three decades after 1981. Even in low-income countries, writes economist Indur Goklany, life expectancy increased from between 25 and 30 years in 1900 to 62 years today. Sixty-three percent of fibers are synthetic and derived from fossil fuels; of the rest, 79 percent come from cotton, which requires synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.”

The 78 corporations are:

1. ABENGOA BIOENERGY US
2. AEMETIS
3. ALCOA
4. AMERICAN EXPRESS
5. APPLE
6. AT&T
7. AUTODESK
8. BANK OF AMERICA
9. BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY ENERGY
10. BEST BUY
11. BIOGEN
12. BLOOMBERG
13. CARGILL
14. CA TECHNOLOGIES
15. CALPINE
16. CAMPOS BROTHERS FARMS
17. COCA-COLA
18. COX ENTERPRISES
19. DELL
20. DSM NORTH AMERICA
21. EMC
22. ENERGY OPTIMIZERS
23. ENER-G RUDOX
24. FACEBOOK
25. FULCRUM BIOENERGY
26. GE
27. GENERAL MILLS
28. GENERAL MOTORS
29. GOLDMAN SACHS
30. GOOGLE
31. HERSHEY’S
32. HEWLETT PACKARD (HP)
33. IBERDROLA USA
34. IBM
35. IKEA USA
36. INGERSOLL RAND
37. INTERNATIONAL PAPER
38. INTEL
39. INTEX SOLUTIONS, INC.
40. INVENERGY
41. JOHNSON AND JOHNSON
42. JOHNSON CONTROLS
43. KELLOGG’S
44. KINGSPAN INSULATED PANELS, INC.
45. LAKESHORE LEARNING MATERIALS
46. LAM RESEARCH
47. LEVI STRAUSS & CO.
48. L’OREAL USA
49. MARS
50. McDONALD’S CORPORATION
51. MICROSOFT
52. MONSANTO
53. NIKE
54. NESTLE
55. NOVOZYMES
56. ONE3LED
57. PACIFIC ETHANOL
58. PEPSI-CO
59. PG&E
60. POET
61. PORTLAND GENERAL ELECTRIC
62. PwC US
63. PROCTER & GAMBLE
64. QUALCOMM
65. RICOH USA
66. SALESFORCE.COM
67. SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC
68. SIEMENS CORPORATION
69. SONY CORPORATION OF AMERICA
70. STARBUCKS
71. SYNGENTA/QCCP
72. TARGET
73. TRI-GLOBAL ENERGY
74. UNILEVER
75. UPS
76. WALMART
77. THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY
78. XEROX CORPORATION

(Note: It was kinda funny writing this, because whatever idiot the White House got to write the original press release can’t count. He/She said that there were 81 companies, not 78. I can’t blame 2nd Vote for not noticing.)