ThinkingShift

Following up on yesterday’s post, I came across really fascinating news. I’ve always loved the Impressionist art movement - the vivid, fiery sunsets of a Turner painting; the dappled waters of a Monet reflecting the electric blue sky; the churning clouds; the emerald greens of a Renoir. I studied them in art school but have never stopped to think of Impressionist paintings against the backdrop of climate change. Until now…

Climate change scientists are busy analysing Turner’s paintings along with other Impressionist artists and sniffing out signs of climate change. In 1883, Krakatoa blew its top and coughed up rocks, dust and assorted debris that circled the globe. For many years, stunning sunsets were seen as the retreating light was scattered by reflective particles thrown high into the atmosphere. So the scientists have examined 181 artists who painted sunsets between 1500 and 1900 - before and after Krakatoa - and calculated the amount of material in the sky during the 1880s. This will feed into a scientific study of a phenomenon called global dimming, which is caused by air pollution blocking sunlight.

When Mount Tambora in Indonesia blew up in 1815 there was so much stuff in the atmosphere that 1815 was referred to as the “year without a summer” and there were massive crop failures in Europe, which led to famine and economic collapse.

The amount of red and green along the horizon in each artist’s painting has been calculated by a computer. Sunlight scattered by airborne particles appears more red than green, so the reddest sunsets indicate the dirtiest skies. And the result was most paintings with the highest red/green ratios were painted in the 3 years following Krakatoa’s eruption. There were 54 volcanic sunset paintings.

Interestingly, Turner was in the right place at the right time. He lived before, during and after several volcanic hissy fits: Tambora in 1815; Babuyan, Philippines in 1831, and Cosiguina, Nicaragua in 1835 and in each case the scientists found a sharp change in the red/green ratio of the sunsets he painted up to 3 years afterwards.

The team of scientists hope to check out 4o paintings from the 20th Century to see if the effects of pollution since the Industrial Revolution have been captured in sunset renditions.

Source: Guardian Unlimited
Images: Wikipedia

A new report, Climate Change in Australia, has just been released. Developed by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology it provides the most comprehensive (and pretty scary) assessment to date of Australia’s future climate. Basically, Australians are going to be increasingly saying “it’s getting hot in here”. The report looks at the years 2030, 2050 and 2070 through the lens of a number of different greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Here’s the bad news:

• by 2030 temperatures will rise by about 1 ºC throughout Australia
• then it depends on the level of greenhouse gases as to what happens next, but….
• if emissions are LOW, warming of between 1 ºC and 2.5 ºC is likely by around 2070, with a best estimate of 1.8 ºC.
• but…if emissions are HIGH, then we’re stuffed - under a high emission scenario, the best estimate warming is 3.4 ºC, with a range of 2.2 ºC to 5 ºC.
• the number of days hitting 35ºC may triple
• the likelihood of seeing rain is pretty slim - under a low emission scenario in 2070, the best estimate of rainfall decrease is 7.5%. Under a high emission scenario the best estimate is a decrease of 10%.

And as a result of all this? well…..a long list of potential catastrophic scenarios:

• more frequent droughts particularly in south-west Australia (well, let’s just extend our current long drought straight through to 2070!)
• high-fire danger and more frequent bushfires
• more intense tropical cyclones
• rising sea levels.

You can freak yourself out with a climate change map of Australia here on the CSIRO site. The technical report is here if you want to wade your way through it. And if you live in Sydney, here’s the really bad, worst case scenario news - an annual temperature rise of up to 4.3 degrees by 2070. And we can’t panic now because it’s already too late to avoid a warming of about 1 degree by 2030.

The report highlights a warming of 0.9 degrees since 1950 and an increase in hot nights have been mostly due to greenhouse gas emissions. There’s been a 40% reduction in snow depth in Spring in the Snowy Mountains in the past 45 years.

And obvious signs of climate change are already happening at the top end of the world. In Greenland, in the year 985, Erik the Red, who was leader of a medieval Norse colony, built his farm and raised sheep, cattle, and barley. Erik and his cohorts could do this because the climate was warmer, but then the Little Ice Age arrived and the colony was doomed. Now, it’s come full circle - in Qassiarsuk, Greenland, young potatoes and radishes are sprouting up. Scientists say that nowhere else in the world are the effects of climate change so obvious as in Greenland. Winter sea ice is rapidly disappearing, which means the Inuit might be in for a rough ride - ice-hole fishing, sled dog mushing and other traditional means of living and surviving will disappear along with the ice. Farming, which is an occupation not heard of 100 years ago in this area, will stage a comeback due to warmer temperatures.

Source: CS Monitor. Photo credit: SMH

Here’s an interesting piece of research and a slightly different way to tackle the climate change debate. A new study by earth scientist, David Zhang of the University of Hong Kong, looks at 900 years of conflict in eastern China and suggests that cold spells fuel the social instability that can result in war.

Zhang and his researchers focused on the 899 wars that took place between the years 1000 and 1911 in densely populated eastern China. They examined climate data for the same period. They established that there were 6 major cycles of warm and cold weather from 1000 to 1911 and clustered the frequency of wars into 3 classes:

• very high = more than 30 wars per decade
• high = 15-30 wars per decade
• low = fewer than 15 wars per decade

All four decades of very high warfare coincided with cold phases. There were two really cold periods: 1448–1487 and 1583–1717. During these two periods, the researchers noted civil instability and turbulent weather patterns - famines, rebellions, heavy rains and severe flooding, devastated agricultural production. 1620-1640 witnessed the coldest temperatures and in 1644 a peasant uprising took place and the capital, Beijing, was captured. And the Ming period was brought to an end by the Manchu invasion.

The hypothesis is that during warm periods, populations increase but when cold spells hit and result in shorter growing seasons and lower agricultural yields, the population cannot be sustained. Social unrest takes place and Zhang points out that China’s dynastic changes all took place during cold spells.

So what’s the relevance of this study to global warming? Zhang believes world population numbers will be unable to adapt to the ecological changes brought on by global warming. He notes that animals adapt in various ways: migration; dietary change; and depopulation (mainly through starvation and cannibalism). Humans have more options when adapting, like birth control, trade and scientific innovation. These social mechanisms include waging war in an effort to depopulate. Zhang says that “war is just like the cannibalism of animals.”

I read recently (can’t remember where) that by 2100, the world’s population will be a staggering 8.4 billion and I think it’s around 6.6 billion now. Can you imagine: it was 1 billion in 1820, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1988, and 6 billion in 2000 (source: CIA The World Factbook).

If you think of the predicted effects of global warming - drought, withering crops, wild storms - then social unrest and possible warfare could easily happen just as it did following the ecological effects of cold weather spells in eastern China during 1000-1911.

Source: Discover Magazine.

Anyone who doesn’t believe in global warming, read no further. If you do, then here’s something to think about. We tend to get caught up in talk over carbon emissions, carbon offsets, doing our bit to save the planet and so on. All good. But….something that I think is missed is: what will be the security implications of a planet heating up?

I’ve touched on aspects of this before here and here. But I came across a new report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies - Strategic Survey 2007 - and a part of this report looks at security issues. It looks at America’s profound loss of authority following its failure to impose order in Iraq and explores who is filling the vacuum - Putin attempting to reassert Russian power; Iran pressing ahead with its nuclear programme. As a result of various powers flexing their muscles, the report highlights key strategic policy issues in the years to come - Islamic terrorism and the military use of space for example.

But the strategic policy issue entitled Climate Change: Security Implications & Regional Impacts is pretty scary stuff. We’ve all heard scenarios of a future world with scarcity of water and wilting crops leading to less food to feed billions of mouths. The IISS report said the effects that would follow would cause a host of problems including rising sea levels, forced migration, freak storms, droughts, floods, extinctions, wildfires, disease epidemics, crop failures and famines. And it likens the impact of global security implications on a par with nuclear war.

Dwindling resources will lead to competition between haves and have nots. And as countries struggle to provide, we will see State failures increasing the gap between rich and poor and heightening racial and ethnic tensions, which in turn would produce fertile breeding grounds for more conflict. Urban areas would not escape - falling crop yields due to reduced water and rising temperatures (predicted to be between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century) would push food prices higher.

The report highlights that 65 countries are likely to lose over 15% of their agricultural output by 2100 at a time when the world’s population is expected to head from six billion now to nine billion people. And it goes on to say: “Fundamental environmental issues of food, water and energy security ultimately lie behind many present security concerns, and climate change will magnify all three“.

This all reminds me of a Pentagon report published in 2003, which created a climate change scenario and asked you to imagine the unthinkable - nations with resources building up virtual fortresses around their countries and preserving resources for themselves; unlikely alliances forming based on survival rather than ideology or religion; military confrontation and violence breaking out in regions around the world like Latin America. It scared the heck out of me then and still does - you should take the time to read it. Download it here - Pentagon report Abrupt Climate Change.

Okay, this week I admit I’ve been a bit introspective pondering the English language, cemeteries and heroes, so time for a change of pace. I just had a week’s holiday and for once decided to stay at home rather than schlepping overseas. This resulted in time to read and contemplate, hence the posts of the last few days.

So…..today’s post is something pretty interesting to me and anyone interested in global warming-related corporate social responsibility issues. GreenMachines.net has just launched the internet’s first green corporate governance network - a social network with the mission of helping to turn climate-related corporate decision-making into a public process so that the technological and economic power of business corporations is focused on the fight against global warming.

There are four online discussion areas on the network:

• The Whistle: looks at whether particular corporations are violating laws designed to reduce greenhouse gas emission. Whistleblower protection is provided by Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 549 U.S. __ (2007), in which the US Supreme Court gives the EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the tailpipes of new motor vehicles - meaning that the United States Supreme Court has found that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” within the meaning of the Clean Air Act and the Court’s reasoning applies equally to other greenhouse gases. So anyone who thinks a company is violating the Clean Air Act by unlawfully emitting greenhouse gases can report the violation on the network.
• The Long View: an area for discussing carbon footprint-reducing investments that corporations can make to develop or implement carbon dioxide (”CO2″) capture and/or sequestration technologies.
• Value-Added: here the network can share information about the steps a company can take to develop or implement CO2 capturing or sequestering technologies or find information on how to publish a Corporate Sustainability Report.
• Deconstruction Zone: an area to discuss and highlight the accuracy of a company’s Corporate Environmental Responsibility Reports or other green PR.

All four forums are moderated and anyone can join. Under New Posts, I found a whole lot of stuff on court cases involving non-compliant companies; companies that are seen as having the greenest tech brands; what specific companies like Wells Fargo and Chevron are doing around sustainability; and a link to measuring and managing corporate carbon footprints.

Quite timely really given the recent article in The Economist. US economist, Robert Reich’s new book, Supercapitalism, denounces CSR as a dangerous diversion that is undermining democracy. Reich has apparently had a Damascene conversion and following many years of preaching the CSR gospel, now believes that companies cannot be socially responsible and that CSR activitists need to focus on getting Governments to solve social problems. He debunks many CSR arguments and maintains that socially responsible companies are not necessarily more profitable and that many companies are using CSR as a propaganda tool to fool the public into thinking that problems are being addressed.

I suspect a good cat fight will erupt over this book - check out the overview of the book in The Economist article.

I know the climate change skeptics will jump on me for this - but jump on the Mail & Guardian Online instead please. An article in this newspaper the other day flashed the headline of “Ice-free Arctic could be here in 23 years“. Not 5 or 10 years; not 20 years; but 23 years. Intriguing. Science Daily thinks it might be within 100 years. Live Science pinpoints 2105 as the year. I don’t suppose the exact timing really matters - the climate is stuffed and the Earth is pretty doomed - sorry, in a maudlin state today after seeing this picture of poor polar bears clinging to melting ice floes.

This image is in sharp contrast to the picture painted in the book I just polished off - True North by Bruce Henderson - the story of brutal rivalry between the two American polar explorers, Frederick Cook and Robert Peary as they raced to claim the North Pole in the early 1900s. I plan to read more on polar discovery - next up is Endurance by Alfred Lansing about Shackleton’s voyage to the Antarctic. But I must say that Peary sounds as though he wasn’t a good sport.

Anyway, what struck me about polar exploration was the landscape and the calibre of the person who set off into the unknown. Chapters were filled with descriptions of abundant ice stretching as far as the eye could see; wild arctic storms that froze the legs and tails of huskies into the ice; ink black nights illuminated by the occasional sliver of glittering ice; rough terrain in which ice cover could literally appear or disappear overnight.

I was fascinated by the portrayal of Cook. His photo shows a man of extraordinary determination but with compassionate eyes and an overall softness to his face. (Photo credit: http://library.osu.edu/sites/archives/polar/cook/cphoto.php). He was lured by the siren call of the Arctic it seems - was he in fact the true discover of the North Pole and not Peary, who claimed to have discovered it in 1909? Peary’s claim remains controversial. Peary seemed driven by fame but Cook perhaps by a call to adventure.

Then I watched Flags of our Fathers - the WWII film about the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima and how the three-surviving flag raisers were trotted around the US, lauded as heroes, in an effort to persuade Americans to buy war bonds to raise money for the war effort.

So the pattern is about heroic deeds: reluctant heroes or tragic heroes like Cook (because his instruments were left behind in the Arctic and not brought back by Peary, as gentlemanly behaviour of the time dictated - Cook was accused of having a weakly-documented claim, if not accused of downright lying). Heroes doing their bit for family and country. Heroes doggedly soldiering on in the face of adversity or failure. Heroes who are humble in the face of fame. The world is a whole lot smaller now. Not many steamy, rugged jungles for a Stanley-type to slash his way through and emerge muttering “Dr Livingstone I presume?“. The Moon is passé, so 1960s - been there, done that.

And so, have we replaced these larger-than-life physical heroes with fictional action men like Indiana Jones? If we viewed WWII veterans like Sir Douglas Bader (who lost both his legs in a pre-war flying accident) as heroes, then who are our current heroes? I know it’s a question I’ve asked before and still grapple with. In a world filled with celebrities who have lost their knickers on their way to another stint in rehab or entrepeneurs who earn squillions overnight for the latest innovation - who do we look to for inspiration? Is our society hero-poor? Do we still feel the need to create heroes? Are heroes still fashionable?

I came across this interesting essay by Canadian author Charlotte Gray who laments the Canadian reluctance (as she sees it) to embrace heroes. Canadian currency depicts birds and Prime Ministers, not war heroes or outstanding figures from the past. At least Australian currency fares a little better with poet Banjo Patterson, an Aboriginal writer and inventor and the founder of the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

Gray says: “Most countries choose individuals with larger-than-life qualities to mythologize: extraordinary imagination, against-the-odds bravery, brilliant creativity. There are colourful characters in our collective past who embody such qualities - think of Sir Sandford Fleming, inventor of Standard Time; Dr Frederick Banting, co-discoverer of insulin; the fighter pilot, Billy Bishop. Why aren’t they on our money, instead of stuffy old Mackenzie King?”.

So how do we define “hero” (or heroine)? The US have their Founding Fathers and the Kennedys I suppose; France has Joan of Arc; the UK has Churchill; and Australia? Well, we worship the heck out of sporting people. What do you think it means to be a hero? Who are our modern heroes? Can you imagine if Frederick Cook popped into a time capsule and ended up in 2007 - apart from being aghast at the melting polar ice, he might also wonder if heroic figures have also melted away.

Over the last hundred years or so, we’ve equated heroes with explorers; politicians; armed servicemen; inventors; astronauts - people who have pushed the boundaries; met the unknown head-on; shown valour; inspired a generation; led a country through hard times. What do we equate our heroes with now? And what do they do?

The photo accompanying this post is of my father, James Evans Jenkins (great Welsh name eh!) who was a WWII fighter pilot for the New Zealand Air Force. I guess most girls say they’re fathers are their heroes :)-

Australia’s Prime Minister is yet to put his autograph on the Kyoto Protocol but at least the Federal Government is smart enough to figure out that wildlife on the world’s driest continent is going to have a pretty rough time as the planet heats up. Australian State and Federal Governments have agreed (a shock in itself really) to create a 2,800 kilometre wildlife corridor according to a piece in Reuters.

The entire East Coast of Australia - from the Australian Alps (south-eastern Australia) to the tropical north - will link national parks, state forests and Government land. Clearly, there’s going to have to be some snappy negotiation with private landowners who might be in the path of the proposed corridor. Not sure either how the animals and plants will find this magical corridor, but presumably as the Land Down Under sizzles under temperatures rising by up to 6.7 degrees Celsius (12 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2080, the preserved areas will function as protective ecosystems.

As one of the scientists involved in the proposal said: “The effects of climate change will likely to be less severe in systems that have some resilience and that we haven’t gone in and buggered-up”.

A thumbs up to the Australian Government for this initiative!

And in related news from National Geographic: the heat is off the sun. A favourite argument of those denying climate change has been that cyclical changes in solar activity have periodically resulted in warmer periods throughout history. The beginning of the 20th Century, particularly the 1930s, experienced warmer temperatures. But that trend reversed after 1985 and cannot explain the rapidly increasing temperatures the world is facing. As one climate scientist quipped:

“Think of the sun as a criminal suspect who has a long record, but a cast iron alibi for the latest crime…..And meanwhile, the fingerprints of CO2 are all over the murder weapon”.

This post is especially for the person who keeps emailing me to say that climate change is a nonsense and that I’ve been sucked in by the rhetoric. Well, neither you nor I are climate change scientists, so it’s best to leave the discussion to those who have more expert knowledge. But when NASA has news that its Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesophere (AIM) satellite has taken the first shots of glowing clouds that scientists believe could be linked to climate change, perhaps we should both check it out.

New Scientist tells us that the AIM was launched in April 2007 on a specific mission - to investigate ‘night-shining’ polar clouds or noctilucent clouds. These glowing clouds are thin, wispy clouds that glow an electric blue colour. They hover 80 kilometres or so above the ground (in the mesophere) and are made of tiny ice crystals. Some scientists think the clouds are chock full of space dust, but a growing majority suspect that they are an early and telltale sign of global warming. They can be seen in the Northern Hemisphere, over the Arctic region, during summer, from mid-May to end of August, and have been glowing brighter in recent years. The AIM will observe two complete cloud seasons and will watch for shiny clouds in the Southern Hemisphere. The clouds form in high altitudes and then move to lower latitudes.

Why are they linked to global warming? “It is clear that these clouds are changing, a sign that a part of our atmosphere is changing and we do not understand how, why or what it means,” says atmospheric scientist, James Russell III, of Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. “These observations suggest a connection with global change in the lower atmosphere and could represent an early warning that our Earth environment is being changed,” he said.

The photo accompanying this post is ‘night clouds’ illuminating the sky over Budapest, Hungary on June 15, 2007. Photo credit: National Geographic. Reminds me of the beauty of the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis - but with far dire consequences for humanity should the scientists be right about the clouds being an early signal of global warming. Photo credit: Wikipedia.

The President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, has an interesting perspective on climate change. Recent European summers have been the warmest in 500 years, most notably the scorching heatwave that shimmered across Europe in 2003. The global temperature increased by 0.6% during the 20th Century. Both these facts, according to Vaclav, have caused environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical action is needed to curb global warming.

In the past year, we’ve had Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, shown in cinemas around the world; the Stern report warn of dire predictions; and the Group of Eight summit grappling with what to do about climate change. But Vaclav queries whether climate change rhetoric is just plain propaganda and whether it is now becoming politically correct to embrace global warming at the expense of alternative viewpoints. The grand narrative – the established truth - he suggests is that of climate change. Vaclav says that global warming hysteria has become a prime example of the truth versus propaganda problem and suggests that some leading scientists protest against the arrogance of those who advocate the global warming hypothesis and relate it to human activities.

He has of course lived in a communist regime and feels the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity is ambitious environmentalism, not communism. Vaclav maintains that environmentalists are demanding immediate political action rather than believing that long-term positive change can result from economic growth and technological progress. In an interesting comment he suggests “..the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment”. Not quite sure how he reaches this position because if we look at the wealthy, developed countries, they are the ones ripping the environment apart with carbon emissions, deforestation and so on. Vaclav believes that scientists should declare their political and value assumptions and how this might affect the selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.

Like many people who question the veracity of the climate change argument, Vaclav questions why we seem to ignore the cyclical nature of climate fluctuations throughout history. There was a well-documented warmer climate during the Middle Ages and as recently as the early 20th Century, temperatures were warmer than now. In suggesting this, Vaclav perhaps chooses to ignore the rapidly climbing temperatures identified in the Hockey Stick graph (shows temperatures shooting up in the latter half of the 20th Century).

He places great faith in contemporary society when he states: ”Due to advances in technology, increases in disposable wealth, the rationality of institutions and the ability of countries to organise themselves, the adaptability of human society has been radically increased. It will continue to increase and will solve any potential consequences of mild climate changes.”

Given that recent articles have suggested that Paris, France and Mediterranean countries could be facing an increase in hot days by up to 500%, I’m not sure how he concludes that we’ll be facing mild changes.

Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”. This is a position Vaclav seems to be taking when he says: “The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.”

Living for most of his life under a communist regime, Vaclav is perhaps finely tuned to political ideologies and seems to be worried that a global warming grand narrative will emerge from a politically centralised approach to climate change. To prevent this from happening, he suggests we keep in mind the following:

• small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures;
• any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided;
• instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as they want (yes, well: can we allow people to wantonly spew carbon emissions into the atmosphere; threaten endangered species???);
• let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority;
• instead of speaking about “the environment”, let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour (Vaclav seems to be assuming that people can or will be personally responsible for their actions – a risky notion if you ask me);
• let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction;
• let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.

Okay I admit I struggle with Vaclav’s approach. Because he has lived under a communist regime, I wonder if he swings to the other end of the spectrum by asking that we be personally responsible for our actions; that human society should evolve naturally without any intervention; that nothing and no-one should be suppressed. Could this position be to the detriment of our world and society?

Well, at the risk of getting savaged again on one of those social networking sites, today’s post highlights climate friendly companies. And if I’m accused again of being “one of those whining greenies who believe in climate change”, then yep, I admit it - I’m deeply concerned about how we’re damaging the planet, killing off species, stuffing up the climate. So….I was pleased to come across this article, which talks about how companies are getting ranked on global warming from the consumer’s viewpoint.

A new non-profit, Climate Counts, has produced a climate scorecard based on 22 criteria. Companies are graded from 1 to 100 on whether they measure their carbon footprint; how they are reducing their impact on the environment; compliance with legislation; and what they publicly disclose about corporate activities and environmental impact.

Fifty-six companies from North America and the UK have been ranked. So who’s on top and who’s at the bottom? Canon, Nike and Unilever came out shining with scores of 77, 73 and 71 respectively. Amazon.com, Wendy’s, Burger King, Jones Apparel, CBS and Darden Restaurants (Red Lobster, Olive Garden) all got zeros. Apple, eBay.com and Levi Strauss also were among 16 companies with scores under 10. Being an Apple fanatic, I was a bit disappointed with Apple’s score (2) - lift your game! even Google is going green with their ambitious plan to team up with Intel and cut the amount of energy computers consume by 2010. Regular ThinkingShift readers will know I’m somewhat obsessed with Google (over privacy concerns) but have to admit that at least they’re trying to do something about carbon emissions :)- Overall, electronics/computer companies scored well: IBM, Toshiba, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard and Sony, Dell, Hitachi, Siemens, Samsung and Nokia were all in double digits.

Companies in the food industry didn’t fare too well: Starbucks ranked highest in this group, with 46, followed by McDonald’s at 22. Yum Brands — which includes Kentucky Fried Chicken and Taco Bell — scored a 1.

The climate scorecard was developed with assistance from business and climate experts and you can go here to check out the scorecard. It’s a great way for consumers to decide which companies are committed to reducing their contribution to global warming and this results in empowered purchasing decisions. There’s even a downloadable pocket version [PDF] of the scorecard you can carry with you.