By Bob Tita
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
CHICAGO -(Dow Jones)- Deere & Co. (DE) has quietly dropped out of a coalition of large companies that has supported a cap-and-trade program for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Deere, the world’s largest manufacturer of farm machinery, opted to leave the U.S. Climate Action Partnership in May because the group’s legislative strategy “no longer served as a foundation for moving forward” with climate change regulation, Ken Golden, a spokesman for the company said Tuesday.
“We came to the conclusion that Deere had other opportunities to be involved in climate change initiatives,” Golden said.
The Moline, Ill., company joins a handful of other companies that have left the partnership in recent months, as political support erodes for comprehensive energy legislation that includes a cap-and-trade program and stricter mandates for energy conservation. Other members to leave the group include construction machinery company Caterpillar Inc. (CAT), and energy companies BP PLC (BP.LN, BP) and ConocoPhillips Co. (COP)
A spokesman for the partnership, Tad Segal, offered no reaction to Deere’s reasons for leaving the group, but credited the company with “playing a valuable and significant role” in developing the group’s policy initiatives.
“As with every coalition, there have been membership changes, including departures and new memberships,” said Segal.
About two dozen companies remain in the group, including corporate heavyweights General Electric Co. (GE), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Siemens AG (SIE), and Alcoa Inc. (AA) The group also has picked up four new members in the past year, including Honeywell International Inc. (HON) and Weyerhaeuser Co. (WY)
full story here:
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Perhaps they came to realize that farm equipment isn’t exactly going to attract the huge government subsidies that GE et. al. could, because a solar-powered combine would actually have to work around the clock.
You can’t argue the fact that they are the original Green company. They gotta know what they are doing….
No one runs faster from a lie than a Deere … Think they will use it?
cap’n’tax, carbon offsets, carbon tax – they are all scams.
25 Aug: Guardian: Reese Erlich : Poorer nations hit with ‘exorbitant’ consultancy fees for carbon offset projects
Nepalese government has paid a Norwegian consultancy €150,000 (£123,000) to get UN certification for biogas projects
Stein Jensen, a spokesman for the Oslo-based consulting company used by the Nepalese government, Det Norske Veritas (DNV), said that there is such competition to provide consultancy services that the fees reflect the market rate. He added: “for small projects the transaction costs are high.”…
The government paid DNV €150,000 (£123,000) for initial site visits and related services. It will have to pay €50,000 (£41,000) for subsequent annual visits. Nepal hopes to complete the UN-administered certification process by the end of this year and ultimately wants to build 200,000 biogas installations. It expects to earn $400,000 (£259,000) per year in carbon credits.
The biogas equipment currently costs $575 (£372) per household, a significant sum for farmers earning under $1,500 (£971) per year. The government offers partial subsidies, but farmers must spend some of their savings and take out microcredit loans to pay for the rest…
WWF will get credit for each tonne of carbon not produced as a result of using biogas. It sells the credits to the Zurich-based NGO Myclimate, which in turn provides offsets to individuals, airlines and other European companies seeking to reduce their carbon footprints.
Thomas Finsterwald, project manager with Myclimate, admitted that the high fees make “it difficult to do small projects.” He said inspection fees might eat up 40% of income for some other projects. “This is really a problem.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/25/carbon-offset-consultancy-fees
I would think that it is a fairly safe bet that every single one of these companies that is in this coalition is in it for some reason relating to the fact that they figure they can make some money out of some scam they can talk the Government into mandating for their benefit.
Big Companies do do things that are environmentally beneficial; but very seldom is it altruism that motivates them.
One example; I used to work for Monsanto chemical; Central Research Labs in St Louis Mo; well actually out in the County towards the Airport where MacDonald Aircraft was/is located.
Over in East St Louis, Monsanto had smoke stack factories that put out every colored smoke known to man from some plant or other. In a weak moment of public sentimentality, they decided that they should clean up their act; for the good of their image.
So their plant engineers set about developing designs for special smoke stack cleaning systems to get rid of all that Krap. And since they knew exactly what species of Krap was in all those rainbow smokes; they could design very effective and cost efficient scrubbers; so they cleaned up the ESL sky line; and started feeling pleased with themselves.
Then out of the blue, someone somewhere else asked them how they got rid of that weird purple smoke; or whatever. They suddenly discovered that they had unearthed a whole new business for Monsanto, manufacturing off the shelf smokestack scrubbers for whatever ails you; which they started to (and presumably still do) sell all over the world.
What they started as simply good pr; turned out to be a profitable busness opportunity for them; and an environmental benefit for everyone else.
But it’s a rare business that does things for the pr effect; there’s a buck in it somewhere you can be sure.
I’m a great fan of capitalism. I don’t like businesses mucking with the legislation to line their nest with golden feathers; at the expense of the taxpayers.
“Capitol Hill is just a black hole for dollars and we are real tired of throwing ours in”
I don’t understand, Pat, it’s Nepal and its poor farmers who are paying for the biogas infrastructure while it’s the WWF that gets the credits? Something very wrong with that picture.
Deere sells equipment for crop production. When it looked like there would be a new crop (cellulosic ethanol, etc. ) they wanted to be the supplier of the equipment that would work it. Deere now sees no future in such biofuel crops as a driver for specialized equipment to harvest, transport, etc., and therefore nothing to be gained for the business. Deere is not the biggest manufacturer of farm equipment because they are stupid. They have a Crystal Ball group as do most other successful large corporations, and they plan ahead 20+ years.
Pay attention folks.
weather IS climate:
25 Aug: New Scientist: Anil Ananthaswamy: Time to blame climate change for extreme weather?
IT IS time to start asking the hard questions. Countless people in flood-stricken Pakistan have lost families and livelihoods. Who can they hold responsible and turn to for reparations?
Less than a decade ago, these questions would have been dismissed outright. “Many scientists at the time said that you can never blame an individual weather event on climate change,” says Myles Allen of the University of Oxford. But a small meeting of scientists in Colorado last week – organised by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre, among others – suggests the tide is turning…
“With the tools we have today we can do much better,” says Allen. His team is now using borrowed computing space from thousands of PC owners to run simulations for recent devastating weather events, though their results are not yet in.
Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, thinks similar analyses should be done within weeks of an event…
Trenberth agrees. “It comes to the question: given that there is a global warming component to an event, is there any way in which you can sue somebody for it? Who do you sue?” He points out, though, that it will always be difficult to rule out natural variation in climate. “It’s going to be messy.”…
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727754.200-time-to-blame-climate-change-for-extreme-weather.html
They better get it while they can, because the gravy train has left the station!
Obvious choice:No CO2, no plants:: no plants, no John Deere…
Remaining Johnson&Johson also meaningful…..Bedwetters et Diapers go along 🙂
TX Pat.
Bravo to Deere.
The bad news is that, with the interventionist policies of the gov’t, such coalitions have to exist as a matter of self-preservation. Even worse for small businesses that can’t afford a seat at the table is that the large corporations that can afford to be heard manage to influence legislation so that it is least harmful to them and the small businesses are left out in the cold to fend for themselves.
Sort of like the situation facing the colonists in the 18th century. The only organizations that could afford to speak to the gov’t (Parliament) were located in England. Rather one-sided. The middle class businesses in the colonies had no voice. Georgy #3 & taxation w/o representation? PR instruments to fan the feelings. It was a revolt of the middle class wanting out of the raw deal they were getting. In the winter of 1776/77 they kept on while many of the wealthy wanted to broker a peace. Fortunately, the middle class prevailed and independence was won. And for a century or so it worked and the gov’t knew its place.
Now, however, forgetting the painful lessons of the 18th century, we’ve recreated our own version of gov’t favors via Congress and all the offices they created for the Executive Branch. How the free have fallen.
I will consider that what’s been said, is less important that what’s not been so.
Remember here: Virtually every corporation, whether it be national or multinational, has members sitting on its board of directors whom also sit on the boards of directors in yet other corporations.
It’s all something of a rather incestuous nature, once you come to understand it all.
When those people start bailing, you’ve got to know that they’ve seen the ‘hand writing on the wall.’
Looks like the rats are leaving the sinking ship.
The trouble with the cap n trade Green Legislation is that everyone expects to make gazillions of dollars off the new trading scheme by charging astronomical fees and lisences plus labyrinth trading schemes. Only problem is, the West is low on cash these days, seeing that the Bailees have been ladled all there is, and there ain’t no more. The East doesn’t want to play the game, unless the West ladles all the benefits out to them.
A sea of sticky fingers grasping for GreenBacks that aren’t there.
The rats are indeed jumping ship. That’s very good. But let us never forget that they are indeed rats.
Deere has outsourced practically all of their manufacturing to China, a nation that courageously refuses to limit CO2 emissions. Yet they had supported cap-and-trade for Americans. That tells me that they have absolutely no faith in America, American employees, or the very idea of America. They wanted it both ways, and they almost had it.
I stopped buying GE appliances many years ago, and I decided NOT to buy a Deere tractor last summer, when I was in the market for a medium-sized tractor, for these reasons. I now buy AMERICAN as much as possible. And real American companies believe in America, don’t manufacture in China, don’t get in bed with politicians, and don’t behave like rats.
Companies will spread good will and a few dollars easily
Deer may find the stink is to much tand the risk of a dirty reputation by association is getting expensive.
Our administration is in bad shape. The notion of green jobs is bogus. They did however re classify ag food production jobs as green ones so they can brag about green job creation. We have had farmers growing food before america was discovered.
From the article:
“We came to the conclusion that Deere had other opportunities to be involved in climate change initiatives,” Golden said.
The only ones who still believe the climate doesn’t change are those credulous folks who believe in Michael Mann’s debunked hockey stick [MBH98/MBH99], in which Mann et al. argues that there was neither a Medieval Warm Period, nor a Little Ice age — nothing but a benevolent, unchanging climate for the past thousand years, with CO2 levels between 280 – 285 ppmv everywhere, from the equator to the poles.
Really, that is Mann’s preposterous conclusion. No wonder he still refuses to disclose his methodology, twelve years after arguing that the climate never changed until the industrial revolution came along.
The John Deere folks should get up to speed regarding the term “climate change.” WUWT readers have known all along that the climate is constantly changing. Only Mann’s acolytes believe the climate is unchanging.
From the U.S. Climate Action Partnership website:
” Washington, D.C. (June 11, 2010) – The following is a statement from the U.S. Climate Action
Partnership (USCAP) regarding the June 10 vote on the Murkowski Resolution that would have
prohibited EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.
The vote on the resolution offered by Sen. Lisa Murkowski reinforces the need for a legislative
approach to solving our energy and climate challenges. Many who voted for the Murkowski
resolution have also supported federal energy and climate legislation that creates jobs while
reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.
This includes Sen. Murkowski herself, who said upon introducing her resolution: “I would also
remind my critics that I co-sponsored a cap-and-trade bill in the last Congress, and last year worked
with the members of the Senate Energy Committee to craft a bipartisan clean energy bill.”
=========
From:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20014726-503544.html
“Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who trails Tea Party-backed candidate Joe Miller by a few votes in the Alaska GOP primary with thousands of absentee ballots yet to be counted, told reporters this afternoon that “it ain’t over yet.”
“There is much, much yet to be counted,” she said.”
——————-
Looks like the Senator tried to cover all the bases, and lost half the voters.
Carbon runs John Deere, but so does profits….
“BP PLC (BP.LN, BP) and ConocoPhillips Co. (COP)”…….everyone here should note the big oil conspiracy. As far as I know, Dutch Shell is still part of the group. Fact is, big oil was the father of the cap and trade scheme. Caterpillar, too. The lie, repeated, over and over again was simply a diversion. Anyone that cared to know did know. Why this was never front page news is disquieting. The reasons as to why big energy and big oil was behind the cap and trade should be obvious. Why it was never properly reported, too, should be obvious, if one thinks for just a moment.
Did my comment go down the memory hole?
[Reply: Yes. But it’s rescued & posted now. I have no idea why your posts end up in the spam folder. Maybe you weren’t a good boy in a previous life. ~dbs, mod.]
I can only hope my
screamingcounseling at farmers that brought new green machines nearby made a difference.