5th Global Corporate Climate Change Report issued by CDP

The Carbon Disclosure Project released its fifth Global Corporate Climate Change Report, tracking carbon disclosure and attitudes toward climate change in the world’s largest companies. The CDP this year also launched the Climate Disclosure Leadership Index, an honor roll for companies who are best addressing climate change issues. The launch coincided with the U.N. summit on how to mitigate climate change in which over 80 world leaders taking part. These high profile meetings on climate change illustrate the growing pressure on governments, companies and individuals to act now on carbon emission and climate change issues.  The CDP is underpinned by over 315 global institutional investors with more than $41 trillion in assets under management, a collaboration includes some of the largest US and foreign institutional investors, including CalPERS, Merrill Lynch, and Goldman Sachs. The CDP has collected 90 new signatories and almost $10 trillion in assets since last year’s report.  Although the CDP5 finds that the gap between awareness and action is shrinking, there is still a huge disconnect between awareness and action on the investor side. The CDP calls on governments to help push investors into using carbon disclosure information in their investment making decisions.