On the heels of a new UN report about damaging and accelerating impacts of climate change, top US business executives will be meeting with Congressional leaders next week to discuss climate-related impacts they are already seeing on their companies, actions they are taking to reduce their companies’ carbon footprints, and the urgency for stronger policy action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, support renewable energy, and boost energy efficiency.

Executives from industry giants Sprint, IKEA, JLL, Mars Inc. and VF Corp. will brief the Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change in the morning, and will be joined by additional business leaders for meetings with individual lawmakers in the afternoon. The companies are signers of Ceres’ Climate Declaration, a business call-to-action that urges federal and state policymakers to seize the economic opportunity of addressing climate change. More than 750 businesses have signed the Climate Declaration since its official launch a year ago on April 10, 2013. Newest signatories to the Declaration include Sprint, Sun Power and the San Diego Port Authority.

WHO:

• Colin Dyer, president and chief executive officer, JLL, a major commercial real estate services firm headquartered in Illinois
• Amy Hargroves, director, Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability at Sprint, headquartered in Kansas
• Rob Olson, chief financial officer/acting U.S. president, IKEA, headquartered in Pennsylvania
• Kevin Rabinovitch, director, Global Sustainability, Mars Inc., headquartered in Virginia, with significant operations in Texas
• Letitia Webster, director of Global Corporate Sustainability at VF Corp., a North Carolina based company that owns Lee, Wrangler, The North Face, Timberland and numerous other consumer brands

WHEN:   
Thursday, April 10, 2014
8:30 AM – 10:00 AM ET

WHERE:
Senate Visitor’s Center, Room 215 

ABOUT CERES: Ceres is a nonprofit organization mobilizing business and investor leadership on climate change, water scarcity and other sustainability challenges. Ceres directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a network of over 100 institutional investors with collective assets totaling more than $12 trillion. Ceres also directs Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP), an advocacy coalition of 30 businesses committed to working with policy makers to pass meaningful energy and climate legislation. For more information, visit http://www.ceres.org or follow on Twitter @CeresNews.

Ceres

Ceres

Ceres is a nonprofit advocacy organization working to accelerate the transition to a cleaner, more just, and sustainable world. United under a shared vision, our powerful networks of investors and companies are proving sustainability is the bottom line—changing markets and sectors from the inside out.

For more information, visit ceres.org and follow @CeresNews.

 

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