LE BOURGET, FRANCE—Last week, as delegates from more than 190 countries worked successfully toward an agreement that would limit global warming to 2˚ C, enterprising companies put forth their own solutions for reducing carbon emissions. In the vast Air and Space Museum here in Le Bourget, the site of the Conference of Parties organized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the companies were vying for the attention among the more than 45,000 people who travelled to Paris to attend the conference.
In the final days of the conference, world leaders reiterated their belief that technology will be the key to achieving necessary greenhouse gas emissions reductions and curb global warming. “Many of us here know that it won’t be governments that actually make the decision or find the product, the new technology, the saving grace of this challenge,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said shortly after the agreement was approved. “It will be the genius of the American spirit. It will be business unleashed because of 186 nations saying to global business in one loud voice: We need to move in this direction. And that will move investment. That will create new, greater research and development, and the next great product will come that will change our lives.”
