WRI's Safe Climate, Sound Business collaboration is a project that we undertook with General Motors, British Petroleum-Amoco, and Monsanto to create a vision of the future that would include a safe climate and sound business environment. We picked those companies as partners because their industries had traditionally been opposed to action on climate change, but the companies themselves were willing to sit down and try to find a way forward with us.

I am excited to say that, even though we developed a vision of how to solve the climate problem over the next 100 years, we concluded that, because the issue is so serious, we need to act now. Together, we published a comprehensive action agenda. The action agenda is what gives us a great springboard for continued activities with the business community. At WRI, we combine an ambitious vision of the future with pragmatic steps for getting there. Provocative and realistic advocacy -- rooted in solid analysis -- is an effective way to engage policy makers and business leaders.

All of these companies that we've been engaged with are global companies. There are opportunities not just in the United States but in Europe and in many of the developing countries where they are expanding operations. After our release of Safe climate, sound business: An action agenda in October 1998, GM invited us to visit their facilities in São Paulo to talk with their engineers. We met with the president to engage in conversations about how GM Brazil might also reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There are a lot of opportunities for a variety of companies to pursue, not just in the U.S. and Europe, but in the developing economies, too.