Alliance

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a national nonprofit organization established in 1967, has helped forge a cross-sector alliance between corporate and environmental leaders, with the intent to achieve economically viable reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

The group, the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), is thus far composed of 10 dominant corporations and 6 leading environmental groups, including such big names as Alcoa, General Electric, and DuPont, as well as EDF and the National Resources Defense Council.

The alliance's proposal, "A Call For Action" [pdf], requests immediate federal government limits on greenhouse gas emissions and the creation of market-based incentives to achieve those limits. There is a clear need for such cap-and-trade requirements to be mandatory, so that early adopters will be rewarded by being able to stay competitive in relevant markets.

USCAP motivates its incentives with the NAS survey result:

In June 2005, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences joined with the scientific academies of ten other countries in stating that "the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt actions."