NEW YORK: On the sidelines of the UN climate conference in New York this week, hundreds of corporate investors and executives gathered to hear researchers pitch the Carbon Disclosure Project and to report its new results. The project is a brilliant plan to prod large companies to cut emissions, but it may take more than a good sell to get businesses to seriously buy in.

The mood at the event, held at Merrill Lynch headquarters was upbeat, inspiring, luxurious even, with fresh croissants and comfy sofas. Former President Bill Clinton was the keynote speaker, exhorting the corporate audience to see the profit potential in going green.

“I think this will be an economic boom,” he said. “I hope Ive persuaded you that its good economics as well as good for the future of our children.” Sustainability, Clinton said, could be “economic salvation.”

From an environmental perspective, Clintons inspirational speaking was needed, since the results of the latest Carbon Disclosure Project were, in fact, exceedingly mixed.

But first, a quick introduction to this clever five-year-old project: Each year a group of environmentally minded institutional investors has sent a voluntary “Carbon Disclosure” survey to hundreds of the worlds largest companies, asking for information about how much CO2 they put into the atmosphere, and if they have a plan to reduce it.

The group has grown dramatically since its inception in 2002, so that now it is harder to ignore. This year, the query was sponsored by 315 financial corporations that manage $41 billion, including heavyweights like Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and American International Group.

The idea is that if investors ask for information about companies carbon footprints, it would be a powerful incentive for corporations to reduce pollution and their contributions to global warming.

For starters, companies would have to calculate their CO2 emissions, a number they might prefer to ignore. Investors would be better able to select green investments, and consumers would be better able to identify brands from companies trying to clean up their acts.

As even its organizers readily admit, the Carbon Disclosure Project is gaining momentum in collecting information about corporate actions, but it has a long way to go in prompting any reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

“Remember that disclosure is a means, not an end. The goal is to change behavior,” said Matthew Kiernan, the chief executive of Innovest, a global consulting firm and one of the founders of the project.

So, first the good news from this years result: 77 percent of the 500 largest listed companies globally answered the questionnaire, and 76 percent of those companies reported implementing a greenhouse gas reduction plan, compared to only 46 percent of those answering last year.

Notably, though, only 56 percent of leading U.S. companies answered, and only 29 percent of those that responded had greenhouse gas reduction programs with specific deadlines and targets. Worse still, only 9 percent said they took into account the cost of carbon when making business decisions.

Partly explaining the gap is that many companies in Europe now have to keep track of their emission to comply with EU rules; American companies do not.

According to the results released this week, a number of big companies have begun to think about climate change, including DuPont, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Wal-Mart.

But 1,100 of the 2,400 companies contacted did not even respond. “They seem to feel so relaxed about this that they dont answer questions from 315 major shareholders,” said Paul Dickinson, the coordinator of the Carbon Disclosure Project. “We have a long way to go with exiting activities.”

Now for the list of shame. Some of the companies that declined to respond were Harley-Davidson, Sears and Western Union.

Then there were the companies that didnt respond at all, many in Russia and China, like Gazprom and China Petroleum.

And so, the impressive presentation at Merrill Lynch was a performance to convince them.

The emphasis was on the benefits of thinking early about climate change, avoiding risks, and how going green can provide money and jobs. (”Green is green, as in dollars,” one of the organizers said.)

Clinton, a master of persuasion, said, “There has to be a good new source of jobs every five to eight years to avoid a stagnant economy, and climate change is it.”

He added that, with a bit of investment, climate change was a “phenomenal opportunity to develop poor countries.” Ethiopia was considering investing in growing cane for biofuels, he noted, a path that has already brought great profits to Brazil.

NEW YORK: So omnipotent is the Apple digital music machine that just the possibility of one of its main suppliers holding back some of its music from Apples iTunes music store is enough to make headlines and send shock waves.

That is what happened last week when the Universal Music Group let Apple know that it would no longer grant the company guaranteed access to its coming releases. Officially, Universal had no comment, but an executive briefed on the negotiations said the music company was merely interested in keeping its options open as it does with most other retailers in the brick-and-mortar world.

The upshot is that Universal will provide music to iTunes on an “at will” basis. Thus, if someone offers Universal a boatload of cash for the right to sell the latest Bon Jovi or Rihanna singles exclusively on a rival download service, Universal is saying that it is open for business.

This bit of news could shake up the digital music business because Universal, owned by Vivendi of France, is the worlds largest music conglomerate, representing one of every three albums sold in the United States. And it underscores the longstanding and increasing tension between Apple and the entertainment industry, not to mention the scores of rivals who spend days and nights plotting for ways to chip away at the primacy of the Apple iPod.

Theoretically, Apple may be concerned because of Universals market clout; an Apple spokesman did not return calls seeking comment. On the other hand, Universal is not about to turn its back on Apple, given that 15 percent of its global sales come from digital downloads.

“It looks like a little bit of saber-rattling,” said Susan Kevorkian, an analyst who covers the consumer audio business for International Data Corp. “Were not seeing ultimatums being dished out here. Its a very symbiotic relationship.”

But there is little question who is benefiting the most from the symbiosis so far. Apple holds more than 70 percent of the market for portable music players and more than 80 percent of the online music sales business - a fairly unassailable lead, as contenders like Samsung, Sony and Microsoft have found. You can almost imagine Jobs shrugging at Universals new terms: “Go right ahead.”

But as more music sales move online, the volume is turning up not just among hardware players but also among digital music service rivals that include Amazon, Yahoo Music, Napster and Rhapsody. According to figures released last week by Nielsen SoundScan, physical album sales decreased by 15 percent from Jan. 1 to July 1 this year, while sales of digital tracks, though still a much smaller business, rose 49 percent.

In this environment, the music industry has a tempestuous relationship with Jobs, more respect-resent than love-hate.

Label chiefs respect that he has revolutionized the online and portable music businesses at a time when so many others have flopped, and file-sharers and sites like Russias AllofMP3.com - a site that labels have accused of piracy - have wreaked havoc on the industrys business models. (AllofMP3 was conveniently shuttered last week as President Vladimir Putin of Russia prepared to visit President George W. Bush.)

But the chiefs resent Jobss rigidity in areas like pricing - 99 cents a track, take it or leave it - and the iTunes proprietary digital-rights management software, which has made songs sold there impossible to play on rival devices.

Most of all, they envy that Jobs is in a much higher-margin business of selling gadgets. Kevorkian of IDC said the label chiefs might still hold out hope that Apple will share someday the spoils of each iPod sold - along the lines of how Microsoft agreed to pay $1 for each of its Zune players, which were introduced last year. But only a million Zunes have been sold, while iPod sales have topped 100 million.

Jobs ruffled some industry feathers in February by suggesting in an open letter that music labels ought to drop their requirement for digital-rights management protection because only a small percentage of the music on his customers iPods was bought through the music store - the rest was from uploads of peoples own collections.

So far, only one of the four big music companies, EMI, has sided with Jobs and lifted the digital-rights management protection on its online catalog, selling those singles for $1.29 each.

Although his anti-protection measure stance is somewhat self-serving - European antitrust regulators had been circling the closed iTunes system - there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that Jobs may be on to something. And, if so, the other big label groups - Universal, Warner Music and Sony BMG - could follow suit and offer protection-free tunes, although perhaps not with their entire catalogs, as EMI has done.

WITH Melbourne grappling with the issue of bigger ships and channel deepening, a visiting Canadian expert had a sobering message: the growing size of container ships was creating infrastructure problems for ports worldwide.

David Gillen, professor of transportation policy at the University of British Columbia, told a major freight conference in Melbourne there was pressure on all infrastructure, and cited the example of Los Angeles airport, which spent $1 billion on an upgrade so that it could handle the new Airbus 380 aircraft.

Melbourne is debating whether to go ahead with channel deepening to cater for the next generation of bigger container ships.

The maximum size of ships using Melbourne now is 4200 TEUs. If the channel deepening project proceeds, Melbourne would be able to handle 7000 TEU ships. Professor Gillen said Danish group Maersk had the world’s biggest container ship one with a capacity to carry 12,500 TEUs (20-foot-equivalent units or containers).

He said the Port of Vancouver, having a deep natural harbour, did not have the same channel deepening issues as Melbourne. Vancouver is Canada’s biggest container port, as Melbourne is Australia’s biggest, and each handles about 2.2 million TEUs a year.

Professor Gillen said the largest ship calling at Vancouver had a capacity of about 7500 TEUs. However, there were still environmental issues.

The environmental hearings for a proposal to add a berth at Delta Port, near the US border, had taken nine years.

“The chief executive of the Port of Vancouver referred to environmental hearings as ‘the slow boat to maybe’,” he said.

Rail freight in Canada and the US had a critical difference from that in Australia rail operators owned and operated the rail track and rolling stock, having exclusive use of their track, Professor Gillen said. “There is no third party access,” he said.

Professor Gillen said Canada’s big rail companies, Canadian National and Canadian Pacific, had been privatised, and now shared each other’s tracks into Vancouver. The two tracks were effectively inbound and outbound rail lines.

“The rail lines west of Calgary are both running at 100 per cent, and are crucial for east-west trade,” he said.

Professor Gillen said Canada and the US emphasised using the most efficient transport system. “In the US, they will run an uneconomic railway to drive economic growth,” he said, which led to a lot of political pork-barrelling.

Professor Gillen said the provinces in Canada had more power than the states in Australia, making it harder for the Canadian Government to direct policy.

The debate in Australia emphasised the need for more national co-ordination. “We have to think more of North America, and not Canada and the US,” he said, because the North American Free Trade Agreement was creating more north-south trade ties, deepening the need for co-operation.

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