Utility CEO Says All Nations Need to Combat Global Warming

Michael Morris, chairman of Business Roundtable’s Energy Taskforce and chairman and CEO of American Electric Power, told CNBC’s “Street Signs” that a world-wide plan is needed to attack global warming.

“If you believe the problem is global warming and you don’t find a global solution, then you’ve saddled U.S. manufacturing with costs that have no benefit to the environment,” Morris said Wednesday. “So, we’ve got to come up with a way to include China, India and some of the other great manufacturing nations of the world.”

The Business Roundtable’s plan calls for:

-- Increased use of bio-fuels.
-- More fuel-efficient vehicles.
-- Expanded areas for exploration for oil and gas.
-- Expanded use of nuclear power.
-- Increased use of coal-to-liquid fuels.

The task force called for drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, the Gulf of Mexico and in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“We’re not talking about drilling facilities here visible half a mile off-shore,” Morris said. “We’re talking about considerably deeper in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Coast.”