Amidst all the financial news of the past week–most of it bad–comes this report from ClimateBiz.com about Morgan Stanley teaming up with Det Norske Veritas (DNV) to help clients become carbon neutral.

The Morgan Stanley Carbon Bank will offer integrated carbon verification and offsetting services, helping clients take an emissions inventory and determine their carbon footprint using the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative.

According to Simon Greenshields, managing director and global head of power, power fuels and carbon trading at Morgan Stanley:

Many companies have begun seeking ways to reduce their direct greenhouse gas emissions. Our new service will help them more easily and reliably take the next step to achieve a zero carbon footprint. This is the first service we have seen giving clients a single source for everything from certifying emissions to buying and canceling carbon credits, all in accordance with the highest international standards.

David Yarnold, Environmental Defense's executive vice president, offered his perspective on the need to use market-based solutions to battle climate change:

Although the regulated carbon market is based on environmentally effective and standardized procedures, it has been difficult for companies to find a high-quality, standards-based service to offset their emissions in the voluntary market. By offering this new service to companies in the voluntary carbon market, Morgan Stanley is not only helping to meet a growing need for many companies, it also is supporting a significant, credible and responsible expansion of the carbon market itself.

In his blog, Two Steps Forward, Joel Makower offers a lengthy post about The Corporate Climate Juggernaut, which seems poised to take advantage of the new carbon banking services offered by Morgan Stanley.

This week brings a new "global framework" from the Global Roundtable on Climate Change, signed by a host of big companies, calling on governments to set scientifically informed targets for greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide emissions and "to place a price on carbon emissions and to set forth policies aimed at addressing energy efficiency and de-carbonization in all sectors."

According to the statement — endorsed by Allianz, Bayer, Citigroup, DuPont, General Electric, Volvo, and a range of others — "Failing to act now would lead to far higher economic and environmental costs and greater risk of irreversible impacts."

Is there anybody outside the Bush Administration — and maybe Exxon — who doesn't understand that climate change represents one of the biggest risks ever to face the private sector? And that there are great financial benefits to reap from addressing it head-on with new, clean technologies?

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