Jeff Berardelli
Reporting

(CBS) NEW YORK A groundbreaking agreement on global climate change was announced Tuesday at Columbia University.

Comprised of more than 90 major international companies and organizations, the Global Roundtable on Climate Change released a joint statement endorsing a bold framework to deal with the world's changing climate. Now leaders of the effort are asking individuals to add their name to the list of supporters.

“This initiative points the way to an urgently needed global framework for action,” said Dr. Jeffrey D. Sachs, chair of the roundtable and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia.

The initiative is called “The Path to Climate Sustainability” and is the result of more than two years of work by the panel's participants. The initiative is a starting point for a new International agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in Japan as a means for signatory nations to set carbon dioxide emissions standards. But many of the emission targets will expire in 2012. Tuesday’s initiative is an attempt to set forth guidelines for future global policy to replace Kyoto.

"All parts of the world must be engaged” for meaningful change to occur, Sachs cautioned.

At the present time, the U.S. leads the world in carbon dioxide emissions. In the not-so-distant future, however, experts say China will far surpass America's emissions. Without a global agreement on emission standards and atmospheric concentration of CO2 that includes countries such China, India and the U.S., Sachs said the math just wouldn’t add up.

Here are a few proposals from the initiative:

• World governments should set scientifically informed targets on mid-century CO2 emission and concentration in order to prevent dangerous human interference with the Climate system.
• All countries should be party to this accord with commitment for actions.
• An economic market price must be set on carbon emissions to get the ball rolling on industry action.
• Government policy should address energy efficiency by implementing low-emitting energy and transportation technologies.

Panel members stressed that much of the technology to combat climate change is already available, and they said much more is coming. The goal now, they said, is to enact global policies that will pave the way for widespread use of the available technology and the development of new technology.