News
Publish date: October 19, 2007
Written by: Anne Karin Sæther
News
Friday, TIME magazine published a special issue where persons around the world are honoured for their important environmental work. TIME calls them Heroes of the Environment. The recent Nobel prize winner Al Gore is on the list along with Bellona’s President Frederic Hauge.
— This is an important recognition for the entire Bellona organisation. We’ll have more challenges in front of us now, but also more opportunities.
— I am very privileged to work with the most important issue in the world. I appreciate my colleagues and everyone who has supported Bellona during Bellona’s 21 year history.
In the company of celebrities
Each year, TIME makes a list of the year’s heroes in various areas. Due to the fact that there has been a lot of attention paid to environmental issues and specifically to global warming in 2007, TIME decided to make a list of people who have worked towards improving the environment.
As TIME describes, they range from activists to tycoons, politicians to inventors; these remarkable people offer hope for the future.
In addition to Al Gore, Frederic Hauge is in the company of James Hansen, Tim Flannery, Wangari Maathai, David Attenborough, James Lovelock and several others. All together, TIME, selected a bit more than 40 names.
Solution-oriented
TIME writes that the work of Bellona has helped to raise environmental awareness and that Bellona is a solution-oriented organisation.
“Hauge’s powerfully pragmatic approach is to collaborate with heavy industry, not battle it.”
Bellona’s and Hauge’s work with carbon capture and storage is also mentioned specifically:
“This emphasis on finding solutions, rather than clinging to ideology, also informs his stance on carbon capture and storage, whereby CO2 from energy production is deposited deep underground. Some green groups scoff at this practice, but Hauge sees it as crucial to reducing emissions.”
Work in Russia
TIME also mentions the Nikitin case and Bellona’s work in Russia with nuclear safety and human rights issues.
Alexander Nikitin is a former submarine officer who works in Bellona and who co-authored a report on radiation safety issues in the Russian Northern Fleet. He was arrested and charged with high treason in 1996. Although he was released after 10 months in prison, it took five years to clear him of all accusations.
Hinders apathy
The article ends with the following:
“Whether cleaning up Norway or dressing down Moscow, “the only thing I’m more afraid of than environmental threats is apathy”, says Hauge, while drifting in the Oslo Fjord aboard Bellona’s patrol boat. With Hauge at the helm, there’s little danger of that.”
On October 25th, Hauge is invited by TIME to the “Heroes Awards Ceremony” in London where all the environmental heroes will be honoured.
Recent attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant "mark the beginning of a new and gravely dangerous front of the war," the UN atomic agency's director general said last week.
After years of inaction, Germany is working on its Carbon Management Strategy to resolve how CCS can play a role in climate action in industry. At the end of February, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action published first key points and a proposal to amend the law Kohlenstoffdioxid Speicherungsgesetz (KSpG). Bellona Deutschland, who was actively involved in the previous stakeholder dialogue submitted a statement in the association hearing.
In the midst of a global discussion on whether natural gas should be used as a transitional fuel and whether emissions from its extraction, production, transport and use are significantly less than those from other fossil fuels, Russia has developed ambitious plans to increase its own production of liquified natural gas (LNG) in the Arctic – a region with 75% of proven gas reserves in Russia – to raise its share in the international gas trade.
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our main focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution risks and climate change.