News
Publish date: April 29, 2010
Written by: Annicken Vargel
Translated by: Charles Digges
News
Hauge took the floor with an unalterable fact: Two thirds of the world’s population needs more energy.
“And we are absolutely going to have to explore negative value chains, for we are very, very late in the fight against global warming, Hauge said.
Hauge sat in the panel along with NASA scientist James Hansen, Author Jostein Gaarder, Professor Bjorn Lomborg, Author and New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin, Cynthia Rosenzweig of New York City Panel on Climate Change and Bill McKibben, who is the author of several books on climate change.
Discussion grew particularly heated between Hauge and Lomborg, who were meeting each other in a debate format for the first time.
Hauge argued, among other things, that solutions to the climate crisis are already available and only need to be adopted, while Lomborg countered that investment must first be put toward research. In addition, Lomborg said that people need a more neutral, and according to him, more truthful climate information as opposed to what he called apocalyptic scare tactics.
When McKibben took the floor, he said, that, “People have not been skeptical about global warming because of the apocalyptic representations, but because the coal industry uses billions of dollars to do just that to people.”
Jostein Gaarder took the evening’s moral philosophical approach, and said that people must not only look after their fellows with whom they share the planet, but also look after those to come in future generations.
“You should do the next generation of what you wish they would do for you,” Gaarder said. “Our own time is the most important thing for us, but we cannot live as though it is also important for those who come after us,” he said.
The world-renowned magazine, the New York Review of Books and the organisation Freedom of Expression co-organized the debate, which was one of five major meetings at the festival.
The festival was started by former PEN President Salman Rushdie, and has since 2005 established itself as one of the leading international literature festivals, with a large number of Nobel Prize laureates and other famous writers on the roster.
A recording from the debate will be posted onPen Club’s website on Friday.
An accident aboard numerous Volgoneft oil tankers in the Kerch in mid December clearly show what can happen to aged ships when they are operated in bad weather—and when economic and military objectives are prioritized over the lives of crews and environmental safety.
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution and climate change.
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
A visit last week by Vladimir Putin and a Kremlin entourage to Astana, Kazakhstan sought in part to put Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, on good footing with local officials.