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Panel Urges Global Shift on Sources of Energy
Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times
Energy experts convened by the world’s scientific academies yesterday urged nations to shift swiftly away from coal and other fuels that are the main source of climate-warming greenhouse gases and to provide new energy options for the two billion people who still mostly cook in the dark on wood or dung fires.
In a report commissioned by the governments of China and Brazil, the 15 experts called for, at a minimum, a doubling of both public and private energy research budgets and a firm – and rising – price on emissions of greenhouse gases to encourage a shift in investments toward cleaner or more efficient technologies.
The report, “Lighting the Way – Toward a Sustainable Energy Future,” was posted online at www.interacademycouncil.net by the InterAcademy Council, a group representing the world’s 150 scientific and engineering academies.
(23 October 2007)
The Energy Solution: Do Something
Bryan Walsh, TIME Magazine
Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club, likes to say that the environmental challenge can be boiled down to a pretty simple question. How are we going to fit a billion new rising consumers – mostly from India and China – into a biosphere that is increasingly full? If the world can make room for the newcomers, then we should be able to make it through the 21st century. If not, it won’t matter what we do in the U.S. – the sheer scale of the rising demand for energy and raw materials in the developing will render our actions moot.
Pope’s question was at the forefront of a report released today by the InterAcademy Council, a Netherlands-based network of national science academies from around the world. Titled “Lighting the Way: Towards a Sustainable Energy Future,” the assessment was the work of 15 scientists from 13 nations – and here’s the important part – it was commissioned by the governments of China and Brazil, two future energy superpowers. The recommendations made in the report aren’t exactly earth-shattering – you may have heard that we should conserve more – but what matters is the focus on the developing world, as both a market for and a center of energy innovation. “The new frontiers of energy are much more likely to be in China and India and comparable places than in the [developed world],” said Ged Davis, one of the report’s panelists and a British energy economist. “This is where the investments for energy are most needed, and this is where I’m convinced they’ll be most applied.”
(22 October 2007)
Full report from InterAcademy at http://www.interacademycouncil.net/?id=9481 .
Nobel conference lectures on energy now online (webcasts)
Gustavus Adolphus College
The 43rd annual Nobel Conference, “Heating Up: The Energy Debate,” which drew more than 6,000 people to Gustavus Adolphus College Oct. 2-3, is now available online in audio and video format. The conference’s seven lectures, which discussed an array of issues including global warming, climate change, peak oil, biofuels, and greenhouse gas emissions can be viewed by going online to gustavus.edu/events/nobelconference/2007/
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… The 2007 Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College [considered] the problems of global warming and declining oil reserves, drawing upon world-renowned energy and resource experts to put our current energy dilemma into perspective and examine new and advancing technologies. To date, the following individuals have accepted the Nobel Conference Committee’s invitation to speak at the conference [and have webcasts of their talks online]:
- Steven Chu
- Kenneth S. Deffeyes
- James E. Hansen
- Paul L. Joskow
- Lee Rybeck Lund
- Joan M. Ogden
- Will Steger
(19 October 2007)
