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Questions and Answers
The experts assembled at the Interdisciplinary Round Table on climate change and energy strategies are asked to answer a set of questions posed by the participants. Please add any questions that come to your mind.
1. What are the salient problems and issues related to climate change and energy?
a. What are the salient scientific facts on the anthropogenic contributions to climate change?
b. Is there a danger of ‘runaway’ positive feedback?
c. How serious and reversible are consequences of climate change?
d. What are the scientific facts of the present Energy crisis?
e. Why is ‘Peak Oil’ a genuine problem for humanity?
f. What is the impact of peak oil on our technology based civilization?
g. What the limitations of biofuels for large scale replacements for fossil fuels?
i. Will agro fuels destroy rainforests, biodiverstity, and food supply?
ii. What is the potential for biofuel production from algae?
iii. Can proliferation of nuclear weapons be avoided when peaceful use of nuclear energy spreads around the globe?
h. Does land use for housing, roads, and industrial style farming create climate change and energy problems?
i. What is the extent of military contributions to the climate change and energy problems?
j. Are systems of governance that are dominated by powerful interest groups capable of addressing the challenges of the 21st century?
2. What are the root causes of climate change and energy problems?
a. Do the root causes of climate change and energy problems include the ubiquitous ‘growth-is-good’ paradigm?
b. Is human world population causing climate change and peak oil by exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet Earth?
c. Should wealthy countries reduce resource consumption per capita maximally notwithstanding the current increased consumption in the developing countries?
d. How does global injustice in wealth and population distribution cause energy and climate problems?
e. Which vested interests are blocking timely change?
f. Does disregard of the Precautionary Principle cause climate and energy issues?
g. Can an economic paradigm based on the premise that externalities are non-existent, or at least insignificant, be appropriate for the resolution of a set of challenges that arise because of externalities?
h. Can institutions whose primary objective is the creation shareholder value be expected to act in the public good?
3. What are the feasible strategies for addressing climate change and energy shortages?
a. Is more than the ‘Factor Four’ achievable in the industrialized world?
i. Can low energy housing be economically feasible?
ii. What is the greatest realistic reduction in energy consumption for transportation in the short and in the long term?
iii. Is the factor ten of the European Industry Association realistic?
iv. What can city planners contribute?
v. Can renewable energy resources replace both, fossil and nuclear fuels?
vi. When will solar energy be economically competitive?
vii. What is the total potential of wind energy?
viii. What does the future hold for hydroelectric power?
ix. Are geothermal, tidal, and ocean wave power globally relevant?
b. How can we cope with the intermittency of renewable energy?
i. Will energy storage be technically feasible?
ii. Can large area electrical networks cope with intermittency?
c. What is the future of nuclear energy?
d. Do geo-engineering megaprojects offer feasible solutions to climate change?
e. Is a social system in which individual rights and freedoms trump the collective good compatible with sustainability?
4. Brainstorming short- and long-term strategies on implementing necessary change at the local and the global level.
a. What specific short-term measures should the federal, provincial, and municipal governments take?
b. What infrastructures do we see as being needed in the medium term (20 years) for which the work needs to be started as soon as possible?
c. What do we see as being needed in the long term, where the basic research has not yet been accomplished?
d. What is the most effective strategy in formal education?
i. Introducing sustainability education in all levels K to University?
ii. Suggesting sustainability curriculum to all ministers of education?
e. How can responsible media create the neccssary paradigm shift in the general public?
f. How can civil societies and religious groups reach a broad public with the right messages?
g. Is there a way to accelerate the greening of national and transnational corporations?
h. What political instruments can government apply in order to create the necessary change without delay? — Taxation, legislation, subsidies?
i. Does the use of economic instruments such as carbon taxes and emissions trading conflict with the goal of fairness or equity?
j. How can the Internet be used to disseminate the sustainability message?
Formal and spontaneous workshops in real time and on the Internet before, during, and after the Round Table are encouraged to ask additional questions, and generate answers, which will be used to disseminate the climate change and energy strategies developed by the Participants.
The climate change and energy strategies produced by the Round Table participants will be forwarded to governments at all levels, decision makers in business and industry, educators, the media, and the general public.