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Natural Gas and Energy Reform

2008-11-01T09:30:17Z

Complete video at: fora.tv

StatoilHydro President and CEO Helge Lund argues that increased use of natural gas should be part of any plan to combat global warming by reducing CO2 emissions. This excerpt was recorded in collaboration with the 19th World Petroleum Congress, in Madrid, Spain, on July 2, 2008.

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Helge Lund, President and CEO of StatoilHydro, and Francis Saville, Chairman of the Board at Nexen Inc., participate in a discussion of developing sustainable practices in their respective companies.

William Hogan, Professor of Global Energy Policy, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University moderates.

Helge Lund is the Chief Executive Officer for the StatoilHydro group. He started his career as a consultant for McKinsey & Company and as political adviser for the Conservative Party in Storting before starting work for Hafslund Nycomed in 1993.

In 1997-8 he was Vice President in Nycomed Pharma before starting work in Aker RGI in 1999 as Vice President before becoming CEO for Aker Kværner in 2002.

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Michael Bloomberg - Taking the Lead on Global Warming

2008-10-29T09:37:02Z

Complete video at: fora.tv

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg calls for U.S. leadership on fighting global climate change, and discusses four steps he believes America should make to address this issue.

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Georgetown University welcomed industry leaders, scholars, and policymakers for panel discussions examining environmental challenges facing the world.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg opened the Newsweek Environment Leadership Conference with a keynote address in Gaston Hall - Georgetown University

Michael Bloomberg is an American businessman, philanthropist, and the Mayor of New York City. He was elected mayor in 2001, then reelected to a second term in 2005.

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Not facing up to climate change crisis a crime?

2008-10-27T21:30:18Z

More at therealnews.com
Dr. James Hansen calls for moratorium on coal and phasing out by 2020

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Reasons for Optimism on Global Climate Change?

2008-10-27T03:29:42Z

Complete video at: fora.tv

Historian Niall Ferguson debates futurist author Peter Schwartz on reasons to feel optimistic about the issue of global climate change.

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Niall Ferguson and Peter Schwartz present Historian vs. Futurist on Human Progress as part of The Long Now Foundation's Seminars about Long-term Thinking.

Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University. He is a resident faculty member of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies.

He is also a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

He is most recently the author of the books The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006) and Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (2004).

Peter Schwartz is cofounder and chairman of Global Business Network (GBN), a unique membership organization and worldwide network of strategists, business executives, scientists, and artists based in Emeryville, California. Established in 01988, GBN specializes in corporate scenario planning and research on the future of the business environment. From 01982 to 01986, Peter headed scenario planning for the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies in London. His team conducted comprehensive analyses of the global business and political environment and worked with senior management to create successful strategies.

Schwartz is the co-author of both the 01999 books The Long Boom, and When Good Companies Do Bad Things: Responsibility and Risk in an Age of Globalization, and is the author of the 01991 book, The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World. He is a member of the Long Now Foundation's Board of Directors.

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Peter Barnes - Should the U.S. Pursue Carbon "Supply Caps?"

2008-10-21T15:30:56Z

Complete video at: fora.tv

Author and entrepreneur Peter Barnes argues in favor of federal carbon supply caps to help control U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

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How to Fight Climate Change Without Soaking the Middle Class featuring author and entrepreneur Peter Barnes.

Fighting climate change is going to cost all of us money. That's because the price of dumping carbon into the atmosphere must necessarily rise, says Barnes. A policy that soaks the middle class won't last longer than a few election cycles. He explores the possible solutions to this vexing political and environmental conundrum - The Commonwealth Club of California

Peter Barnes is the co-founder and former president of Working Assets Long Distance. In 1995, he was named Socially Responsible Entrepreneur of the Year for Northern California. He is the author of Who Owns the Sky? and Pawns: The Plight of the Citizen-Soldier, and has written for Newsweek, The New Republic, the New York Times, and many other publications.

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CHP at Royal Brewery, Manchester

2008-11-21T02:30:16Z

Scottish & Newcastle's Royal Brewery in Manchester's about to reduce its carbon footprint by 25,000 tonnes a year - an 87% reduction in fossil-fuel missions - by installing two combined heat and power (CHP) plants. Find out more about CHP at
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/efficiencity

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Plane Stupid - the only sane option

2008-11-21T02:30:17Z

Paddy Gillett, cycle instructor, recent Sheffield University graduate and the only paid member of anti-flying pressure group Plane Stupid, explains why we all need to to stand up against airport expansion while there is still time.

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Heathrow: Brown must grasp the nettle

2008-11-21T02:30:17Z

Committed environmental campaigner Deepak Rughani, who gave up his job and house to campaign on climate change, talks about the urgency of the situation we face and why airport expansion is the last thing we should be doing.

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Stop Heathrow Expansion

2008-11-21T02:30:18Z

If we are serious about tackling climate change, we can't keep expanding our aviation capacity (aircraft are the fastest growing source of CO2 emissions world wide). The proposed third runway at Heathrow will increase traffic by 70 per cent. Watch this film to find out more.

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John Baez - Ecological Damage from Global Warming

2008-10-15T03:31:37Z

Complete video at: fora.tv

Celebrated mathematical physicist John Baez looks at global warming from an historical perspective, and details the widespread ecological damage that may result from rapid climate change.

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John Baez - "Zooming Out in Time"

The graphs we see these days, John Baez began, all look vertical--- carbon burning shooting up, CO2 in the air shooting up, global temperature shooting up, and population still shooting up. How can we understand what really going on? "It's like trying to understand geology while you're hanging by your fingernails on a cliff, scared to death. You think all geology is vertical."

So, zoom out for some perspective. An Earth temperature graph for the last 18,000 years shows that we've built a false sense of security from 10,000 years of unusually stable climate. Even so, a "little dent" in the graph of a drop of only 1 degree Celsius put Europe in a what's called "the little ice age" from 1555 to 1850. It ended just when industrial activity took off, which raises the question whether it was us that ended it.

Zoom out further still to the last 65 million years. The temperature graph show several major features. One is the rapid (every 100,000 years) wide swings of major ice ages. When they began, 1.35 million years ago, is when humans mastered fire. But almost all of the period was much warmer than now, with ferns growing in Antarctica. "Now it's cold. What's wrong with a little warming?" Baez asked.

The problem is that the current warming is happening too fast.
Studies of 1,500 species in Europe show that their ranges are moving north at 6 kilometers a decade, but the climate zones are moving north at 40 kilometers a decade, faster than they can keep up. The global temperature is now the hottest it's been in 120,000 years. One degree Celsius more and it will be the hottest since 1.35 million years ago, before the ice ages. Baez suggested that the Anthropocene may be characterized mainly by species such as cockroaches and
raccoons who accommodate well to humans. Coyotes are now turning up in Manhattan and Los Angeles. There are expectations that we could lose one-third of all species by mid-century, from climate change and other human causes.

Okay, to think about major extinctions, zoom out again. Over the last 550 million years there have been over a dozen mass extinctions, the worst being the Permian-Triassic extinction 250 million years ago, when over half of all life disappeared. The cause is still uncertain, but one candidate is the methane clathrates ("methane ice") on the ocean floor. Since methane is a far worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, massive "burps" of the gas could have led to sudden drastic global heating and thus the huge die-off of species. Naturally the methane clathrates are being studied as an industrial fuel for when the oil runs out in this century, "which could make our effect on global warming 10,000 times worse," Baez noted.

"Zooming out in time is how I calm myself down after reading the newspapers," Baez concluded. "A mass extinction is a sad thing, but life does bounce back, and it gets more interesting each time. We probably won't kill off all life on Earth. But even if we do, there are a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, and ten billion galaxies in the observable universe."

--Stewart Brand, The Long Now Foundation

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