'Measures and Policies - Can We Predict The Impact?'
The panel discussion (see
panel members) will focus this year on the impact of measures of policies on global change - which are of course in most cases only a minor but strategic contribution to the combined effects generating global change itself. How much do we know about the global system, the factors influencing the global ecology and climate, and what do we know about human societies and their economies in order to achieve a given strategic goal? For example the goal of not letting the average yearly temperature rise more than 2 degrees Celsius in this century? The following themes will be central to discuss these issues:
Climate Change
There are discussions how to artificially increase carbon dioxide uptake, for example by fertilizing the 'unproductive' Pacific Ocean with iron compounds. Or to shield the earth from solar radiation in different ways. Are we ready for such measures to be taken? Or can we still avoid such drastic (and often immensely costly) steps?
Financial Markets and the Economy
We have seen recently drastic instabilities of the world's financial markets, with new huge burdens on public governmental budgets in an attempt to stabilize the situation. In addition there is much international discussion on imposing new rules and regulations to ensure both financial stability and free floating capital to support further economic growth. Indeed a problem is that financial instruments have branched into a multitude of different concepts which are hard to handle or predict in their global impact. Is there a sensible strategy to ensure and motivate both economic growth and urgently needed innovation, and financial stability?
Energy Crisis
All modern societies still rely immensely on fossil fuels. We can currently notice that the easy and efficient oil production of the past is slowly shifting to much more costly and potentially more risky methods. There is increasingly more deep water oil drilling, or the use of oil sands. Dreams of endless and safe energy production with the help of nuclear fusion seem very hard or never realizable, with a current cost explosion of the latest ITER project demonstrating the difficulties. Regenerative energy sources have been explored, like wind energy, but the amounts of energy that need to be produced replacing fossil fuels (and the controversial atomic energy) would need immense investments. A technological and financial barrier can also be observed in the transition and evolution of mobility concepts. It is currently completely open whether the car of the future is fuel driven, battery driven, or using a hybrid approach. Novel and less expensive batteries would urgently be needed, but a major technological breakthrough is currently not in sight.
Biodiversity and Agriculture
From an evolutionary aspect we are living in an exceptional age, as the impact of a single species was rarely so immense as that of Homo sapiens nowadays. Humans have effectively changed the surface structure of the earth which in turn affects many of the earth's material cycles and the climate. The loss of biodiversity has reached in some sense the quality of a mass extinction. The increase of inhabitants living on the planet has made sustainability of food production a major issue. There was a remarkable relatively silent green revolution at the end of last century that could keep up with this increase of the world's human population. But as recent prize increases for wheat show, food overproduction can easily swing to food shortage for different reasons. Besides agriculture many people live from fishing. Unfortunately even the vast oceans do not guarantee an unlimited food source. Many fish species relevant for human consumption are at high risk of rapid decline due to overfishing.
©2010 Markus Kirkilionis