The ambassador of Norway, Sverre Stub, was among the speakers in an environmental meeting organised by Biopolitics International Organisation in Athens on 20 December 2008. Stub highlighted the increasing challenges of climate change. He stated that it is too late to prevent climate change altogether. It is already here, so far mostly felt in parts of Africa and in the Arctic. But we can still act to limit the rise in temperature. And there are encouraging signs that the world does finally realise the seriousness of climate change, Mr. Stub said.
The ambassador also referred to the financial crisis and expressed the hope that focus would be on the opportunities that the crisis provides for the development of a greener society. Economic policies must be based on long-term sustainable development, he said.
The European Union leads the way towards binding targets for reductions in emission of green house gases. Member states will have to switch more to renewable eneregy sources. Norway is not a member of the EU, but cooperates closely with the EU to meet these challenges. We set goals for ourselves that are at least as ambitious as those agreed by the 27 member states, the ambassador said.
The challenges are global and therefore also require a global framework to deal with global climate change. The United Nations now has one of its most urgent and important tasks ever. UN members will meet in Copenhagen in 2009 to agree on a more ambitious plan to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. With new attitudes and policies in the US under president Obama, and partly also in China and India, there is now real hope for progress.
But maybe most important is what we do at national level and individual level. That means governments, business, civil society and in the end you and I. All tax-payers’ money that now go to handle the financial crisis should be spent to help build a more “green society” with a “green economy”. Governments must encourage development of more “green technology”.
One can not simply “leave to others” to do the job - then the job will not be done well enough, ambassador Stub concluded.