Earlier this year german chancellor Angela Merkel asked climate advisor Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber to organise a symposium with Nobel laureates from various disciplines to focus Climate Change and discuss solutions. The Interdisciplinary Nobel Laureates Symposium profited from independent and open minded characters and was held 8-10 October, 2007 in Potsdam.
Humanity is standing at a moment in history when a Great Transformation is needed to respond to the immense threat to the Earth. Anthropogenic global warming through greenhouse gas emissions is the foremost of an entire set of emerging development, security and environmental crises. Nobel Laureates from all disciplines, high level representatives from politics and world-renowned experts have called for this transformation to begin immediately.
An integrated response will have to accommodate human welfare within the capacity of the planet to sustain economical growth. While drastic reduction in GHG emissions by rich countries is essential, the right for development in the poorer countries, accommodating the vast majority of humanity, will have to be an integral part. This requires, above all, equal access to affordable, sustainable and reliable energy services.
This Great Transformation can only be achieved with a new global contract between science and society which needs to tap all sources of ingenuity and cooperation to meet this challenge of the 21st century. The scientific community and the leaders, institutions and movements representing the worldwide civil society have to engage in a strategic alliance.
The need is to embrace a multi-national innovation program on the basic needs of human beings, requiring the scale of for instance the Apollo Program. In addition, it is essential to remove the persisting cognitive divides and to create a global initiative on the advancement of sustainability science to win over the best young minds for laying the cognitive foundations for the well-being of the generations further down the line.
More: Extensive Version
Papers: Scientific understanding of Climate Change, Robust Options for Decarbonisation, Making Progress Within and Beyond Borders
Picture Credit: Hannah Förster
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