The Munk Debates: Climate Change

Thanks to Tom Paton for this:

CBC AIRS CLIMATE CHANGE MUNK DEBATE WED. ON CBC RADIO ONE "IDEAS".

CBC's Ideas will re-broadcast the Munk Debate on Climate Change on CBC Radio One this Wednesday evening, Dec. 2.

"Munk Debates
Next Monday, the most important climate negotiations in 12 years will begin in Copenhagen. The goal of the United Nations conference is to lay the groundwork for a global treaty to cap greenhouse gas emissions and stem climate change. But in the lead-up to the conference, a debate remains over how grave the threat of global warming is, how much needs to done to fight it, and at what cost.
Those questions will be on the table at the Munk Debates in Toronto . George Monbiot and Canadian Green Party Leader Elizabeth May will be on one side. Bjorn Lomborg and Lord Nigel Lawson will be on the other. And they'll debate this proposition: Be it resolved: Climate change is mankind's defining crisis and demands a commensurate response.
Bjorn Lomborg is a professor at the Copenhagen Business School and the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It. George Monbiot is a columnist with The Guardian newspaper and the author of Heat: How to Stop The World from Burning and The Age of Consent: A Manifest for a New World Order.
CBC's cbc.ca. Ideas will re-broadcast the debate on CBC Radio One this Wednesday evening, Dec. 2." CBC

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C02 levels in the atmosphere are climbing steadily higher. Some believe this is having a devastating effect on humans and nature, while others argue that the threat has been overstated. Is this the moment for a bold international treaty to curb carbon emissions? Or, are the social and economic costs of reducing C02 emissions too high in world where a billion people live on a dollar or less a day?
Just days before the United Nation’s historic Copenhagen summit the Munk Debates will tackle one of the great public policy questions of our time: how should the world respond to climate change?



Elizabeth May
“We need to look at all of Canada’s priorities, but we must address the climate crisis . . . if we fail to address it, nothing else we do makes any difference.”


George Monbiot
“The real costs of climate change are not measured in dollars and pounds, the real costs are measured in lives and in ecosystems . . . immeasurable.”




BjØrn Lomborg
“ . . . we are knowingly squandering colossal sums of money (on climate change) while fractional sums can save millions of lives right now.”


Lord Nigel Lawson
“We have entered a new age of unreason which threatens to be as economically harmful as it is disquieting. It is from this, above all, that we need to save the planet.”


The Munk Debates are open to the public. Tickets to the debates are $20 to $50 each. Seating is limited. Each event begins at 6:45 p.m. with a vote by the audience on the resolution being debated. The debaters then provide opening arguments and cross-examine each other. A question and answer period with the audience follows. A well-known moderator keeps the proceedings orderly. The debate wraps up with a summation by each debater and a second vote by the audience on the resolution. The final vote is tallied and the winning side announced at 9pm. CBC Radio's Ideas, The Globe and Mail and CPAC take each event's discussion to the larger public.
The Munk Debates is an initiative of the Aurea Foundation, a charitable organization founded by Peter and Melanie Munk to support Canadian institutions involved in the study and development of public policy.

The Munk Debates is organized by Rudyard Griffiths and Patrick Luciani, the co-directors of the Salon Speakers Series.

The Munk Debates benefit from advice and insights of an advisory board. Its members include Andrew Coyne, Devon Cross, Allan Gotlieb, George Jonas, Margaret MacMillan, Anthony Munk and Janice Gross Stein.
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