Thursday 31 October 2013

Bill McKibben picks up US $ 100,000 Norwegian prize - and asks Norway to close down its oil and gas industry

This week Eco-fundamentalist Bill McKibben took a high carbon footprint flight to fossil fuel rich Norway - "the country I love the most beyond my own"" - in order to pick up the Sophie Prize, "an international award (US $ 100,000), for environment and sustainable development".

One wonders what the Norwegians thought about McKibben's speech at the prize ceremony, in which he in effect urged Norway to close down to its entire fossil fuel industry - the source of the country's riches:

"And here Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, as the largest single investor on the planet, has a crucial role to play. It is time for Norway to end its investments in fossil fuel. Yes, that wealth was built on oil, mostly in a time when we didn’t understand its peril. But now it needs to be invested in the future, not the past.
Morality demands no less. If it is wrong to wreck the climate, then it is wrong to profit from the wreckage. And if Norway takes this step, it will reverberate. It won’t immediately end climate change; many other strategies are needed."

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