Education, education, education!
On October 12th Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, spoke to HSE students at a seminar organized by WWF Russia and the Higher School of Economics.
Click here to watch a video of the meeting.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was not a random choice of guest for this meeting: during his time as governor of California many acts and business initiatives were implemented in the sphere of environmental protection and the development of power saving technologies. The Golden State has become a world leader in the use of renewable power sources. The seminar participants wanted to talk about how the experience of California could be used during the development of environmental laws and the reforming of the fuel and energy sector in Russia.
Before the arrival of the Governor, Igor Chestin, Director of the WWF Russia, Alexey Kokorin, Director of the Climate and Energy Programme at the WWF Russia and Georgiy Safonov, Director of the HSE Center forEnvironmental and Natural Resource Economics, shared their views of the economic and ecological challenges facing Russia. According to them, one of the key problems is the fact that both the vast majority of the population and the government ignore the issue of climate change. Evgeniy Yasin, HSE Academic Supervisor, who joined the discussion, also agreed that environmental issues still are an insignificant, if not to say, exotic, theme for Russian society. However, perhaps the recent weather anomalies are helping to overcome this skepticism, he said.
— The first breakthrough happened in 2006-2007, when the winter was abnormally warm, the days were gloomy, and there was no snow until the end of January. This greatly affected people’s health: the number of visits to psychiatrists in Moscow grew fourfold – said Igor Chestin – And this year also made the population look differently at the problems of climate change.
And the development of power-saving technologies and improvement of energy efficiency should be, according, to him, ‘a follow-up of measures for preventing catastrophic climate change’.
We know that opponents of global warming theories usually accuse its advocates of building their ‘apocalyptic’ forecasts on the basis of very short period of monitoring data. Alexey Kokorin admitted this, but noted that the problem here is in different approaches to the issue: ‘geological’ and ‘climatological’. If we, like geologists, look back over millenniums, we find that waves of climate warming and cooling came and went many times without any human participation. The key factor in such cases is the Sun’s activity. There is no doubt that the current warming which climatologists are talking about will also come to its end, but it does not make it easier for those who have to live in these climate change circumstances over the next fifty years. Alexey Kokorin also appealed to people to abandon the term ‘global warming’: we are talking not only about a rise in temperature in the lowest layer of the atmosphere, but also about a change in the ocean temperature and increasingly sharp deviations (both positive and negative) from climatic norms in various regions of the planet.
Nevertheless, it is still unclear how big the anthropogenic factor in the current changes is; humanity’s part in greenhouse gas production is very little: only 2% of CO2 emissions are artificial. But Alexey Kokorin and his colleagues are absolutely sure that it is humans who are responsible for the increase of such emissions over the last 20-30 years. At the same time, the range of forecasts of the increase of average temperature on the planet is too wide to say anything specific. The probability of negative events as a result is also very varied: from 50% to 80%.
Gerogiy Safonov shocked the audience with his statement that according to some expert evaluations, by 2050 the world economy losses from climate change may add up to 20% of the global GDP. Puzzled students asked him to clarify how exactly temperature fluctuations can have such a catastrophic effect on the economy. Then it became clear that according to other estimations economic losses only total 5%. And the transfer to ‘green’ technologies will be no less expensive. Moreover, developed countries have already agreed to pay multibillion dollar compensations to those developing countries who are unable to cut emissions without losses in their economies.
But it is still important and relevant to combine economic and ecologic feasibility. This is what Arnold Schwarzenegger, who appeared in the audience to thunderous applause and camera flashes, stated with all his confidence. The Governor of California, who has a degree in economics and business administration, admitted that he treated each field of his activities – sports, acting and governorship – as a business process, clearly defining the tasks he needs to solve to gain success.
— And the same is true today as the Governor of California – Arnold Schwarzenegger continued — “you have to run the state like a business. So again, my background in business and economics has been helping me reforming the state in such a way that we can go forward in a sound way economically. And that’s why I’m here on a trade mission. Because again in California we don’t just want to sell to Mexico, or to Canada, or to other states – we want to sell our goods around the world, and there’s no better place to come to than a place like Russia, where there are such great opportunities. So when your President Medvedev asked me to bring a business delegation to Russia, I jumped at this opportunity, because this is a great opportunity for economic development in California and also for Russia”
Arnold Schwarzenegger mentioned that he sees only positives in the collaboration on the Skolkovo project which will create new jobs and bring revenue both for Californian and Russian companies and then addressed the problem of environmental protection and energy efficiency increase.
—“When I ran for Governor, one of my themes was that we must protect the economy and we must protect the environment at the same time. It was very difficult for people to understand, because they had never thought how you can combine the two. We have proven in California that you can do both, that you can take care of your economy and at the same time we started building hydrogen fuelling stations all over the highways and the freeways, we started the Million Solar Roof programme, or the low-carbon fuel standards, or the renewables of 33% for wind, solar, biomass and so on, and the passing of the famous law 8042 which reduces the greenhouse gases by the year 2020 by 25%”
The Governor of California mentioned that the Russian capital has changed a lot since his first visit here back in 1976. He also recalled his meetings with legendary Russian weightlifters Leonid Zhabotinskiy, YuryVlasov and VasilyAlexeev, as well as the shooting of the movie ‘Red Heat’.
— You are on the right track to be here in this school – Arnold Schwarzenegger summarized the meeting. Then, to the surprise of the HSE students, he used a quote from Vladimir Lenin: ‘Education, education, education!’
Oleg Seregin, HSE News Service
Photos by Nikita Benzoruk and PolinaFrolova