It is now widely agreed that climate change is one of the greatest environmental, social and economic threats facing the planet. The earth's climate has changed over the last century and there is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.

How could climate change affect us in the future?

1. Projected changes in climate are expected to have both beneficial and adverse effects on water resources, agriculture, natural ecosystems, and human health. But the larger the changes in climate the more the adverse effects should dominate. For instance, some crop and forest productivities could benefit from a small climate change. But for many other natural systems, the adverse effects should be dominant, especially if warming exceeds a few degrees.


2. Human populations are expected to face increasing flooding and heat waves but reduced cold spells. The geographic range for infectious diseases should increase.


3. The vulnerability of human populations and natural systems to climate change differs substantially across regions and across populations within regions.

These are just some of the consequences that could be reality in a few years. This severe problem has lately received renewed attention thanks to Former US Vice President Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and the newly released Stern Review ordered by the British Government. According to Tony Blair, the latter showed that scientific evidence of global warming was "overwhelming" and its consequences "disastrous".

The panel
In the light of this highly relevant debate, WELL invited a very diverse and interesting panel to address the issue from different perspectives. All the participants work with the challenges of climate change and offered their view on current and future initiatives. The participants in the panel were:

• Flemming Funch, Vice President, Global Quality, Environment, & Safety Management, Novozymes
• Kim Carstensen, Secretary General of WWF-Denmark
• Hans Jürgen Stehr, Danish Energy Authority former Chair of the Executive Board of UN’s Clean Development Mechanism
• Lars Aagaard, Vice President of the Association of Danish Energy Companies
• Frode Neergaard, Chief Adviser, Department for Environment and Sustainable Development, Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Sources: www.greenfacts.org, www.news.bbc.co.uk