The Stockholm Memorandum

Tipping the Scales towards Sustainability

From May 16th to May 19th, 2011, seventeen Nobel laureates met in Stockholm, Sweden for the third Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability.  The attendants outlined eight priorities in their message.

  1. Reaching a more equitable world
  2. Managing the climate - energy challenge
  3. Creating an efficiency revolution
  4. Ensuring affordable food for all
  5. Moving beyond green growth
  6. Reducing human pressures
  7. Strengthening Earth System Governance
  8. Enacting a new contract between science and society

Each area has advice on how to accomplish these goals.  It is well worth a read.

Panel of the Jury during the Noble Court Case: Planet Earth vs. Humanity. Jury members (from left): Nobel Laureates Werner Arber, Peter C. Doherty, Mario Molina, Carlo Rubbia and James Mirrlees.

Real Climate has a piece on it:

The Stockholm Memorandum concludes that we have entered a new geological era: the Anthropocene, where humanity has become the main driver of global change.

The Lyndon Larouche "climate-change-is-a-hoax" crowd dropped by:

I approached one of the protesters who carried a banner “against Green fascism” and asked him whether he seriously believes what his pamphlet says, namely that our meeting is a “symposium for global genocide”. He nodded emphatically and replied: “Yes, of course!”

National Geographic also does a write-up:

Despite the hard messages and difficult tasks ahead, like helping people rise out of poverty in the face of limited natural resources, the air was more optimistic than I can ever remember after such a gathering of international leaders. On the steps of the Swedish Academy, laureates and leaders and UN panelists combined for their photo op and the smiles felt quite genuine.   Enough to break business as usual?  Time will tell.

The Stockholm Memorandum document ends:

We are the first generation facing the evidence of global change. It therefore falls upon us to change our relationship with the planet, in order to tip the scales towards a sustainable world for future generations.

Posted by grypo on Friday, 27 May, 2011

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