Text and photo: Norwegian Climate Foundation
The Climate Breakfast was initiated by the Norwegian Climate Foundation in 2014 after the trust became a partner. At least six meetings a year are now planned up to 2020.
“This project fits with our commitment to supporting good ventures related to research and humanitarian activities,” explains Inger Elise Iversen, general manager of the trust.
“The climate foundation collaborates with important research institutions, such as the University of Bergen, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research.“Destructive weather resulting from global warming is already affecting vulnerable and exposed populations in poor countries. Limiting dangerous climate change accordingly has an important humanitarian aspect.”
Kristin Halvorsen, director of Norway’s Cicero centre for climate research, opening the Climate Breakfast in September 2016.
Variety
Eighteen Climate Breakfast sessions have been held so far, mostly in Oslo but also in Bergen and Trondheim, and covering a variety of subjects.
These have included such issues as the significance of the solar energy revolution for fossil-fuel demand, and dilemmas related to oil drilling in the Barents Sea.
Others are communication of new climate research, structuring of Norway’s oil tax regime, and questions related to the way local authorities and investors should handle climate risk.
“We aim to contribute to extensive knowledge-sharing and informed discussion in Norway,” explains Anne Jortveit, manager of the breakfast project at the Norwegian Climate Foundation.
“Our country has many qualified people who can contribute important research-based knowledge required on the difficult path towards a low-emission society. We bring them together with able players from politics and the business community.”
Grateful
“We’re very grateful that the Kavli Trust is financing the Climate Breakfast scheme for another three years,” she says. “Concrete action is needed up to 2020 to cut carbon emissions.
“All positive forces must pull together to boost energy restructuring and contribute to limiting climate change.”
Funding from the trust will allow the climate foundation to stage its breakfasts until the spring of 2020, and to film the speeches and discussions for direct transmission on the web.
These webcasts will also be published after the meetings, thereby reaching a broader audience than the people actual present.
Read more about the Norwegian Climate Foundation (in Norwegian only) at Norsk Klimastiftelse.