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 Abstract 
Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges and DecisionsCopenhagen, March 10-12, 2009
Session:
"Culture, Values and World Perspectives as Factors in Responding to Climate Change"
Morten TønnessenThe nature view held by environmentalistsAttitudes in the Norwegian environmental establishment
The work to be presented is the outcome of a survey of partly qualitative and partlyquantitative character, which was carried out in preparation of the debate book 
Utslippsfrie nye verden?
[
Pollution-free new world?
].The survey was carried out August-September 2006, with 37 respondents, madeup of environmentalists, politicians, scholars and researchers and industryrepresentatives. A total of 200 selected persons were invited to participate, all of themdecision makers involved in Norwegian environmental discourse.The questionnaire included the following open question:- What do you have in common with all living beings?- What is an environmental problem?- For whom are the so-called environmental problems a problem?- Do potential ‘environmental bombs’, left behind after humankind’s eventualextinction, concern us?- Can the so-called environmental problems be overcome without changes infundamental economic, technological and ideological structures?- For how long can, will, and should the growth economy go on?- Should the European population in 100 years be higher, lower or equal to that of today?- To what extent does the Norwegian corporative model (where business interests aswell as environmental NGOs have become an integrated part of an extendedbureaucracy) make sense?Two further tasks were of a more statistical nature.- ranking of various energy sources (including electric power from natural gas and coal,with and without carbon capture and storage (CCS)), according to their environmentalfriendliness- attribution of value to ten human/natural entities ranging from ‘individual humanbeings’ to ‘nature’The respondents’ ranking of energy sources (according to ‘environmentalfriendliness’) seems to have reflected historically contingent ideological stands, datingback to major conflict in modern Norwegian environmental debate. One example ishydropower, which is still to some extent controversial. On coal plants and nuclearpower, which has not been established in Norway, there is a near-consensus, negativelyspeaking. Controversies especially surround CCS-supported electric power from naturalgas (a more recent, and ongoing strife), which was ranked any place from top to bottom,and appears, comparatively, to be over-rated by some while under-rated by others (inaverage, such energy ranked at no. 8 out of 15, that is, exactly at the middle of the
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