Growth, jobs and more

Here are a few paragraphs from Eisenhower's farewell radio address of 1961 (via openmarket.org ). Relevant to the general debate on the European Innovation Union and the debate in Slovenia on the Higher Education Program and The Innovation Strategy. Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity . For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and disc...

In a letter to Michelle and Barack Obama, NASA’s Jim Hanson makes some valid critique of the “cap and trade” approach to the reduction of CO2 emissions that we also embraced in Europe: Policies being discussed in national and international circles now, which focus on ‘goals’ for emission reduction and ‘cap and trade,’ have the same basic approach as the Kyoto Protocol. This approach is ineffectual and not commensurate with the climate threat. It could waste another decade, locking in disastrous consequences for our planet and humanity. “Cap and trade” generates special interests, lobbyists, and trading schemes, yielding non productive millionaires, all at public expense. The public is fed up with such business. The physics of the matter, together with empirical data, also define the need for a carbon tax. Alternatives such as emission reduction targets, cap and trade, cap and dividend, do not work, as proven by honest efforts of the ‘greenest’ countries to comply with the Kyoto Pro...

My last speech during the Slovenian EU presidency at the European Sustainable Development Network Conference in Paris, June 30th-July 1st, 2008. Excellencies, ladies and gentleman, It is a real pleasure to be here in Paris on the last day of the Slovenian presidency of the EU. The European Sustainable Development Network is a valuable actor for promoting the kind of development that is future proof. The presence of highly ranking politicians from Slovenia and France demonstrates the importance we attach to your network. I am convinced that sooner or later the internal issues related to our institutional setting and the Lisbon Treaty will be behind us. My message here today will be focused on the importance of this network for the role that Europe needs to assume on the global stage. This role is to care [1]! In a complex world of today, there are fewer and fewer issues that are limited to one scientific discipline, one industrial sector or a single ministry and working across these b...

I am still in Seoul where we have just adopted the Seoul declaration . Here are some notes from my intervention on the plenary before the signing: First I'd like to join all who congratulated the organizers, the government of Korea and the OECD for such an excellent event. I think it demonstrates that we are all aware what a vital role the internet plays in globalized economy. What internet is enabling is many more people to get involved in creative and innovative processes. This type of innovation is called ' open innovation ' and for it to work, information and data on which the innovation and creative processes are based, must be made broadly available. One set of such data is scientific data and scientific publications. This is somehow covered in item b on page 6, bullets 2 and 5 and I would like to understand that it covers open scientific publishing as well. While we support the declaration, I would like to invite the OECD to investigate and continue to make po...

To address climate change we need to think both with our wallets and our hearts (notes for an intervention at an OECD ministerial meeting in Paris, June 4th, 2008). Climate change is an issue that is global and global solutions should be found. But we must make very clear that politics should define the goals and targets, and that the business and science must, in undistorted competition, find the best solutions. Lets not speak about 50-50-50 until 2050 until we do 20-20-20 by 2020. Politics should not pick winners. We need a third industrial revolution and it will be done by science and business. To be enable it we must create a level playing field for competing technologies and this also means creating a single price for CO2, regardless of its source, and not distorted by widely different taxation and subsidies even if the tax is not called CO2 tax. This would enable the market to identify the cheapest solutions. But so much about thinking with the wallet. At least as important is...

ADDRESS of Minister dr. Žiga Turk at the Athens Summit on Climate Change and Energy Security Athens, 5. – 7. May 2008 Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, In the beginning allow me to thank the organizers for bringing this summit together and congratulate for such excellent organization. There is mounting evidence, that humanity has been affecting the climate not for the last 100 but for the last 6000 years. We are here in Athens, Greece, which is the cradle of western civilization. But to build the ships that ruled the Mediterranean and to smelter the iron and copper, the forests on the coasts of the Mediterranean had to fall. The last oaks in the Slovenian Cars fell to build the fleet of the Venetian Republic. Two industrial revolutions have been fueled by fossil fuels, releasing into the atmosphere the carbon that has been captured by biological processes below the surface of the earth in millions of years. The effects of climate change are being felt now: temperatures are rising, ic...