8/14/2019 [Morten Tnnessen] The Nature View Held by Environmentalists (Attitudes in the Norwegian Environmental Establi

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The nature view held by environmentalists. Attitudes in the Norwegian environmental establishmentMorten Tnnessen

University of Tartu, Department of Semiotics, Institute for Philosophy and Semiot, Tartu, Estonia

The work to be presented is the outcome of a survey of partly qualitative and partly quantitative 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, made up of

environmentalists, politicians, scholars and researchers and industry representatives. A total of 200 selected

persons were invited to participate, all of them decision 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 humankinds eventual extinction, concern

us? - Can the so-called environmental problems be overcome without changes in fundamental 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 as well as environmental NGOs havebecome an integrated part of an extended bureaucracy) 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 environmental friendliness -

attribution of value to ten human/natural entities ranging from individual human beings to nature The

respondents ranking of energy sources (according to environmental friendliness) seems to have reflected

historically contingent ideological stands, dating back to major conflict in modern Norwegian environmental

debate. One example is hydropower, which is still to some extent controversial. On coal plants and nuclear

power, which has not been established in Norway, there is a near-consensus, negatively speaking.

Controversies especially surround CCS-supported electric power from natural gas (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 (in average, such energy ranked at no. 8 out of 15, that is, exactly

at the middle of the ranking). While coal-fired electric plants without CCS shared the highest number ofbottom-rankings with nuclear power (15 each), solar energy was superior at the top of the scale (with 20 top

rankings), ahead of ocean wave energy (8 top rankings). As for attribution of value, in all categories, more

than 9 out of 10 attributed value to all or some entities belonging to all ten categories. Around 9 out of 10

attributed value to all of individual human beings, nature and species. At the other end of the scale,

only 6 out of 10 attributed value to all cultural landscapes. Perhaps most surprisingly, only 7 out of 10

attributed value to all cultures, while 3 out of 10 attributed value only to some cultures. Equivalently high

scores for some were only found for landscapes, cultural landscapes and individuals of other species.

On this point it was (perhaps surprisingly) more difficult to find patterns related to political/ideological

stands, as most respondents were generally eager to attribute value to a whole range of human and natural

entities.

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