Is Climate Change Humanitys Defining Crisis?
“Climate change is mankind’s defining crisis, and demands a commensurate international response.” This was the resolution for the Munk Debate on Climate Change, which took place at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory on December 1. Before the debate started, 61 percent of the audience agreed with the resolution, and 39 percent opposed it. The majority – 79 percent – reported being open to changing their vote based on the debate. The Centre for International Governance Innovation, a partner institution for the debate, broadcast it live in CIGI’s atrium. On the “pro” side of the debate were Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May and George Monbiot, leading environmentalist and author of Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning. Representing the “con” side were Bjørn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, and Lord Nigel Lawson, the recently departed president of the British Institute of Energy Economics, former Chancellor of the Excheqe
