HELBI

Winning the battle against climate change due to global warming was the theme of a lecture by European Commissioner for the Environment Stavros Dimas, organized by the Hellenic Society for the Protection of the Environment and Cultural Heritage at the Bank of Greece late last year. Three months later, the subject is suddenly on the front pages of all the world’s newspapers. Former US vice president Al Gore’s documentary with David Guggenheim, “An Inconvenient Truth,” is being seen by audiences around the world, and in Athens at the Goulandris Natural History Museum this Sunday and next. In the Hellenic Society’s journal (Volume 24), its president Costas Carras writes that “if such a change has resulted from increased gas emissions from the activities of the some one billion people on the planet who are relatively well-off, what will happen when the 2.5 billion Chinese and Indians manage to reach our level of economic prosperity?” Carras believes it is correct that the state gives environmental incentives and counterincentives, such as those for renewable sources of energy.