Hi MF members and public,

Welcome to the blog site of Hot Air a Melton Foundation Work group composed by Amrita Nanda and Vinay Arun from BMS University, India; Raphael Richard and Stephanie Woodard from DU, USA; Matthias Reichardt and Nils Laub from FSU, Carlos Rilling, Daniel Vera and Rocío Dantagnan from UFRO, Chile; and Jiahui Huang, Simeng Wang and Zeyu Liu from ZU, China.

In this blog site, you’ll find some useful information about the oil prices situation in countries such as: Chile, China, Germany, India and United States.

Have you ever asked how this global situation has affected the economies, societies and politics? We’ll try to answer to those questions through a gallery of expert’s interviews from those five countries, including articles about politics, society and economy written by our staff.

We have been working in the topic and original workgroup name Government control v/s Business development, and after four months of discussion, we decided to see and show you through this global issue which is the social and economic dynamic in the five countries that are part of Melton Foundation.

Enjoy and have an informed day.
HotAir members

In May of 2007, Al Gore visited Chile in the context of the seminar “Global Warming and Climate Change”; this has been the biggest event in Chile related to the political reflection about global warming. In this event, President Bachelet declared that “the time for action has come”. Basically, in order to describe the scenario for climate change and political decisions in Chile, we could say that the “political will” is present, but the real measures and the coordinated action in order to minimize our impact to the environment aren’t in the agenda. The main concern related to global warming and energetic alternatives is directly related with the limited energy sources in the country.

Chilean Interviewees

The Chilean experts we interviewed about the subject were Natasha Pino and Ronald Cancino, both currently working in the Institute for Regional and Local Development in programs related with the development of communities, local public policies and local governance.

More Opinions gathered by FSU fellows

OPINION OF COMMON CITIZENS ON GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE

A short survey was conducted to understand the general mindset of common citizens in Bangalore towards Global Warming and related climate change issues. A couple of interviews were conducted to gather information on the general public’s view on the issues of global warming and human responsibilities towards climate change, business development and government control. Information was also collected from other sources like the internet, books, magazines etc.

It was observed that people have a general awareness on the subject but are still confused on the where the responsibility lies and how they could make a change. But they definitely feel with the help of government and individual responsibility they can make a difference.

The following are excerpts from two interviews taken.

OPINION OF EXPERT ON GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE

An interview was conducted to understand the opinions of an expert on various issues like global climate change, governmental control, business development and the related interlinked topics. The following is the interview we had with our expert, Mrs Padma who is an expert in the field of Waste Management. She is a part of an organization named SAAHAS. Saahas is a Bangalore based voluntary organization committed to finding solutions to problems related to solid waste management in the city. Saahas also works with corporates on waste management. Over the last two years, Saahas has worked closely with the Hazardous Waste Management Program, Karnataka (HAWA) to study the various issues related to generation of e-waste as also its flow, recycling and final disposal. Saahas is working in partnership with WeP Peripherals and E-Parisara. They have setup the first ever city wide collection programme for household e-waste like batteries, CDs & floppies. This has been implemented at over 20 institutions already.

Global Warming and Indian Intelligentsia

Given how serious the consequences of global warming could be it is desired that there be a concern towards global warming within the education systems of all nations. All though the concepts of global warming and its effects are touched upon in the Indian Education system it is a fact that a career in Environmental Sciences does not attract the kind of talent in India as do careers in Engineering, Medicine or Finance.

In general as a citizen of India and as a student one cannot feel any urgency in the educational institutions to deal with the issue of Global warming. It is a subject that exists and everyone is aware of but nothing really is happening on the ground or practically nothing significant is being done about it. There does not exist for instance a drive to create a long term plan to deal with global warming among most universities in India.

The following is an interview of a professor from an engineering college in Bangalore:

Global Warming and Indian Businesses

India is a developing country that currently witnessing a boom in the economy. This boom is especially seen in the sectors that require extensive amounts of energy.

Taking for example the success story of the IT industry in India concentrate in Bangalore, this industry has boomed so much that there has been a tremendous change in the city of Bangalore and its dynamics. Traffic has multiplied; fuel requirements have increased, electricity requirements have multiplied etc.

For a developing country like India, when an industry shines with success it has invariable gone through a lot of obstacles and has reached a state where the people look up to the industry with a lot of expectations and also pride. This emotion of the citizens of India can be seen clearly with the software industry. Even now the industries in India face a lot of obstacles, some of these are traditional obstacles and some are more modern problems that the industries are facing. Global warming and its associated issues fall in the category of recent obstacles.

An important factor to consider while studying how businesses react to an environmental issue that in a developing country like India when an industry booms there is a lot of encouragement from all sides and a lot of expectation for the industry to continue growing. Sometimes so much that environmental issues could be overlooked in safeguarding the interests of the industry that has brought a lot of prosperity, jobs and wealth to many citizens.

The following is a snippet of an interview of a local businessman:

China is developing in an incredible speed, and will probably go on for a couple of years. Behind the fast development, there are many problems, among which environmental problems are the most important. With the Olympic Games coming soon, “Go Green” and develop harmoniously has been put in an extremely important position. How to keep a balance between economic growth and environment protection is a great challenge for China. We conducted some interviews with a business man and a person from local community to see how they respond to questions concerning with environment and economic growth. We wrote a record as follows.

Interview of a business man, Mr. Stefan Kratz, Managing Director, Q-cells China operations.