Birte Holst Jørgensen
Managing Director of Nordic Energy Research.
Susan Leschine
Dr. Susan Leschine is internationally known as a leading authority on the biology and diversity of cellulose digesting microbes, and currently holds a senior faculty position in the Microbiology Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research formed the basis for the foundation of SunEthanol, a company that turns biomass (plant life) into ethanol.
Martin Parry
Chair of Working Group II of the Intergovermental Panel on Climate
Coleen Vogel
Coleen Vogel, Professor of Sustainability at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Susan Leschine
Professor in microbiology at the University of Massachusetts
Dr. Susan Leschine calls for a major decrease in greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, domestic energy use and by industry.
We must find alternatives for burning fossil carbon and we need to develop renewable, sustainable sources of transportation energy. At present, plant biomass is the only significant source of liquid transportation fuel that may replace the world's finite supply of oil.
At present most of the biomass converted into transportation fuel is plant material which has other uses. This becomes especially problematic when the other use is food. This is a serious issue and needs to be looked at on a global scale. Although corn ethanol is not perfect, it represents an improvement over burning petroleum. I believe we cannot give up on such solutions because they are not perfect. We need to look at them as stepping stones to better solutions.
Biotechnology can certainly play a role. There are many forms of biotechnology that we could use. Sometimes we use techniques of DNA manipulation, but use of these techniques does not automatically mean we end up with recombinant organisms or GMOs. I am sure using biotechnology will lead to more debate, but the debate should focus on the science. There is no evidence that the use of biotechnology is necessarily detrimental, and there are ample examples of beneficial outcomes.