During the past year, a series of articles in various DTU outlets announced the new oil and gas centre (here the rector with English subtitles). I understand the main rationale: national energy self-sufficiency (and accessorily, a sizeable amount of research money for DTU). This being said, I remain unconvinced on the ethical dimension of conducting such research. My premise for doubting is simple: if successful, the research will lead to increased extraction capability, which implies more recoverable resources globally, both directly in the North Sea, but also possibly indirectly if the technology is reused elsewhere. This is good for Denmark of course, but as this total amount of recoverable oil and gas increases globally, following the simple rules of supply and demand, I see no reason why this should not lead to increased consumption, and thus emissions, GLOBALLY. Now that this causal link has been established, do we, at DTU, have an ethical, moral or political responsibility to raise this issue, and possibly, to question under what conditions should oil and gas extraction research be conducted? The main gap is that on one hand we have a limited carbon budget by 2100 to stay within acceptable global warming. On the other hand we have not yet organised a way to manage this global resource. This results in the current ‘gold rush’ which we see now, and to which we have chosen to directly contribute with here at DTU. This, as a DTU researcher but also as a ‘world citizen’, leaves me uneasy. I feel some important questions concerning this new centre have not been addressed. In Norway, similar concerns were raised and an independent ethical committee concluded that there indeed were important ethical concerns to be addressed, and conclude on ‘real danger of a vacuum of responsibility’. Although it is clear the rector and the board of DTU directors support the centre, my main proposal is simple: can we, as in Norway, start a proper debate on this and get advice from an independent ethical committee? Please visit and LIKE the discussion page below to join the discussion, whichever side you may tend to align with.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 12:02:30 +0000