The debate on The Economist's web site was concluded by the following announcement by the moderator:
Global Energy Crisis - Debate Summary
Debate: Global energy crisis
Proposition: "We can solve our energy problems with existing technologies today, without the need for breakthrough innovations."
Final vote count: Pro 55% / Con 45%
The Moderator's winning announcement: The results are in, and the winner of our debate on energy technology is the Pro team, by 55% to 45%.
The Moderator's winner announcement - Aug 29th 2008 | VIJAY V. VAITHEESWARAN
The results are in, and the winner of our debate on energy technology is the Pro team: 55% to 45%. Though the Pro debaters held on to their early lead, the close outcome reflects the strength of the Con team’s support.
The close match also suggests that there is a powerful and legitimate disagreement among experts and punters alike about the relative importance of rapid deployment of today’s technologies and investment in tomorrow’s inventions.
The Economist would like to thank Joseph Romm and Peter Meisen for their thought-provoking but respectful style of pugilism. With occasional testy exceptions, our readers followed their noble lead and made many insightful comments and critiques. We thank all of you for those important contributions.
Taken together, those contributions have made this one of our most successful debates to date. Numerous web outlets, blogs and even other publications picked up on this battle of wits. I believe the reason for this success is this: in this debate, you helped us engage in a proper conversation about one of the great debates of our age. And that, after all, was the very reason The Economist was founded over 160 years ago.
Thank you all for your contributions.
As we wrote in our comment, the debate was skewed and based on the wrong propositions.
We believe the deeper purpose is getting readership for the Economist, one of the most anti-ecological journals we know.
- Helmut Lubbers environment scientist for ecoglobe dot org and ecoglobe dot ch
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