Guest blogger at "Föräldravrålet"

This week, I have been the guest blogger at “Föräldravrålet”. The name of this climate advocacy group literally means “Parents crying out” - for the future of their children. I have translated the text for my foreign readers, the original Swedish text can be found here. Please also sign their global call for "Our Kids Climate".

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Having children is a journey with a distinct start but no given ending. It’s a journey where the goal is to let go and take a step back. We start on this path very close to the lives that have been trusted upon us. We keep our children in our cupped hands, care for them and protect them.

Soon our children start to create their own lives and very early on we need to open up and give them space – while still be ever present. As time passes, our hands will be a platform from which they can bounce away from us. Our role will be to see them go with an open heart, despite the worry we might sometimes feel. Because there will be a point when we can no longer protect them, only hope that they have knowledge enough and some good advice that have made them ready to face the world on their own. We can not protect them against everything. But we have the responsibility to give them the best opportunities to thread their own path.

But the conditions in the world they are entering are now drastically different. Climate change cast its shadow over their future. For small children both heat and drought, floods and lack of clean water is a direct threat to life. Also youngsters are affected and it hurts to realize that when climate is altered in a unforeseen and sometimes violent way, our advice and guidance may no longer be valid. Tempting coastlines may disappear in a storm surge. Exciting city streets turn to streaming rapids when the sky bursts. Drought drives people away and brings on conflicts and war.

Recently I watched Naomi Klein’s new film; "This changes everything”. Her blunt message is that climate change is not an issue for polar bears, it is about us as humans; “We are nature”. That message is something we who live in Sweden can appreciate, due to our proximity to nature. Anywhere in Sweden you live, you may within half an hour be out in the woods or on a beach. This is not a common situation in large parts of the world. Therefore, we have a a responsibility to keep this connection on nature alive and be advocating that we are a part of nature, not seeing it as a backdrop to our lives.  

In Klein’s movie on of the main characters states that “sometimes you have to take little steps and sometimes you have to run like a Buffalo”. The time has come to fun fast and we as parents need to be heading the herd. We can not pull back, even if our own children have left home. We have a responsibility to continue to create the best opportunities for the lives we have brought to this world. If we stand up to that challenge the climate crisis may be turned into an opportunity to create a better future, or with the words of Klein: "What if global warming is our best chance?"

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