I have danced tango for many years and in many places, but I have yet to dance tango in Hell. That's despite Hell being well within reach. No, I don't need to go down in the underworld to reach Hell, I just need to go to northwest Norway, since Hell is a small village in the vicinity of Trondheim.
As a coastal location, the climate in Hell is temperate. This is due to what's in laymen's term is known as the Gulf Stream, but more technically is called the AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation). It's the transport of warm water and thus heat by AMOC that provides northern Scandinavia with a climate much warmer than other locations at the same latitude. Without AMOC, our area of the world would have a climate more like northern Canada, something that would not allow agriculture as we know it.
For some time now, climate scientist have sounded the alarm about what might happen with the AMOC if global warming continues. And today, the AMOC is changing, thanks to warming oceans, increased rainfall, and melting sea ice. The world as a whole may get much warmer, but a collapse of AMOC would cause temperatures in northern Europe to plunge drastically. Average temperatures in northern Norway and Sweden would be 10°C cooler and winter temperatures would be so low that sea ice could expand down to the British Isles. So goodbye to fisheries in northern Norway! The risk of this development is so severe that last year, a prominent group of climate scientists sent a warning letter to the Nordic Council of ministers.
Graph from https://amocscenarios.org/ showing increase in sea ice cover after AMOC collapse
A study just published has shown that the risk of reaching a point of no return for the AMOC is real if we continue our current path of greenhouse gas emissions and thus global warming. This could happen already in a few decades, even though a total collapse would likely not happen before the end of this century. So while I will not be around when Hell freezes over, my grandkids may well be. And that's a world I don't want them to live in.
In Sweden, there will be a general election in just over one year, at the time of writing in exactly 375 days. During this parliamentary session, the current rightwing government has been heavily dependant and influenced by an even more extreme rightwing and nationalistic party, the "Sweden Democrats" (SD). As a consequence of having to please an anti-science party like SD in order to remain in power, the government has moved backwards in all areas of climate and environment policies.
- Funding for nature conservation has ben heavily cut and protection of of the few old growth forests remaining has been largely reduced.
- Emissions from traffic has increased drastically due to new fossil fuel subsidies, while incentives for buying EV's have been eliminated.
- Development of renewable energy has been been hampered and especially the offshore wind energy has been blocked on both local and national level.
Instead, the government has clung to the one area where these parties have a common view on climate and that is promoting nuclear energy at any cost. And the cost will be high, many hundreds of billions SEK according to the governments own calculation, a cost that will be transferred to Swedish households and enterprises. We know from other European countries that recent attempts to build nuclear energy production has been very slow and extremely costly — if in the end being built at all. A "best case scenario" would be that some nuclear energy is online mid 2030's. But the focus on spending most financial resources on a slow and expensive energy source will mean that funding and investments on renewable energy that can be available much faster will dry out. This in turn will lead to less electricity available at a higher price, directly hindering a necessary transition away from fossil fuels.
The climate crisis is urgent on so many levels and we need to mobilise on all fronts. I have decided that my personal route of action is to engage in politics. Since 2023 I am a non elected member of the Environment and Climate committee for the city of Gothenburg, representing the Green Party (Miljöpartiet). In the forthcoming election, I aspire to be an elected candidate and I will devote time and energy to accomplish this, but also to ensure that the Green Party gets an increased representation and thus influence over politics at both local and national level.
