2 dagar till valet - är klimatet värt din röst?

 Idag fredag den 9 september är det två dagar kvar till valet 2022. Det är också 212:e gången som Greta Thunberg klimatstrejkar.

Sedan 2018 när Greta startade sin klimatstrejk har miljontals ungdomar över hela världen gått ut på gatorna i rörelsen #SchoolStrike4Climate #FridaysForFuture och med budskapet #ClimateJusticeNow. Det är en rörelse ledd av unga och med många flickor och unga kvinnor i främsta ledet.

Många är de världsledare som sagt sig lyssna till dem och politiker som ställt sig i kö för en selfie. Ändå har så lite hänt, utsläppen fortsätter öka och klimatkatastroferna kommer slag i slag, med torka, bränder och översvämningar denna sommar.

De unga som deltagit i strejker och manifestationer är med rätta både arga och frustrerade över oförmågan hos politiker att ta till sig det vetenskapen säger, att klimatkrisen orsakas av de samhällen vi har byggt och att det krävs mod och ledarskap för att ändra kurs. Svenska politiker som grupp har knappast varit några lysande exempel. I valrörelsen har klimatkrisen reducerats till en fråga om elpriser och de "lösningar" som presenterats har handlat om mer subventioner till fossila bränslen. Allt för att kunna upprätthålla illusionen om att inget behöver ändras i våra liv.

Trots politikens brister vill jag ändå uppmana alla de inom FridaysForFuture som kan, att använda sin röst väl i detta val. Ni vet hur bråttom det är att få stopp på utsläpp och arbeta för en rättvis omställning. Vi har inte tid att pausa det arbetet och låta Sverige styras av partier som saknar vilja och ambition att hejda klimatkatastrofen. För det är tydligt vilka partier som gör något, vilka som mest pratar och vilka som aktivt bromsar klimatomställningen: Vår (Researchers Desk) analys visar att KD och SD aktivt förhindrar de klimatåtgärder som behövs.

https://www.lu.se/artikel/klimatforskare-granskar-partiernas-politik-vilka-lyssnar-pa-vetenskapen-och-vilka-ar-samst-i-klassen

Självklart räcker det inte med att rösta vart fjärde år, för en vital demokrati är det viktigt med aktivism och folkrörelser, inte minst för att balansera inflytande från mindre synliga aktörer inom kapital och företag. Men skall aktivism fungera krävs det någon att påverka och det är politiker som är beredda att driva frågorna så att lagar och regler ändras. Därför har jag själv valt att kandidera till riksdagen för Miljöpartiet i detta val. Jag gör det för att klimatkrisen är akut, för att ta mitt ansvar för att påverka politiken inifrån och för att vara en mer lyssnande röst till klimatrörelsen.

Framför allt gör jag det för att kommande generationer, i Sverige och världen, skall ha en rimlig chans att leva i ett stabil klimat med en levande natur, det som jag hade privilegiet att växa upp i. 

 

Bo Norrman

Going viral 3 - Comittement, change and collaboration

(This is my third text on the Corona virus / Covid19 epidemic, see previous posts on the blog)

We are in a global pandemic crisis and countries are heading into a lock down, closed border survival state. Everyone tries to find ways to avoid the Italian situation where hospitals are overwhelmed with critically ill patients. The situation is likely to become even worse in countries with less developed health care system, or as in USA where lack of paid sick leave in combination with high individual costs will make people stay away from necessary care. We have NOT seen the worst yet!

It will be a long and hard time ahead before we see any kind of turn for the better. What combination of ordered and voluntary containment that will be needed, how bad the situation will become and how many that will die we just don’t know yet. What’s making this worse is that we are in a triple crisis, as was discussed on Gaslit Nation this week. The combination of authoritarian and incompetent “leaders” with the accelerating climate breakdown contributes to making the Corona crisis so much worse. 

That's the struggle against autocracy. That's the struggle against the climate crisis. That's now the struggle against a pandemic in a world where most countries don't have the healthcare apparatus and or the transparency of government necessary to prevent a large scale human tragedy.

There is a high risk that authoritarian regimes will try to use corona created chaos to enhance their power and financial gains in the midst of the turmoil. Today there was a report from newspaper Welt am Sonntag that Trump has tried to lay his small hands on a potential vaccine being developed in German, in order to use it exclusively in USA. At a time when collaboration and cooperation is what is needed, men like Trump, Bolsonaro, MSB and Putin will not be able to look beyond there personal power and gains. That is a crisis as bad as Corona itself. When Saudi Arabia is waging a price war on oil that threatens to further escalate the economic crisis, Trump sees it as chance to fill up with cheap oil. 

So what can we do and how do we act? We will need a countermovement and a new direction in order to not just to survive but to transform our societies for a better future. I find inspiration in how Italians confined to their homes have been singing on their balconies rather than stay silent in despair. As Eric Holthaus wrote in a recent post about climate change and what we need to have more climate action it’s trust in mutual aid, not competition, that could form the basis of a new collective story: "I would have to trust others a lot more than I already do.”

Sadly, at the moment we can watch the lack of trust in Europe, where countries within the EU are keeping critical medical equipment to themselves. It would probably been much better also for the rest of Europe if Italy had received the support it asked for. Even better would be if EU would be proactively equipped to handle crisis like this. But if governments are not able to handle this kind of solidarity, likely we as citizens need to finds way to create the kind of collaboration that we will need for the future to meet both the Corona crisis and the climate breakdown. 

We will need to tell a better story that can lead us forward. It will not be simple story of happily ever after story, it will be a story that also includes struggles and losses. However, both human history and our collective storytelling shows us so many occasions where mankind has rissen to the challenge. 

We will need a transformation to a society that can adsorb the challenges ahead without falling apart. The last year I have been given the opportunity to be involved in the regional development strategy for the region of Västra Götaland in Sweden. Three keywords in the forthcoming strategy have suddenly become eerily important and also scalable on the global level: 

• Robust
• Inclusive 
• Fossil Free

Robust - There will be more challenges ahead, a new pandemic like Corona or rapid sea level rise that inundates our coastal regions. There could be other completely unknown Black Swans that we need to deal with. To sustain these kind of challenges we can not run our societies, our companies or ourselves at the limit of capacity, because then every extra straw will break the camels back. 

Inclusive - At the moment we can foresee that the Corona crisis will hit the most vulnerable hardest. The same is true for climate change. We need to distribute the burden far more equitable than what we have seen during the last two decades. A world for the 1% is not sustainable for anyone.

Fossil free - Getting of rid of our dependence on coal, oil and gas is not only a given if we want to have a stable climate, it is also necessary for a stable global economy. A world where the power of both fossil fuel companies like Exon, Shell and BP as well as petrostates like Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran will be a better world for everybody. 

The young climate movement has during the last 18 months been able to make both climate change and climate justice subjects that have been discussed at the highest level, from the UN to World Economic Forum. We need to harness the same energy in dealing with the ongoing corona crisis. It is a crisis, but if we can sustain the immediate crisis it is also an opportunity to rebuild in a far better way than the system that brought us to this brink. Whether we call it Great New Deal or something else is irrelevant. But wise governments and leaders should not throw good money after and try business that have outlived their time. The era of weekend shopping flights and mass consumerism fuelled by oil will need to stop now. Corona may show us in a brutal way what we can live without. What we need now is both leaders and social movements to help us discover what we need instead. 

On the edge of the ocean and life as we know it

I have spent every summer of my life on the Swedish west coast; on, in and by the water. Swimming, fishing, then more and more sailing, but sometimes just sitting on the dock watching nothing and everything. 

A long time ago I thought that whatever would happen in the world, the ocean was bigger than anything mankind could affect. I imagined that the vastness of the deep sea was so immense that whatever humans did, this was beyond our reach. I was wrong.

This summer I have been out sailing, revisiting an island in the outermost part of the archipelago that I haven’t seen in decades. On the surface, it was as beautiful as I remembered it. The cliffs were still made from pink granite and the flowers were everywhere, hiding from the wind behind rocks and in crevices. The view of the open sea was breathtaking. Terns, bird that I seldom see nowadays, where fishing in the waters around the island. 

So much beauty and tranquility that it took time to still the mind enough to open up the senses. I needed to immerse my myself in the moment, diving into my soul like I let my body dive into the still water for a morning swim. 

But in the back of my mind, the feeling of almost gratitude of being in such a place was mixed with too much knowledge. So much is happening on and below the surface. The plastic invasion, visible everywhere along the coasts but also invisibly present in both birds and fish. Overfishing has taken its toll and on almost any island you will see signs of the omnipresent oil spills. 

Even more hidden are the slow changes caused by our still increasing emissions of carbon dioxide that are changing the chemistry and life below water. And far beyond my view, the melting ice sheets on Greenland are spilling into the ocean, rising sea levels and creating havoc with both weather and ocean currents.

How to cope? How to handle these mixed feelings, both enjoy the moment and acknowledge the inevitable losses that will occur? Can I embrace and connect; not resign and become numb but transfer these feelings to the courage of resistance? 

These questions seem to be lingering in the minds of everyone that really understands the implications of the climate and biodiversity breakdowns that we are heading into; with knowledge but without understanding. Many have shared their thoughts, among them @MaryHeglar. Her answer was love:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course this is something that some will shy away from and other will try to ridicule. “Love? That’s nothing that will drive growth” they will say. And their will be claims from (mostly) men of power that love is a sign of weakness. But the fights we will need to enter can not be driven by revenge and vengeance only, says Mary Annaise Heglar, we need to find our strength from within and together.  

 

 

 

 

 

So I will try to save the moment on the island in my mind for the coming fall and winter, to use it as a grounding point in order to be ready for the hard work that lies ahead if we are to steer ourselves away from the business as usual disaster path we are on. It will be a hard struggle, overcoming both the fossil fuelled powers and the inertia of those who have not yet realised that nobody will be sheltered if we allow the climate storm to reach its full strength.  

We will need a lot of love to pull this through. 

PS

I made this video a few years ago. Soon the august nights will be dark enough to see the starlight again.

Full movie here 

Let the Boomers be grounded!

The Boomers (or Baby Boomers) is the generation born from 1945 up till about 1960. I am myself a part of this generation, albeit being born on the trailing edge. This was the generation that benefited from the rebuilding of broken societies after the second World War. Growing economies, from trade and new technologies brought affluence and created a new middle class that could enjoy the consumer society and travel in a more open world. 

Of course not everything was good. Wars were still being fought, in Vietnam among many other places. Nations were invaded, democracies crushed in both East and West, partly due to the Cold War confrontation that kept nuclear annihilation as a Damocles sword over our heads. Nevertheless  this was a period when it was natural to be living a both healthier and richer life than the previous generation. 

Most of the boomers are now entering retirement and many are economically well off. They have benefitted from a growing wealth during their working life, but also just from the passive wealth growth coming from owning a house that has increased in value. So now they want to enjoy life, travel, play golf in Spain and fly to Thailand or the Caribbean to avoid the winter cold. Sadly, that is a privilege they (we) can not be granted due to our collective failure to ensure a liveable future for our children.

The climate crisis is very much about equity in a very double meaning; both fairness and wealth. It’s a question about levelling the economical gap between countries, between the rich and the poor, ensuring that developing countries are given some opportunities that the richer countries took for granted. But as the recent youth activism by Greta Thunberg and her followers have shown, it is also very much a generational question, where the financial equity that the boomers have built up largely has been charged to a planetary credit card that is about to expire, leaving the debt fully for todays children to pick up.

Therefore I think it is time to ground the boomers and that includes myself. We’ve hade our glorious time and did not do enough to leave a stable climate for coming generations, so at least we know should step back and not continue to wreck the planet. Do I want to ban them/us from travel and trips abroad? No, because you learn from travelling and meeting other people. But we need to drastically reduce our carbon emissions in ALL sectors of society and for individuals flying can be the largest contribution of greenhouse gases. And for retired boomers, if they have the funding to travel they should have the time to travel on the ground. Take the train, make the journey into an experience, see what you might have missed during your active working life. In Europe, many of us spent summer vacations using the Interrail train pass to visit all corners of our continent. That is still possible and would also create a market demand for more and better trains, which everybody would benefit from. 

I would like coming generations to have some possibilities to travel to far off countries. There is no reason that boomers, who have had it all, should spoil the chances for their kids and grandkids to experience what they did. So, let’s ground the boomers! And while on ground, it is very overdue time for this generation to (again) become activist and fight for stable climate and a good future for coming generations! That will also ensure that the great-grandchildren will be able to say with pride that their ancestors cared for them.   

Children should be seen and heard, from David Suzuki foundation