“A Happy New Year”

New Years Day 2025... 

In better times we wish each other all the best for the new year. This year though, saying "Be prepared for the worst during the coming year" to friends and family will likely not create a good mood. It may still be the best we can wish each other as we enter 2025. This does not mean giving up, rather be prepared and be vigilant because you, we, all of us will need determination and strength considering what lays ahead.

So what are some of the "low points" we can expect for the coming year, bearing in mind what 2024 brought us? Here are some of my thoughts.

Climate change:

2024 followed 2023 in being a record warm year. Global emissions are still increasing and the 1.5° goal of the Paris accord from 2015 is being overrun by reality. During the last year, this has resulted in continuous events of extreme weather, with combinations of droughts and wildfires alternatively storms and floodings. This will continue during the coming year, with climate disruption having real and devastating effects on life, health and increasingly the sacred economy. Sadly it seems that only the last point is something that will make our "leaders" take climate change seriously.

War and conflict:

The Russian war against Ukraine continues to have negative ripple effects, in addition to the heavy suffering by the Ukrainian people. In a time when our efforts should be focused on climate transition, we have to spend on defence against the military threat from Russia. We need to help Ukraine to defeat the fossil fuel dictatorship of Putin, for both Ukraine's sake and our own freedom.

In Palestine, we witness live-streamed crimes genocide as Israel bombs schools and hospitals, with tens of thousands civilian deaths. Israel apparently aims to eradicate all memories of Palestine, a country that existed before Israel. Instead of learning from the long history of oppression against the Jewish people, modern Israel has become a right wing expansionist regime. Critique against the state of Israel and its armed forces are being dismissed as "antisemitism" in a way that will only increase the real antisemitism that still exists barely concealed in many societies. 

Democracy in declne and oligarchs wanting to rule:

The super election year of 2024 did not turn out well for democracy, with few exceptions. Populist running on a myth of returning to some glorious past were successful in many elections, with the return of Trump as president as the ultimate disaster. Subversive actions of both clandestine operations on social media and open propaganda on Musk's X distorted political discussions and corrupted trust between people. The Broligarch billionaires Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg feel that now is their time to amass even more wealth and power. But we can not afford the rich! 

If not hope, determination and grit:

So with all these negative forebodings, what do we need to continue to strive for a livable planet and a just society? I have for a long time called myself a dystopian optimist, because if you are not feeling somewhat dystopian you have not understood what lies ahead. However, if you stay in the dystopian mood you are giving up, and that is not a worthy life. One the books I read last year addresses this theme, "I want a better catastrophe" by Andrew Boyd. We surely need to accept grief, create (not wish for) hope and use all the gallows humor we can muster!

Hope really is a verb, something we can not passively wait for. Being a father and grandfather also means it's not all about me. My grandkids should be able to live into the 2100's. But it is not a given, if the world continues on the present path. It will take determination and effort to turn towards a better future for generations to come. The resistance from the 1%, their lackeys and conned followers will be hard. We need to provide a better story for the future than the populist con men. In other words, "What if we get it right?".

Thus, I start the new year with all its dark signs on the horizon citing from this book:

Sometimes the bravest thing we can do when facing an existential crisis is to joyously imagine life on the other side: What if we get it right? To envision the world we want to create, it helps to know the many ways we are already creating it. And it takes collective wisdom

So let's just do it! Together! 

Lessons from Covid-19 on climate change and politics

We have just said goodbye to 2020, the year that will stay in our collective memories as totally dominated by news about Covid-19. One year on, the pandemic is still raging all over the globe. Luckily, vaccines are starting to be available, at least in the more affluent parts of the world. But we still have a long road to travel before we can achieve something resembling normality. 

The start of a new year is off course a given time to look both back and forward. There has already been many comparisons between the Covid-19 pandemic climate change. Both are global crisis, both require dramatic transformations on both societal and personal level and they are also interlinked in many ways. As Jonathan Foley just recently wrote:

[Science] has warned us that changing environmental conditions were contributing to increasing disease threats. Numerous studies highlighted how infectious diseases could arise form deforestation, habitat and biodiversity loss, wildlife exploitation, the bushmeat and traditional medicine trade, confined animal agriculture and antibiotic misuse.

In the same way as we amplify storms and flooding by adding increasing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we increase the likelihood  of viruses and bacteria jumping from the animal world as new zoonotic diseases when we destroy natural habitats and push wildlife into close encounter with humans. 

Still, Covid-19 has taught us that huge changes can happen very quickly. The rapid development of Covid vaccines is an example of how open science plus massive collaboration between academic scientists and pharmaceutical companies could create scientific breakthroughs that few thought possible a year ago. It shows the potential of technology to alleviate societal problems. But it also shows that there must be a willingness at all levels of society to heed the scientific advice and accept that facts are more solid than opinions. It doesn't matter if a vaccine can be developed, produced and distributed if in the end no one is around to give the injections and the people that need the vaccines have been so duped by the lies of an authoritarian wannabe dictator that they will refuse the cure. 

One more analogy between climate and Covid is that both will put the worst burden on those who have contributed the least and already are marginalised. Indigenous communities, migrants and people of colour suffer more from climate change and have been more severely hit by the pandemic. Also, people doing the kind of essential work you cannot do in front  of your computer and in the confinement of your home have also suffered hard from the disease. We can not solve climate change without climate justice and long term we can not solve pandemics without healthcare  for all who need it. 

So what can we really learn from Covid-19 when it comes to handling the enormous threats to both our individual health and societal stability if we can not stop global warming? Despite some decreases in the emissions of carbon dioxide during the last year, 2020 will still be the warmest year on instrumental record. When lockdowns are not enough to more than marginally lower emissions, it is clear that we need new ways to handle the climate challenge. To cite @EricHolthaus:

Let me be clear: 2020 wasn’t just a “bad year”, it was what happens when the people in power have spent centuries exploiting others to ensure their own comfort. The uncontrolled coronavirus epidemic wasn’t inevitable, just like the climate emergency wasn’t inevitable. Another world is possible. It won't happen magically. We have to demand it.

The question of personal change vs political and structural changes has been hotly debated among climate activists. We can take great initiatives and be role models as individuals but can only bring on real change together and collectively.  Most importantly we must remember that hope is a verb. It's useless to pray for change, we create hope by action. And we need hope, since as Margaret Atwood puts it: 

We must be a beacon of hope, because if we tell people there is no hope, they will do worse than nothing

We also need to hold on to our values and call out the people who are denying and delaying climate action. In Sweden we coined the term "Flygskam", Flight Shame. Shaming can have some effect and even before the pandemic we saw a marked reduction in both domestic and international flights in Sweden. But in the long run calling for accountability is better than shaming.  And that is because accountability starts at the top with governments and corporations. We need to put pressure on both politicians and business to get action on reducing emissions, not only fair words. The fossil fuel industry and its lackeys will not go away without resistance and they must be hit where it hurts them most, the bottom line of the balance sheet. And those industries that do go for real change must be encouraged and supported. 

However, accountability cannot stay on the top. As we have seen during the pandemic, for some people, the “right” to a great Black Friday deal is deemed so important that they cannot fathom that it may kill their grandmother and neighbour. People have been more concerned over delayed haircuts than the risk of disease and potential death and this behaviour must be called out.  Accountability is also connected with climate justice since the carbon footprint is in no way equally distributed. As an example, when it comes to aviation emissions 1% of travellers contribute more than half of emissions. I have written before that there are a lot of people that needs to be grounded for good. 

2020 was in many ways a year put on hold. Conferences and graduations, concerts and festivals, weddings and dance lessons all were  cancelled and countries went into different degrees of lockdowns. There is of course a strong longing to regain some kind of normality in our lives.  But climate change has continued unabated and there is no good future if we return to pre-pandemic way of life. Instead, as we enter 2021 it is time to double-down on activism and efforts to turn our fossil-fuelled and consumption bases society around. Because "we can use less energy and still have good lives". 

We also need to have more politicians that embrace and support the shift towards the clear and green economy we need. And here we got some good news today from the senate runoff elections in Georgia USA. Both the senate seats were captured by democratic challengers against republican Trump followers. That was very good news in a traditionally republican southern state and it also means that president-elect Biden will have a far easier path to pursuing his political agenda. Given the strong climate agenda that Biden has promised to enact, this is good news not only for the US but for all of the world. 

The major reason for turning Georgia Blue was the work led by democratic organiser @staceyabrams. She, together with others spent years on the ground organising and encouraging people to vote. That takes persistence, something that @sarahkendzior pointed to in the latest @gaslitnation podcast. And this brings a lesson also for the climate movement. In addition to the activism on the streets there is a need to more actively engage in politics, to make sure that politicians with a green agenda are voted in. There is also a need to have more people themselves taking part in the political process. As the @runforsomething movement states it, "Don't just march, run for something". Because in the long run, we need to transfer activism into budgets, laws and regulations that will steer our societies in a better direction. 

My wish for the coming years is thus that we create hope by getting back the activism shown by #FridaysForFuture and other grass rot organisations (many led by young climate activists). But I also hope that there will be increased political activism, both directed towards present politicians and engaging new people to enter into politics. 

PS

I wrote this before the US Capitol was attacked by terrorist encouraged by president Trump. Just hours earlier I listened to a special edition of @gaslitnation podcast following the democratic win in the #Georgia senate election. @sarahkendzior described the joy of that moment but also how scared she was for todays event in Washingon. Sadly, she was right as so many times before. We still don't know if there will be a peaceful transition to president Biden two weeks from now. It is a scary time US democracy. And it also clear that the US is still in its core a unequal country, just judging from the difference how Trump thugs were treated by police as compared to how #BlackLivesMatter protester have been teargassed, beaten and shot at during last years protest. 

A walk in the park

 The past weekend, on the last sunny summer Sunday afternoon, I had decided to go for a run. But the balmy weather instead inspired me to take a walk in Botaniska, the Gothenburg botanical garden, which is located a mere 2 km from the city centre. Botaniska is embedded in a nature reserve, with a fluid border between the two. I’m glad that I decided for a walk, because it gave some important insights which I would not have been able to pickup, had I as planned been running through the same surroundings.

 

The first insight I got from looking at the explosive colour choreography exhibited by the Dahlia flowerbeds. There, the extraordinary shapes and neon colours made the flowers look “unnatural”, even though they were merely expressing some of natures ability to excel in form and fragrance. Nature itself in the form of bees were intensely attracted to flowers, loading up pollen to bring back to the hive. 

The second insight I got walking along the winding paths in the rock garden. There I could observe a more subdued form of nature, with moss and leafs covering the stones. To see the hidden beauty there, I had to look down, to slow down to take in and appreciate what I saw.

This brings me to my third insight which is intrinsically linked to the Corona time we are living in. To stop the virus from spreading we are trying to give each other physical space and social distance. Therefore, I had to step aside to let others pass and someone else needed to wait for me. This creates a common possibility to slow down, something we should appreciate and keep even when the pandemic has gone away.

As I left Botaniska and ventured out into the nature reserve, I started to see the 30-40 year old manboys on their MTBs, cycling determinedly and with head down through the forest. I wanted to yell at them “Hey, slow down, step off your bike, take of your helmet and be here, instead of speeding to your next goal”. But they kept whisking by.

There are hard times ahead, with the ongoing Corona crisis, the accelerating climate crisis and the political crisis with rise of right wing nationalists. To meet these challenges and prepare for a better and more just world, we have to understand that we need to be in the nature, that we are a part of nature. We need nature to survive as much for our minds as for food. We are still natural biological beings, despite all the technological gadgets we carry around,

Accepting oneself as a being a part of nature will be difficult for those who have been attracted the fake news promoted by some politicians but also to the synthetic and technological world where nature is something to be subdued and conquered. It takes courage to shut down the lights and take a walk in the dark. When I slow down I find new paths and new directions even in this forest where I have been running so many times. I can put away my phone and see the details around me and listen to the silence. 

Nature is now in its recharge time, when both plants and animals are filling up their reserves to sustain the winter and be ready for the coming spring. So while the dwindling evening light and the cooler evenings may make us sad, we should take this as a personal inspiration to recharge mentally and physically. There will be hard fights ahead if we are to keep our civility and our connection to each other.  

Gathering strength for the coming winter also means to be prepared, be mentally as well as physically prepared but also to be organised. To be organised and connected was the core message in a recent @GaslitNation podcast. We need to be prepared, we must not be caught off guard. 

Nature is resilient when given space and time. We need to find our own pauses to be as resilient.

 

 

 

 

 

PS

Thanks to Bar La Lune for good pause environment

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. 

Going viral 2 - Corona, climate and collapse

My previous blog post was about Corona, how we stumbled into a pandemic and why some countries more than others (especially USA) have missed the opportunity to contain the crisis.

Even though we are only in the beginning of the Corona pandemic, there are already lessons to be learned and parallels to be drawn. Some of them relate to the connection between Corona and climate change. It is clear that the decrease in emissions due to lowered industrial activity have had a marked impact on CO2 emissions. Furthermore, it might well be that the reduction in particle emissions due to reduced traffic and combustion actually savedmore lives than those killed by the virus (which of course is not a good way to solve the pollution problem).

There are of course also economical effects. The slowdown in transports from both less cars and trucks on the ground and far fewer flights in the air has caused plummeting sales of cars. Airlines are bleeding economically and some are going bankrupt. Still, the long term effects on travel might be even bigger. The big pharma company AstraZeneca was already far ahead before this crisis, conducting 20,000 video and telephone meetings per week. Others will now need to adapt quickly and rapidly start to move towards a non-travel meeting culture. What the lasting effects on business travel patterns will be remains to be seen. But it is unlikely that once companies have gotten used to running virtual meeting they will go back to spending money and their employees time on long flights for short meetings. So even if the corona crisis eventually subsides, the airline industry  might not make a full comeback. 

Presently central banks and governments are pouring money into the financial system in order to shore up companies whose business has came to a standstill due to the pandemic. But as the airline example shows this may well be throwing good money after bad. We need transformation not return to an outgoing business model that is not compatible with a liveable climate. It’s not only a question of emissions and pollution. Anthropogenic climate change and biodiversity destruction is one of the factors behind pandemics with a zoonotic cause, as habitat destruction and increasing temperatures are pushing wildlife too close to humans. Ebola, SARS, MERS and Covid19 all have a common denominator in that it was a disease that jumped from animals to humans. Still, we fail to see this link, but also don’t grasp that while Corona infection is an imminent threat, climate change is already the big disruptor which will only get more dangerous in years to come.

While coronavirus is understandably treated as an imminent danger, the climate crisis is still presented as an abstraction whose consequences are decades away. Unlike an illness, it is harder to visualise how climate breakdown will affect us each as individuals.

There is another link between Corona and climate change. Despite a likely reduction in CO2 due to less energy used, the reduction in aerosols can paradoxically result in a jump in temperatures, since the particle formed during combustion shields some of the incoming sunlight. Considering the already hot start of 2020, with the warmest winter on record in Europe while Australia endured record heat, droughts and fires, even an small increase in temperature could be very bad. A worst case scenario would be that in the summer we are hit by heatwaves and droughts at a time when both public resources and population have been worn down by the Covid19 pandemic. If so, there is a huge risk that this would lead to calls for "strong leaders" when it is instead strong leadership we need.

Trump will veer toward the edge of the cliff here and his cult of followerswill go with him. There’s no choice now for the Trump faithful. To admit he is incompetent and at all responsible now would be a devastating blow to their reality that might destroy their lives. There will be vast conspiracies, drumbeats of unnecessary war, scapegoating of political rivals, and a demonization and dehumanization of vulnerable populations.

And while most people are showing responsible behaviour and are willing to accept sacrifices for the common good, solidarity seems to disappear with increase wealth, as the super-rich jet off to disaster bunkers amid coronavirus outbreak. So what do we need to do in order to change the course we are on? Stay tuned, this is a crisis to good to be wasted! 

Deniers, delayers, debate and democracy

When it comes to climate change, debating climate deniers is seldom worth the effort. They will stick to their talking points, won’t listen to arguments and are not interested in understanding climate science. And you can count on that sooner or later they will turn to invectives and name calling. Still, when a self proclaimed expert on tennis bookmaking makes aggressive statements on the “fake climate science” it’s a bit too much to swallow, even if responding to him is more taking a stand than for a moment believing that I can influence his views. 

Delayers on the other hand are more complicated to handle and they tend to come in many varieties. One of these persons claimed to be a “climate realists” but immediately resorted to calling Greta Thunberg a tool of the "communist elites". He must be a very scared person. 

But it is clear that Greta Thunberg has caused a lot of anxiety among the people with vested interest in fossil fuels and status quo. As this article on “What we need to do the next 18 months" by Matt McGrath points out: 

And it is not only Greta, she has many fellow activists and followers all over the globe, especially among other young girls and women. These activists have found their voice, are demanding real actions and are taking on a heavy burden to ensure that they will have a liveable future. We should do everything we can to support them!

This brings me to another example of the kind of climate delay that comes from people who claim to know better. In a recent Op-Ed in NY Times, Christopher Caldwell was ranting about Greta Thunberg as a threat to democracy, while he proposed more wait and see as a climate “strategy”. 

His piece has been thoroughly taken apart and debunked by many of the worlds climate scientists and activists: 

 

 

A huge number of scientist have already thoroughly sided with the young protesters, as shown by this article in Science and the 52 pages of signatories… 

Haven Coleman, one of these young climate activists called Caldwell a “Rita Skeeter” person (if you haven’t read Harry Potter you need to look this up). Dr. Genevieve Guenther made a thorough dissection of Caldwells “points” which is well worth reading (much better spending your time there than on Caldwell). 

There is certainly a right for everyones to have an opinion, but there is no right for anyone to have his or hers own facts. Nor is there a ‘right' for anyone to have plattform such as NY Times for attacks and spreading confusion. The fossil fuel industry has been allowed to do this for decades; what we need now is debate over which action to take, not if we should act at some later time. Predatory delay is the term Alex Steffen has coined for this behaviour.  

But the debate about Caldwells Op-Ed has made it clear that there are still other kind of delayers, who do accept the climate science - but still don’t want to press ahead with straight talk and strong actions. Instead they wave the banner of free speech and “both sides” must be able to have their say. But there is no both sides to the climate crisis and we don’t give talking space to flat earth proponents. 

What these persons also might have missed is that climate change is itself a profound threat to both society and democracy. This is already evident in the energy area: 

But worse is to come if we continue to delay climate action.  We all now how badly the European Union handled a million refugees from war torn Syria. Climate change will increase that number with one and maybe two factors of ten in the coming decades - can our societies handle that and still be working democracies? The scariest thing about climate change is what it will make us do to each other says Kate Marvel, climate climate scientist at Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Real sustainability only comes in one variety, now: Disruptive. That is scary and will cause a great deal of discomfort for those presently in power. But the alternative, to allow climate disruption to descend us into chaos, is much worse. For all of these reasons, the time for "opinionated ignorance” by people such as Caldwell is over.   

PS

Maybe the supporters of Caldwell right to publish should have looked more into his background. Some examples:  

Here's Christopher Caldwell's glowing defense of Germany's far-right, climate denying AfD, which lost big to the Greens in the European Parliament elections after using its campaign to attack Greta Thunberg. Maybe he's bitter? 

The Spectator has somehow managed to outdo the Telegraph for ignorance on Ireland. American journalist Christopher Caldwell says that a “British unification” under the “moral tutelage” of London would make more sense for Ireland than EU membership.

Is it likely that this person has something worthwhile to contribute with when it comes to discussing climate change and democracy?

Reflections on Aniara: Everything will not be OK and we can live with that

Earth is in trouble. Or rather, we as beings living on the surface of planet Earth have gotten ourselves into real trouble, a slow disaster we might not be able to rectify. 

This past weekend I was experiencing doom and the tragic fate of humanity during Gothenburg International Film Festival. I visited the Swedish premiere of Aniara, a film based on a poem from the 1950’s by the Nobel laureate Harry Martinsson. It was written at a time when human annihilation through nuclear war was a persistent scare in peoples mind. In Martinssons story the spaceship Aniara is loaded with people fleeing the dying Earth, but an accident sets Aniara adrift on an endless voyage in space, a bubble in the vast nothingness. 

The film depicts the spaceship as a modern day cruise ship, where the passengers initially try to hang on to normality but gradually become more desperate and succumbs to sects or suicide. There is no Hollywood hopeful ending, when the spaceship finally reaches a habitable planet, the passengers have been dead for many millennia. 

While nuclear extinction was the backdrop for the poem, Harry Martinsson was already in the early 1960’s pointing to environmental destruction as a rising threat to humanity. For Roy Scranton, author of two books with the uplifting titels “Learning to die in the Anthropocene” and “We’re doomed - now what” the impending climate catastrophe is a reality we can not avoid. There are many things that I take to my heart from Roy's texts and the talk he gave during the film festival. I am deeply impressed by the journey that Roy Scranton has traveled moving out from the war in Iraq to writing about the fate of humanity in the Anthropocene. There’s a deep sorrow in his description of what we are inevitably going to loose. And I agree with his notion that we need to slow down, reflect and meditate on what’s really happening with our climate and our societies; do less instead of keep on running. Humans have the ability to make meaning under the worst of circumstances, says Scranton, what we need to do is to organise locally because the cavalry will not be coming to save us. 

But the road that his total acceptance of this situation leads him to is not mine. Roy Scranton is disavowing those who like our most recent climate activist in Sweden, Greta Thunberg choses to fight for a liveable climate. We are lost and resistance to our fate is futile says Scranton. But his reactions rings with both bitterness and even envy towards those who continue to struggle despite the odds of real success being infinitesimally small. Some of the reactions in Swedish press to Roy Scrantons visit encourage this perception, maybe as a token gift to those who fear action more than the future. 

Perhaps we should not view Scranton as a truth sayer, but as the poet he is and wants to be. We can read him as a Baudelaire or Rimbaud of our time, writing about the beauty of death and decay in times of war and conflict. Like in the final verse of Rimbauds poem “Le Dormeur du Val”:

He sleeps in the sun, his hands on his breastAt peace. There are two red holes in his right side

So what to do if we abandon hope? Maybe it is no hope but courage that may save our humanity if not our world and nature as we have come to know it. To cite from a recent article in Washington Post by Dan Zak: 

To grasp the problem, we have to slow down. To respond to it, we have to act fast. We have both no time and more time.“We want there to be a really simple story: You do this, and then everything will be okay,” says Kate Marvel, who works for NASA in New York. “And everything is not going to be okay.”There is opportunity in this acceptance. Marvel thinks we need courage, not hope. We must know what’s coming, we must realize it will hurt, and we must be very strong together.

So we need to accept that the times are a-changing and there are no easy paths forward. We need to strive not for control but to find a way to flow like the waves and grass. 

Hold the problem in your mind. Freak out, but don’t put it down. Give it a quarter-turn. See it like a scientist, and as a poet. As a descendant. As an ancestor.

Finally, what seems to be lacking in Scrantons narrative is the willingness to speak truth to power. "We" are not equally complicit for the climate crisis. Therefore, the light on the super rich gathering in Davos that Greta Thunberg was shining is important. If the super rich, half a percent of the worlds population are responsible for 13% of the worlds consumption related emissions, then solving the climate crisis is a question of both moral and equity. It is not a done deal and we can alter our fate. 

Despite repeated warnings

"Despite repeated warnings 

Of dangers up ahead

The captain won't be listening

To what's been said”

These are the first lines of Paul McCartney new song from his latest album. Listen to the words. Take them to your heart. Our political leaders have been warned. But they are not listening to the dangers of climate change.

The warnings have been clearly articulated for decades, with more strength for each passing year. For every IPCC report, for every research publication on the subject of climate change, the message has been more urgent. Still carbon emissions keep going up despite the promises made when the Paris accord was signed. Economy and endless growth is still allowed to rule over the physical world. 

There has been some comments that recent severe weather events like Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Florence gives us a glimpse of the future. That is not true, they show us the present as bad as it is. The future will be much worse, how bad it'is not possible to say. Science can not yet tell us exactly when further temperature increase will result in vicious feedback cycles that will fundamentally destabilise our climate.

But by looking into the past, we can understand the future. The figure below describes the unknown era we are entering into in one graph. The red and blue lines shows carbon dioxide and temperature going up and down together as the planet has moved in and out of ice ages during many millennials. The correlation is clearly visible; as CO2 has varied between 180 and 280 ppm, the temperature has been about 4°C colder during ice ages as compared to present times. 

Atmospheric CO2 from Antarctic ice cores (Jouzel et al., 2007) and modern NOAA measurements, and global surface temperature change estimated from ocean core data of Zachos et al. (2001) using an approximation described in our ‘Climate Sensitivity’ paper for converting ocean core δ18O to surface temperature. 

On the far right end of the graph however, the time scale has been expanded to show what has happened during the last 150 years. Two things are bluntly obvious: The present rate of change in carbon dioxide level is far quicker than at any time during the last 800,000 years. And the temperature is lagging behind, which means that we have seen only a fraction of the warming that will happen if carbon dioxide continues to rise in the atmosphere. 

The sad fact is that no graph however convincing to the people who care about our collective future is enough to be a wake up call for those who pretend to be sleeping. Climate scientist have gone from concerned to engaged, even enraged at the lack of political will and action. They know that continued emissions will lead to meters of sea level rise, unpredictable conditions for agriculture and mass extinction of both plants and animals. That in turn will disrupt civilisation as we know it. 

In Sweden, the Conservative party leader is trying to form a new government after the recent parliamentary elections which gave a very complicated outcome, with no clear majority to back a new prime minister. During the election campaign he claimed to take the role of "the grown up in the debate”. Yet at no time has he talked about the climate crisis as a fundamental factor when forming a new government. He articulates no understating of the connection between his stated ambition to reduce immigration and the fact that continued climate change will drive hundred of millions of people from their homes. 

Instead of the so called grown ups, it has been from youth that we have received the call to action. Greta Thunberg is a 15 year old girl who in the lead-up to the election decided to go on strike from school. By sitting outside the Swedish parlament, she called attention to the bizarre situation that she was obliged to learn facts in school that our politicians choose to neglect. Her question was both simple and clear: “Why don’t we treat climate change as the crisis it is?” Greta was recently interviewed in the New Yorker by Masha Gessen who wrote "Thunberg is a voice of unaccommodating clarity".

There is a link between the (mostly male) leaders unwillingness to act on the climate threat and what we have seen during the recent process to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court. What Kavanaugh demonstrated above all was his scorn towards the demand that he should to take responsibility for his actions. He very clearly felt entitled to drink, harass and abuse as much as he wanted as a youth, without it having any repercussions later in life. It was clear that he sees himself as belonging to a group of (again mostly) men who deem themselves superior to others, especially women. But the same attitude can also be seen in these groups in how they view nature, the environment and our climate. Trump and his accomplices demonstrate a total lack of comprehension why they should in any way restrict themselves for the sake of our common future. Risk of 4 C warming? Then we might as well burn some more coal! A business deal with an asbestos producer? Who cares about a little cancer?

The saying "Après moi, le déluge” by Louis XV clearly fits in with Trump and similar “leaders” who hold on to power and enrich themselves by degrading both society and nature. They are a clear threat, both directly and because they drain our energy and the resources we need to fight for a liveable climate. So should we give up? Absolutely not, instead we need to muster the courage to confront both the climate change deniers and the authoritarian tendencies in our time. Sweden is not the US and the struggle will look different in different parts of the world. "We should only lament our future if we lack the will to fight for it” writes David Rothkopf. Being a man, I can do my part, but I think a large part of the fight will need to be taken by all the women who have found their strength and anger during the last year. And by young people like Greta, who’s questions we must answer. 

It is time for our leaders to listen to the warnings. When the water starts to rise, there will be a reckoning time.

"Oh, but he should have listened 

To the will of the people"

Valrörelsen börjar på måndag!

Om två dagar är det måndag och valet är över. Detta skrivs alltså innan resultatet är klart så jag vet inget om vem som ”vann” valet, inte heller om vilken grad av politiskt kaos som kommer att bryta ut. Det jag vet är att det har varit en valrörelse som handlar om allt och inget och som framför allt inte på allvar berört framtiden. De visioner om Sverige som det två huvudkombatanterna om statsminsterposten lagt fram, ett nytt jobbskatteavdrag ställt mot en extra semestervecka har inte imponerat. Den tredje aspiranten i form av mannen utan minne längtar tillbaka till en dåtid som inte fanns och är villig att rasera allt för att vandra tillbaka dit. Så det är inte konstigt att man kan drabbas av denna känsla.

Kanske har vi fått vad vi förtjänar genom att låta valrörelsen vara det enda tillfälle då vi förväntas agera inom vår demokrati. På samma sätt som vi har outsourcat mycket av vår produktion till andra länder så har vi låtit politiken bli något för partistrateger och kommunikatörer, istället för att självklart beröra oss alla. Vi har låtit oss förvandlas till röstboskap istället för att vara aktiva medborgare.

”Democracy dies in darkness” har varit mottot för Washington Post ända sedan Donald Trump valdes till president. Tidningen har arbetat hårt för att sätta ljuset på de många skandaler som följt i Trumps spår. Men både i USA och här i Sverige ser vi att demokratin också kan förfalla mitt framför våra ögon. Samtal och kompromiss har ersatts av hätska utfall och hatdrev på nätet. Det blir allt mer tydligt att det inte räcker med att tycka eller dela information, den når inte fram. Sverige har varit ett land av folkbildning och folkrörelser, nu saknar vi den allmänna bildning som knyter oss samman. Det är inget vi kan återskapa genom en litterär kanon; en lista på böcker att läsa räcker inte långt. Vi behöver en ny “provisorisk utopi” att arbetat tillsamman för.

Det finns en sak till som faller sönder framför våra ögon och det är vårt klimat. Trots den extremt varma sommaren har de flesta politiker såväl som merparten av media återgått till att agera som om klimatförändringen handlar om “någon annan, någon annan stans, någon annan gång”. Men ingenting har hänt som motiverar att vi slutar agera på den akuta utmaning som klimatförändringen innebär. Som inför andra världskriget vill vi inte se varningstecknen; inte lyssna på Churchills ord om att “The age of procrastination is over and the age of consequences is here”. Vi går och handlar i affären som vanligt, knappt medvetna om att halva den svenska skörden torkade bort i sommarhettan. För 100 år sedan hade det betytt svält och kravaller på gatorna. Ännu ett tag är vi rika nog att kunna köpa vår mat och ännu en tid finns det överskott på mat att köpa. Det är inte givet att det gäller nästa gång.

En person har genom direkt aktion starkt bidragit till att hålla frågan levande och det är Greta som i tre veckor skolstrejkat framför riksdagshuset. Hennes aktion har uppmärksammats över hela världen med intervjuer i internationella medier. På många ställen både i Sverige och utomlands har också både skolelever och vuxna strejkat i solidaritet med henne. Men kan vi fortsätta lägga ansvaret för framtiden på de som knappt haft en chans att uppleva nutiden?

Så vad skall vi göra? Självklart fortsätta ta del av politiska livet och avslutningen av årets valrörelse. Att rösta är något som många människor dött för så att lägga sin valsedel är att vara en del av samhället. 

Men det räcker inte! Vi måste återerövra politiken från politikerna, se att det är något som berör oss och avgör hur vårt framtida samhälle skall se ut. Den senaste veckan har jag pratat med olika partiföreträdare, några insatta och insiktsfulla även om vi var överens om att inte vara överens i sakfrågorna. Men jag har också mött aggressiv okunskap och hybris, en närmast religiös övertygelse om att ha rätt. Den onda cirkel som skapas av okunskap och rädsla leder till egoism och i förlängningen även hat mot “andra”. 

I veckan kom en studie om ekonomi och hur den nyliberala ekonomiska vågen drivit människor bort från de traditionella partierna. Problemet med den rimliga analysen är att den utelämnade hur partier som SD och deras ytterkantsbröder AfS och NMR har vänt ekonomisk oro från berättigade krav på rättvisa till att finna syndabockar som kan anklagas för det som hänt. Hellre sparka nedåt än ta strid uppåt, det är det fega budskapet hur mycket man än hävdar sig vara emot etablissemanget. 

Syndabockarna är invandrare och främlingar och lösningen är “återvandring", ett mildare uttryck för slänga ut människor med annan bakgrund. "De passar inte här", som Jimmie Åkesson hävde ur sig i den avslutande partiledardebatten. När den retoriken sprids får så småningom människor plikta med sina liv. Det hände den rumänska tiggaren Gica som slogs ihjäl av svenska tonåringar i Huskvarna. Och det är därför som svenska militära veteraner från krigen på Balkan har gått ut med sitt upprop att säga nej till främlingsfientlighet. De har med egna ögon och med livet som insats sett vad som händer när människor lockas till att börja hata och se ned på sina medmänniskor.

Men om de skulle lyckas, om den miljon människor som Jimmie Åkesson vill förpassa från Sverige verkligen skulle försvinna, då vore inte mycket sig likt i Sverige. Ekonomin i trasor, sjukvården i ruiner, kulturen reducerad till knätofs. Vem skall de då skylla på när nästa värmebölja kommer, skördarna torkar bort och det inte självklart finns någon som vill sälja sin mat till oss? Vilka står näst i tur när det gäller syndabockar? En inte alltför vild gissning är att kvinnorna ligger risigt till i Åkessons framtid, mer lik Handmaids Tale än lika lön för lika arbete.

Det finns ingen väg tillbaka. Den otidsenliga framtid som SD längtar efter löser inga problem. Därför är uppgivenhet inte en möjlighet, vare sig när det gäller klimat eller demokrati. Men vi kommer inte att klara de utmaningar som väntar oss genom att sitta ned och vänta. Det kommer inte heller att vara vare sig enkelt eller smärtfritt att styra om utvecklingen - men alternativen är så mycket värre. 

Den danske författaren Carsten Jensen skrev nyligen en serie artiklar och varnade oss för att vandra den danska vägen och normalisera hatet mot det främmande. För att klara det måste vi återuppliva demokratin bortom röstandet.

På ett eller annat sätt är det tvingande nödvändigt att åter knyta ihop banden mellan den direkta demokratin och den representativa, och det innebär också en återupptäckt eller kanske till och med ett återuppfinnande av själva tanken med att vara medborgare i en demokrati.

Den arbetshypotes för vårt framtida samhälle som Carsten Jensen lade fram var “Klimatstaten”, ett öppet samhälle bortom den exkluderande välfärdsstaten.

Den stängda dörren, inte den öppna, har blivit välfärdsstatens symbol, och det är alltid dess överlevnad som används som argument när utlänningar ska hållas borta från landets gränser. Det går ingen väg tillbaka, varken till nationalisternas dröm om ett skyddat land bakom stängda gränser eller, för övrigt, till den klassiska välfärdsstaten. Det finns bara en väg, och den går framåt. Välfärdsstatens nödvändiga efterföljare vill jag i väntan på det officiella dopet kalla Klimatstaten, och det är bara för att jag just nu inte har något bättre namn.Klimatstaten har en annan uppgift än den välfärdsstat som skulle ställa skeppsbrutna befolkningar på fötter igen efter andra världskriget. Den ska förhindra en hel arts kommande utplåning.

Vår beredskap är god, sade Per-Albin på sin tid. Det var den inte och det är den inte nu heller, vi är inte beredda på de omvälvningar som kommer. Desto större anledningen att inte skjuta upp arbetet till 2022. Arbetet med att återerövra politiken börjar på måndag - är du med?

“If we go on our own it will be to little. If we wait for politicians it will take too long time. But if we work together, it might just be enough and in time to solve the problems"