Thoughts on issues ranging from the semi-private, like dancing; to the very global, such as sustainability, democracy, future and other minor subjects.
Me: Middle aged university educated white man
Most of the time I see myself as a somewhat dystopian but still essentially hopeful person. But this past week... A new dose of disastrous climate science news, Assad's shameful nerve gas attack on his own citizens, followed by the tRump regimes pompous and hypocritical cruise missile attack on an emptied Syrian airbase. This while tRump himself still wants to block any Syrian refugees from coming to the USA. Already there my mood was low. Then yesterday afternoon came the news of a terror attack in Stockholm. Someone, whose motives we do not yet know, hijacked a delivery truck and drove it through a crowded shopping area in the city center. Behind the truck dead and injured lay strewn along the street. It was just too much.
Yesterday was a brilliant spring day, sunny and unusually mild for the season. But the events in Stockholm hang like a grey cloud over the spring feeling. Walking through the center of my own city, Gothenburg, there was a marked increase in security. Police officers with automatic rifles were standing in street corners, police cars could be seen all over. There was likely no reason to be afraid, as everything pointed to the attack being a singular event. But there is also no way to exclude that an attack may happen again. It seems as we are on a path of societal and environmental destruction while our rampant consumption is used to cover up the mental scars it's causing. For us as individuals, finding a way to counter the ongoing negative news can feel overwhelming and impossible. We don't have armies and bombs to throw at the evil forces (as if if would solve the problems). The men (mostly men and some women) in power perceive themselves to be isolated from most of the effects, thus decreasing their motivation for taking real action. Thus, it is to a large extent up to us as humans, citizens, individuals and interlinked people on our planet to catalyse a change. But today the challenges we face are many, interlinked and complex. There are no simple solutions; the only ones that advocate for simple solutions are the populists who wants to restrict our lives and build walls both physically and mentally. They are the both scary and scared people, afraid of freedom, afraid of both bright colours and grayscale. Terrorists as well as populists have the same longing for viewing the world in black and white. They both hate the rainbow flags, the softness and ambiguity of an open society.
It is there, in the strength of an open and soft society that my hope came back and allowed me to crawl up from the mental pit I was close to fall into last night. Because the overwhelming response in Stockholm and Sweden was not fear, it was support. The trending hashtag on Twitter in Sweden was not #terror, it was #openstockholm. By using this tag, people in the city stranded due to lack of transport could find places to rest and stay. Citizens as well as companies opened up, inviting strangers to stay as long as they needed. Parents picked up each others kids from school, shops made sure that children could get food. It was not something ordered or organised, it was as response that was built from trust and a web of connections.
Moreover, as many has commented today, the crucial backbone of society in the form of police, emergency services, hospitals and first responders did actually work when a crisis occurred. The government functioned, vital areas such as the parlament were secured. Above all, people accepted the situation and the inconvenience of having to walk home or catch a lift with someone who had room in their car. Ordinary citizens bought food for police officers on watch during the night. We are not a collapsing society.
So despite the terror of yesterday, I am somewhat more hopeful today about our joint possibility to steer the development in a more benign way. Yet, what yesterday also shows is that to really use the wast resources that we together can muster in a time of crisis, we need to understand that there is a clear and present danger. We must not lull ourselves, we need to transform our world. More on that path later, but the great stories can give a hint on what is needed.
Today is Good Friday, a day well suited for thoughts and reflections, whether one has any religious beliefs or not. In our 24/7 society we often seem to lack the time to just stop, sit down and think, without immediately relaying our mental position via our social media networks. So even if Good Friday was a very boring day in my youth, we could use slow days to be able to catch up with ourselves.
This week any reflection will and must start with what happened in Brussels. We need to lament the lives senselessly lost, when once again men whose minds have been perverted commit an act of “heroism” by killing innocent people. There is no excuse of any sort for these killings. That said, we still need to understand roots of terror to be able to combat it, as is well laid out in this comment.
If our answer to the terrorist is only to fortify our societies, close our borders and arm ourselves with ever more security we will be loosing in the long run. If we look with even more suspicion at our neighbours and especially at the refugees that are seeking to escape from precisely the same kind or terror in Afghanistan or Syria, we will increase the kind of tensions and conflicts that the terrorist seek. Of course we become frightened by the terror attacks, but we must not let this feeling take over our ability to think and act. But as Nick Kristof writes in the NY Times the basic problem is this: "The human brain evolved so that we systematically misjudge risks and how to respond to them."
The history of terror also shows that we are very short sighted and forget to look at even recent history. This graph from the Global Terrorism Index 2015 shows a timeline of terrorism. Most of the terror strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Nigeria, but these events seldom creates big headlines in our media. It is also clear that two events stand out, the US invasion in Iraq back in 2003 and the start of the Syrian civil war. Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator was a terrible oppressor, especially to the Kurds, but there was no Al Queda or ISIS in Iraq before the US invasion. The invasion was based on false premises and lies and instead created a brewing ground for terrorism. When the worst drought in 900 years hit Syria this and an oppressive regime set a match to the tinder box as the rest of the world was just looking on wringing its collective hands.
So now we have a situation that must be dealt with. But if we allow terrorism, conflicts and threats of war to consume all of our attention span, we will not be able to change perspective and see other and even larger threats on the not so far horizon. Terrorism kills hundreds and thousands of people every year and causes terrible harm, but it is still unlikely to bring down our societies - if we don’t let it by failing to see what is coming at us. As Nick Kristof states, we must not become consumed by the wrong problems.
Climate change is a far bigger threat than most people are yet aware. The last few weeks have been another avalanche of bad news. It has been a record warm start of the year, to the extent that even seasoned climate scientist have been grasping for words to describe it. “Stunning,” “wow,” “shocker,” “bombshell,” “astronomical,” “insane,”“unprecedented”– these are some of the words climate scientists have used to describe the record-shattering global surface temperatures in February 2016. And yet this information has largely failed to register with media or penetrate into the political and public debate. It is as if the Paris deal in December had magically translated into action, while in reality not very much has happened.
Granted, there are positive sign, with some estimations indicate that carbon emissions are starting to level off, helped among other things by a marked shift in the Chinese use of coal. And we have a rapid and very promising increase in low cost solar energy. In 2015, renewables supplied 10% of global electricity. This is very good but it is just not going at the speed necessary, since 2015 showed the largest ever increase in CO2 concentration.
There is a real risk that dangerous climate change will occur within decades, far quicker than earlier projections and that the consequences will be dire. The research behind this statement was just published but if you don’t want to read the 50 page paper, I dare you to look at the video accompanying this publication. Here the lead author James Hansen describes what’s at stake:
To me, "the potential loss of all coastal cities within this century” is not a message that I can just let pass.
As I have written before, there are very few political leaders to be found that dare to deal with the true impact of climate change. Most to the attention span is given to demagogues like Donald Trump, a man that spews hatred and resentment with the rhetorical skill of another politician with bad haircut, a man that was voted into office some 80 years ago. Trump talks about securing borders and building fences but does not seem to understand the implications of climate change. He can’t even be bothered to get the talking points right. "He isn’t just a climate know-nothing, he’s a climate know-less-than-nothing who doesn’t even know what he doesn’t know."
If we elect “leaders” like Trump or Le Pen in France to deal with a world of global warming and an aggressive Putin, we are lost. So what can we do to really change direction? Understand the problem and the fact that we are way beyond easy solution, a better future is possible but it will need adjustments of our way of life that no politician dare yet talk about. One scientist who has been very outspoken on the kind of change needed is Kevin Anderson from the Tyndall Institute. In a recent interviewhe gave some both blunt and promising answers. As an engineer himself, he says that engineering and innovation is essential for the change needed but but it will not solve the problem quickly enough, there is no way we can reconstruct our energy system in a few years. The fossil fuels need to stay in the ground and that can only be achieved if the demand and use is radically decreased.
And there is a possibility for change that also involves bringing in equity in the solution. Climate impact in the form of emissions and ecological footprint is not equally distributed. We often talk about the role of different countries, but distribution of wealth and carbon emissions is uneven also within countries. If the richest 10% of the world would adopt the meagre lifestyle of an average European (i.e. still on top of the world) that would mean a 30 % reduction of global carbon emissions. That would by us the time necessary to rebuild the energy system.
It can be done, if we are serious about caring for poor people in the present world and giving future generations a chance to inherit a liveable world. But it can not be done if just continue business as usual and defend our lack of action because we feel entitled to a few shopping trips to Paris or London every year. If that is the position we really want to defend let us be clear about it. But If we and our political leaders fail to translate understanding the problem to actions, we might all be seen as complicit terrorists by future historians.
This is not a path we need to follow. It is a choice.
