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

Du får ingen respirator av RUT

När nu Corona-krisen slår till med full kraft i Sverige blir det många frågor kring vår bristande beredskap:

• Varför testar vi inte alla för Covid19?
• Varför har intensivvården så få respiratorer?
• Varför finns det inte 10 miljoner skyddsmasker i lager?

Det är många som nu upptäcker luckorna i vår samhälleliga förmåga till krishantering, när beredskapslagren visade sig vara tomma. De 30+ fältsjukhus vi en gång hade är nu bara två och medicinlagren försvann när det statliga Apoteket privatiserades. Det hjälper inte stort att apotekskedjorna har ett stort utbud av hudkrämer när det är Alvedon och handsprit du vill ha. Besparingskrav och “new public management” inom sjukvården blev en giftig kombination i skarpt läge.

En del av de som nu med emfas efterfrågar insatser från samhället har under det senaste decenniet säkert glatt sig åt skattesänkningar och byggt om sina lägenheter och sommarhus med ekonomiskt stöd av ROT-avdrag. Det kan ju vara trevligt men men du får ingen respirator av RUT och Doktor Kry kommer inte att sköta om dig när du behöver intensivvård. När andnöden känns i brösten är snabb vård via appen för enkla åkommor inte lika värdefull. Allt kan inte lösas "just in time”:

"Man är van vid film on demand och mat on demand. Då vill man kanske också bli frisk on demand”

Det handlar också om eget ansvar. Trots de uttryckliga varningar om att personer över 70 är den viktigaste riskgruppen, så finns det pensionärer som tycker det är viktigare att köpa ål i Östermalmshallen är att skydda sig själva och undvika att överbelasta sjukvården. Den import av smitta som vi hade vid pandemins start kom i stor utsträckning via skidåkare som återvände från Alperna. Var det samma personer eller deras vänner som spred smittan vidare på aftersski i Åre? Där kan det också finnas en möjlig förklaring till den stora smittspridning som verkar ha skett på Järvafältet i Stockholm. Kan det ha varit via taxichaufförer som körde hem trötta och snoriga skidresenärer som smittan fick fäste? Förhoppningsvis kommer epidemiologer att studera detta framöver.

Idag stängde Finland av Helsingforsregionen för att undvika att storstadsbor flyr ut på landet och tar smittan med sig. I Sverige har kommuner med sommarparadis som Smögen och Kungshamn sett att mängder av storstadsbor har tagit sin coronatillflykt till sina fritidsbostäder. Därför beslöt en enig omsorgsnämnd i Sotenäs att neka hemtjänst och omsorg till visstidsboende som inte är folkbokförda där. Är det dags för resestopp för Stockholms invånare innan de hinner sprida smittan vidare över landet under påskhelgen?

Den kris vi nu är mitt uppe i kommer att kosta, både för samhället och personligt. Det handlar om mycket mer än pengar och börsvärde. För många kommer det att leda till svår sjukdom eller förlust av nära anhöriga. Det är ett val vad vi lär oss av coronakrisen och hur den är kopplad till andra risker. Vi kan ta det som intäkt till att bygga ett robust och hållbart samhälle, ett samhälle som både klarar nästa pandemi och att ställa om för att hantera den redan uppenbara klimatkrisen. Den omställningen  kommer också att “kosta”, men blir långt billigare än att försöka starta om ett trasigt system. Valet handlar i mångt och mycket om fortsatt “Jag” eller mera “Vi" under de kommande åren, men kanske framför allt om ett val mellan livskvalitet och tillväxt. Förhoppningsvis inser vi det när vi får lämna vår valda och/eller påtvingade karantän och åter får gå ut och upptäcka glädjen i att möta naturen.

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!