This week, a child in my family was evacuated from a typhoon in Korea, I have relatives who had to leave a flooded cabin on Ål in a hurry, and one of my closest family members has been stuck in a flood on the mountain in Sel.
The terrifying future that scientists have been trying to depict for us for decades is here. I fear for people I love. And I fear for the future, which could be much, much worse. I call it climate fear. I don’t use the word climate anxiety. Because anxiety is something you turn inward, towards something abstract, while horror is a natural reaction to a real danger.
I’m looking for hope that this will go well, but it’s gotten harder. We are good at talking about the practical disadvantages a conversion to a greener life can entail, but far too bad at talking about how demanding it is to live with this new fear of the future and where we find hope.
This must change everything, I thought in the first months of the corona pandemic, trying to find comfort in the chaos: Afterwards, when this is over, we can’t continue as before. Now we have seen how adaptable we are, now we have seen how quickly we can change, how well we cooperate when we really have to.
But covid changed nothing. Norwegians are less concerned about the climate and nature crisis now than they were before the pandemic. And not only that: “Is the climate crisis man-made?” 39 percent of Norwegians answer in theor I do not know on this question.
Almost 40 percent of Norwegians therefore do not believe in science. Is the climate crisis our blind spot? It is perhaps painful to realize that oil, which has given our country so much prosperity, is also to blame for the crisis we are now facing.
And it doesn’t help that we have a government that tells us that we can and should continue largely as before. Because the subtext in a communication about business as usual is precisely that the climate crisis is not really that dangerous.
I wish we replaced the black leader’s jersey with a green one, I wrote in a column in 2018, that we became the pioneering country on climate that we have the opportunity to be. That we spent our oil billions on the future, instead of disposing of the money in the same way as we have always done. That Norway, which has earned all our money exactly on fossil fuels, took on extra responsibility.
Both because it is the morally right thing to do and because we can. We are a small country without too many restrictions, and change is easier here than in many other places. We are also good at volunteering.
It’s been five years now, and little has happened. The world needs leading countries, someone who goes ahead and shows the way, but Norway shows little desire to be that country. And how are we going to get anywhere as a nation when we don’t even believe what the world’s leading scientists tell us, and nature shows us, again and again, through increasingly extreme weather events? And when we have politicians who neither communicate the degree of seriousness nor take the necessary measures?
Where is the Winston Churchill of the climate struggle, asks Carsten Jensen. And it is perhaps precisely a Churchill that I also want, a politician who dares to say “I have nothing else to offer but blood, toil, sweat and tears” and who tells us that we must act.
Hope is inextricably linked to action. We know that we have to make enormous changes in a short time and I want a politician who says exactly that, who has a plan for the changes. A politician who does not promise that we can continue as before, but who, on the other hand, dares to tell us the opposite.
That the transition can be tough, that we have to sacrifice something, that some of the benefits we have taken for granted may be lost, that we have to change the way we live in order to preserve what is most important to us humans and to everyone other species we share this globe with: a stable climate, a wild nature, a safe world, a world that fills us with faith in the future instead of fear.
I would much rather that my life becomes a little less comfortable, than living with an ever-increasing fear of the future. And I would infinitely rather drop flights and reduce consumption than see my children’s home being torn away by masses of water or experience our neighboring European countries disappearing in fire.
The pandemic showed us how adaptable we are. Now we need the same pressure, the same degree of action to solve the climate crisis.
Dear Jonas Gahr Støre, dear government, you have a responsibility to change the course and thus also to give us courage.
You have an opportunity to create visions instead of fear. How about starting the autumn with a press conference about the climate crisis and what Norway can and must do? And then follow up in the months and years to come, with the same seriousness as you showed us during the pandemic?
Please promise us both blood, sweat and tears. We put up with it, because we want to do something, we want to contribute. It is action and change that give us the hope we now need, not more of the politics that are about to make the world so frightening.
ALSO READ:
2023-08-12 14:54:06
#Promise #blood #sweat #tears #Jonas
