The climate police are in the streets. Dressed in helmets and in rebel uniform, they crack down on protesters marching under a series of flags in the long procession.
They are protesting against the right to drive their old fossil-fueled vehicles, against new wind farms and against sorting the damn rubbish. It has become popular, and part of the resistance struggle, to burn their rubbish at home on the plot. It’s becoming unmanageable. The police must constantly move out to residential areas in the cities.
In some places, the authorities have only had to give up. The bonfires burn almost continuously. The aging Sylvi Listhaug, former leader of the Progress Party – now renamed the Freedom Party – leads the demonstration, but is handcuffed and led away to screams and shouts.
It was not the intention of the authoritarian climate state to start imprisoning its opponents. After a series of demonstrations for years, with the onset of violent elements, and with more and more rubbish burning in the streets, arrests have now become commonplace. Censorship laws are on the way. The climate state has got its first prisoners of conscience.
Prisoner of conscience – without a conscience, it sounds dismissively ironic from the supporters of the climate dictatorship on social media.
DEMONSTRATES: Extinction Rebellion demonstrates in Oslo. Video: Celina Morken sea view
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These are not like that future dystopias we are used to reading when the topic is climate. It is often rising sea levels and societal collapse due to climate change itself, which are the ingredients. Economist Jørgen Randers (77), a pioneer in the Norwegian climate movement, nevertheless makes it relevant to cultivate an alternative dystopia.
In Klassekampen on Saturday, he declared once again that he is a supporter of an authoritarian state, in the name of the climate struggle.
Since Randers was involved in publishing the book Limits to growth in 1972, which was later sold in 30 million copies, he has repeated the message that growth will eventually lead to collapse. Solving the problem will require higher taxes, more regulation, bans and subsidies, and Randers has given up the belief that it will be possible to secure a political majority for this. The population thinks too short-term. The market does not succeed because the changes are not profitable from an investor perspective, he believes.
The solution to Randers thus becomes the authoritarian state.
The question is just: Why that?
Randers is a supporter of China’s authoritarian action and five-year plans. China is developing a lot of renewable energy. It can just as well be said to be the result of an enormous economic room for maneuver and industrial capacity, as a result of the authoritarian. It is also tempting to ask a million oppressed Uighurs, and the people of Hong Kong who have lost their democracy, if they want to join in the applause.
The authoritarian model state Randers envisions simply does not exist.
Authoritarian twists in other major countries give rather the opposite result. Trump in the United States, and Bolsonaro in Brazil, are examples of how authoritarian leaders are fighting against climate measures, not for.
The biggest mystery, however, is this: Why travel to authoritarian states on the other side of the globe in search of successful climate policy, when we have it here on our doorstep?
The world’s most successful climate policy is short-lived, and is being developed in the EU – a collection of some of the world’s most well-developed democracies.
In cooperation, these countries managed to meet their targets for emission cuts by 2020. The democracies are grinding together in Brussels towards new goals. The EU is now putting the finishing touches on the plant to be “ready for 55” – which means a 55 percent cut in emissions by 2030.
Jørgen Randers will probably think that this comment caricatures his ideas. His concrete proposal for Norway is to establish an upper house that will provide guidelines for everything that has to do with climate.
Randers only forgets that liberal democracy has already developed mechanisms similar to this: Constitutions, and human rights, to which Norway has committed itself.
The Constitution’s so-called “environmental section”, section 112, was the starting point for the climate lawsuit that came up before the Supreme Court in 2020. It did not end in favor, but set a new precedent for requirements for mapping climate consequences in connection with oil developments. The case has also been appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, where it has high priority.
A climate lawsuit in an authoritarian state is, of course, unthinkable. Such states simply do not have legal certainty.
It may seem strange to care a lot about what a single environmental pioneer thinks. What is also a pity is that Randers’ principles about the planet’s endurance limits are important. The tradition of ideas he helped to start is in many ways the basis for the development of radical climate policy aimed at zero emissions and nature conservation, such as in the EU.
When climate work has nevertheless been so slow, many people lose patience with good reason. Civil disobedience actions have become part of the daily news picture. Activists glue themselves to the gallery in the Storting, attach themselves to the tennis net during the French Open, or sit in the roadway on the main access road to Trondheim in the middle of rush hour. Civil disobedience is legitimate. These people have not necessarily given up on democracy, but it is a warning.
Randers uses its weight to offer an authoritarian opening. It can mislead good forces. Pursuing an anti-democratic line is a sure recipe for political radicalization and marginalization. Just ask old, remorseful AKP (ml) ere.
Politics is always interest struggle. Democratic institutions are built to resolve the struggle for interest in a peaceful way, so that everyone can all settle down with the result – even the one who has lost.
Anyone who wants to replace this process with something authoritarian must be prepared to enforce the policy by force instead. The idea of the climate police soon knocks on the door.
Anyone who wants to reject democracy, and dress in armor in an authoritarian climate fight, does not secure a better future. Rather, it guarantees that the future will be unfree, and thus miserable – no matter how the emissions go.
