(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
In Europe at the moment there is a double climate crisis: increasing warming – and people's reluctance to hear more about it. Politicians avoid the topic to avoid the anger of voters.
Climate has become a losing topic. Historian Hedwig Richter and journalist Bernd Ulrich oppose this tendency. Their book Democracy and Revolution is a battle script. Here they advocate a democracy that must be revived, and a revolution that has been freed from its masculine kitsch.
It's about our ecological century and our political emergency. According to the author duo, citizens and politics must acquire a new way of thinking, with a new vocabulary. The struggles of the XNUMXth century, which were defined by the conflict between capital and labor and the opposition to nationalism, are certainly not over. However, the flawed human-nature relationship follows the logic of the XNUMXst century. It is already long ago that then US Vice President Al Gore stated : "The minimum necessary to combat climate change exceeds the maximum potential of policy making."
What is at stake
The paradigm shift that Richter and Ulrich want is of course not a revolution in the Marxist sense, the one that sweeps away the democratic system. They argue instead for a change in climate policy direction, so fundamental that it resembles a revolution – one that brings people out of a self-inflicted disempowerment. Climate politicians, the authors maintain, support this disempowerment. Out of narrow political self interest they present more offensive measures as a form of violation of human rights. "Instead of explaining to people what is at stake, instead of convincing and motivating them, they assure them that no one should have to fear sacrifices."
What is being done is too late and too little. That is the essence of the analysis. "We can tell ourselves what we want, but in the summer of 2023 the water temperature at the Florida Keys was 39,4 degrees. This is unparalleled and as warm as bathtub water. The world's oceans are collapsing – in the foreseeable future they will contain more plastic than fish. One million species are currently threatened with extinction."
An awareness journey
Bernd Ulrich is deputy editor-in-chief of the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, where he regularly criticises the government. The book he has written in tandem with Richter goes in the same direction, but both facts and arguments span a wider canvas and describe the world we all see around us. The two point to an almost paralyzing environmental legislation: "However well it was intended, it has rarely stopped the destruction, only slowed down the speed. They have convinced people that intention was the same as deed, increased environmental awareness the same as improved environment.”
Right from the invention of the steam engine until today, oil and coal have stood for progress, prosperity and welfare for the many.
They take us on a journey of awareness through democracys history, shows how closely linked democracy is with fossil fuel consumption. Right from the invention of the steam engine until today, oil and coal have stood for progress, prosperity and welfare for the many. "At the same time, we see today that the combined economic power of the West and its military support for Ukraine have not been able to force Vladimir Putin into capitulation or at least bankrupt him (...). On the contrary, in the wake of the Russian aggression, new permits for oil drilling have been handed out around the world and new gas fields have been opened – fossil infrastructure is being expanded further (...). Without exaggeration, it can be stated today that the history of the West is at a turning point and the history of humanity at a crossroads. We are in the echo zone of the Western way of life.”
Homo suicidalis
The chapter on the social question is punishing and deals with the special responsibility that rests on the academic middle class, to which the authors and the majority of their readers belong. If this social group does not change its basic attitudes and consumption standards, how can they, as environmentalists, avoid the label of hypocrisy? Whatever it is – eating less meat, driving less, wasting less resources – discipline and renunciation are required of everyone. It is a prerequisite for the freedom of the next generations. And no – technological solutions cannot carry the load alone. A collective science seems to agree on that.
Is it a failing faith in the future, is it a lack of faith in oneself, is it cynicism, fatigue under the weight of all the crises, is it rage?
It may look like we belong to the species Homo suicidalis. We know everything we need to know. With the Paris Agreement for the protection of species and the climate, we have set ourselves the right goals. Why are people still unable to pull themselves out of self-destruction? Is it resignation? Ulrich and Richter ask. Is it a failing faith in the future, is it a lack of belief in oneself, is it cynicism, fatigue under the weight of all the crises, is it rage? In their eyes, it boils down to the question of what fundamentally makes life worth living.
Animals become partners, their right to life recognized; the educated citizenry becomes more humble, ecological participation becomes a fundamental right...
Here we are encouraged to find a way back to what in the democratic law abiding society has lost focus. In this blur, the necessity of renunciation is swept under the rug – freedom becomes consumerism, political hocus-pocus rhetoric lulls people to sleep, right-wing extremists take the stage. The ecological crisis threatens to intensify precisely in the historical era in which the power of the West is also declining.
Democracy and Revolution is a deep dive into the themes of democracy, ecology and the importance of counteracting a fatal lethargy. The authors are far from an on-the-one-side-and-on-the-other-side relativism.
In the end, they land on a 'utopia to go'. They also call it the last remaining realism: society's goals are redefined, people free themselves from a destructive life, 21st century grammar is formulated and acquired as you go, politics works with, not against, the truth. People are spoken to as adults, not as consumer children; the old normality is discarded; animals become partners, their right to life recognized; the educated bourgeoisie becomes more humble, education serves clarification, not repression; ecological participation becomes a fundamental right, the tax system becomes fairer, technology becomes an engine of transformation and a celebration of human ingenuity – without serving as an excuse for business as usual.
Between democracy and ecology
Is this even possible? At least in part? We'll see. For sure Ulrich and Richter have made a bold contribution to reducing the gap between democracy and ecology, between the inevitable pressure of time and democracy's apparently God-given inertia.
