Climate. "These talks are helping to push the negotiations further," said Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg (H) during the climate summit, which gathered 120 of the world's top leaders in the UN building in New York City on Tuesday this week.
(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Prior to the meeting, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and more closely 400.000 others, including Norway's Minister for the Environment, Tina Sundtoft, had taken a climate demonstration through the city's streets.
"There is too much distance between what we heard people talking about in the streets and what is said at the climate meetings," Sundtoft told Aftenposten after the climate march. She could have added that there was a difference between what she says in the media herself and what her own boss says in the climate meetings, including in the UK's UN post.
There is too much distance in the climate debate: So to say “everyone” officially agrees that much or something needs to be done. But when this "something" is concreteized, it is the "most readily available fruits", as Solberg predecessor Jens Stoltenberg (Ap) said in Bali in 2007, which is picked.
Fattigtrøsten. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Norway is hailed for renewed rainforest efforts, now also in Liberia and Peru. Or focus on food production and financial support for technology transfer and green growth in developing countries. These are the easiest and cheapest solutions for oil Norway. Which allows rich Norwegians to buy indulgences for our climate sins. But symbolic rainforest conservation on the other side of the earth is a poor consolation for most poor people.
SV's former Environment Minister Heikki Holmås, and several with him, have pointed out that the difficult Norwegian, national cuts are omitted from Solberg's boast list: “She did not talk about how Norway should cut in the emissions she herself has control over. We have to cut oil recovery. By failing to say anything about what Norway should do with its own emissions, she fails all of us who joined the climate march on Sunday. ”
Holmås himself was in government with the Labor Party and the Center Party, and he knows how difficult these cuts are to make an impact. Yes, it had to be an all-green party in the Storting before the debate about what Norway should do after the oil was finally taken somewhat more seriously also by others.
Ready to burst. Many of the climate demonstrators on the streets of New York or New Dehli on September 21 have a different language than spoken within the walls of the climate summits, where multinational companies such as Nestlé and Unilever have now positioned themselves.
The protesters have the obvious: The oil must lie, and the tax on climate-friendly fuel must be established together with an international climate law. For as the civil disobedience campaign in New York on Monday, the day after the big climate march, told the world with its large, gray and floating beach balls:
"The carbon bubble will burst" – and the sound of that bubble will make the housing bubbles of history seem pleasant.
Therefore action. But what about us ordinary consumers? Green growth sounds alluring, but does everyone need to grow? Do Norwegians need to be even richer? What if we left consumption growth to someone else for a while?
Individual initiatives are often set up against major system changes, and that the individual cannot take responsibility and find solutions to the climate problem alone. It is absolutely right. But Ny Tid believes that the individual can withstand more pressure than exists today. Norwegians can consume differently and use the climate argument more often in their daily "buy, do not buy" dilemmas. Or "travel, do not travel." When did you last hear / use a climate argument?
Leader of the Future in our hands, Arild Hermstad, points out in his latest blog post that "there is a significant climate problem that we Norwegians fly more often and farther with each passing year."
He says that in the summer of 2015, Norwegians set another record in the number of flights. The climate impact of Norwegians' air travel has never been greater. "Hardly anyone in the world flies more than us," Hermstad writes. Aviation, domestic and foreign, accounts for almost 10 per cent of Norwegian greenhouse gas emissions. It is more than the emissions from Norwegians' car journeys.
Pushes hard. The decolonization of Africa did not happen because of one single event that turned everything down. Nor did it happen because the colonial lords suddenly found that it was ethically wrong to be, indeed, a colonial lord. There were a number of single factors that suddenly loosened the grip on the French, British, Portuguese and Belgian colonies. Some much more violent than others.
Similarly, there is probably not one major solution to the climate problem. There are millions of small changes every day that together can push the world into new development tracks. Politicians, multinational corporate leaders, environmental movement, trade union movement, indigenous groups, media, writers, cultural figures and individuals can make the changes.
Technological advances, changing consumption and brave climates can make the world greener. Then it won't help with a small puff from Solberg in Manhattan. She must rather be pushed hard to admit that Norway's oil must also lie in the ground.
