(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
A small talk at the airport leads to the following comment from the passport controller: "So you work with climate issues. And you fly a lot, I see. Are these activities now in harmony with each other?” I realize that the climate debate has become a universal issue. In record time. Just five to six years ago, it was controversial to say that fossil fuel must remain in the ground. Now "everyone" agrees with this goal. There is only a lack of general agreement on how the goal can be reached, in time.
There is no longer any doubt that it is urgent. The UN's climate panel (IPCC) published its conclusions in 2022. Even if, as of today, we do everything we can to adapt to a worsening climate and limit the planet's warming to 1,5 degrees, according to the experts, it is still too little. Too late because the differences between people are increasing at the same rate. "In the last decade, people in particularly vulnerable regions are 15 times more likely to die from floods, droughts and storms than people living in regions with low vulnerability," writes the IPCC.
The Exxon group spent billions against their better judgment for decades to cast doubt on scientific findings.
After all, can we in the north reassure ourselves with the thought that we live in regions with low vulnerability? Unfortunately no. The Swedish professor and director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research in Berlin, Johan Rockström, has explained that Europe is warming faster than anywhere else on the planet: "When it comes to climate consequences, Europe is planetary Ground Zero."
With our backs to the wall, acceptance of the need to act grows. This acceptance is fatally new. In the Norway of the 70s, awareness of the environmental threats was limited to a small group of zealots who mainly aimed at 'big industry'. Some distinguished themselves as scientific spearheads. Jørgen Randers was one of the researchers behind the report The Limits to Growth, which was published in 1972. It was translated into 36 languages. Mottoes such as 'sustainability' nevertheless had relatively little effect. The environmental movement's activists were often branded as romantic dreamers. Some of them nevertheless received a lot of attention, such as the philosopher and mountain climber Arne Næss. He developed theories around the terms 'deep ecology' and 'ecosophy',with a view of life that placed nature in a larger context, where everything that lives has equal right to life.
The sack term 'big industry' was used as a target for the environmental movement in the 70s. At the time, the terms 'technology' and 'nature' were often perceived as diametric opposites. Today, awareness is growing that we cannot manage without also developing technical solutions to eliminate CO2- the emissions into the atmosphere.
Exxon Mobil's sins
However, big tech and its actors are not always our best friends. We don't have to look far to find someone who knew what they were doing and kept their sins a secret. Like the American oil company Exxon Mobil.
In 2015, journalists found evidence that the company was already aware of the dangers of its own business more than 40 years ago. In 1977, their own scientists warned their leaders of the "potentially catastrophic" consequences of man-made climate change. Now a group of researchers has taken a closer look at the studies the group delivered at the time, and published them in the science magazine Science. Here it becomes clear that Exxon's experts are foreseeing the development with astonishing accuracy. Nevertheless, against their better judgment, the Exxon group has spent billions for decades casting doubt on scientific findings that demonstrate the connection between the use of fossil fuels and global warming. As recently as 2004, Exxon publicly declared that humans' role in climate change was "scientifically uncertain."
So is there any point in spending time and effort on identifying the culprits? Yes, because public opinion is important, and responsibility on behalf of the planet has finally been enshrined in law. In 2021, the UN drafted a resolution that recognized the right to a healthy environment as a general human right. Europe has already seen several cases dealt with in court with the climate crisis as their theme, and where protection of the climate was victorious. If the legal process continues in the same direction, the major oil companies risk finding themselves in a danger zone they never expected. In the meantime, however, Exxon could celebrate a record year in 2022, with a profit of 59 billion dollars – compared to the previous year, an increase of 157 percent (and thanks to Putin's war of aggression).
Carson gave environmental awareness a voice.
Many find it immoral that companies profit to such an extent from the world's problems. They call it "crisis and chance profit". The USA has thus already introduced a corresponding tax, so has the EU. Exxon Mobil has complained about the new tax, which in the last 4 months of 2022 cost them $1,3 billion. Their chief financial officer Kathryn Mikells considered this profit tax to be "bad policy", but what she considered to be good policy, she left unsaid.
Rachel Carson
In the fight for a healthy planet, we need guiding stars. The ecosophist Arne Næss was himself inspired by another pioneer, an American biologist who, with a book in 1962, inspired the global environmental movement. Rachel Carson's SilentSpring (Silent Spring) constituted a crossroads. It describes in heart-wrenching detail the death of nature, through all the environmental toxins the chemical industry spewed out over land and water, partly out of ignorance, partly out of the desire for profit. The producers tried in vain to prevent the book from being published. The US government responded by banning, among other things, the most notorious pesticide DDT.
What is hidden behind this sparse description of the hero? A young Rachel Carson, born in 1907, studied science, which was unusual for women of her time. Her father died early, and Rachel had to work to support the family. She wrote in her spare time, and in the 1940s and 50s she had published a sea trilogy that made her a literary star. She herself saw herself as the 'sea poet', not as the sharp defender of the environment she was later hailed as.
One day she began to receive upset letters from readers telling about dying birds. This was the prelude to Silent Spring. The backdrop is the period after World War II, when the United States began a massive use of insecticides such as DDT, dieldrin and heptachlor – sprayed indiscriminately from airplanes. Carson describes how the poisons rained from the sky, on gardens and livestock, on streets and in rivers, on fields and orchards. She lists the dead beetles, flies and larvae that were picked up by birds, which immediately afterwards lay in convulsions on the ground. In front of Rachel Carson's small house by the sea, the birds are becoming rare, many species are disappearing completely – and with them their singing. Spring has fallen silent.
Rivers and lakes, rainforests, large savannahs, mangrove forests and wetlands.
After the chemical and agrarian industries launched a frontal attack on her, Carson had to defend herself before the US Congress and on television. By then she was dying of cancer, not particularly surprising after all the work with toxic substances. She never experienced what her research led to – on a global scale. In 1968, Hungary was the first country to ban the insecticide DDT, followed by almost all countries in Europe. In the USA, it took until 1972. Two years earlier, the state environmental authority had been founded there, and the law Clean Air Act against air pollution was introduced. Then the Clean Water Act followed.
Carson gave environmental awareness a voice. It says: When humanity poisons nature, nature becomes toxic to humans. In the wake of her efforts, many environmental organizations saw the light of day. But still, development has taken its crooked course. In Carson's time, American farmers had a choice of 37 different pesticides. Today, the figure stands at 1000, and the quantities have increased tenfold. The death of species has developed into a global crisis, which threatens the stability of the earth's systems.
Ecological land use
That the climate crisis and biodiversity crisis are closely linked is an insight that is spreading. The world nature conference in Montreal in December 2022 was also a sign of this. Likewise, the insight is growing that so-called immeasurable values (the beauty of nature, mental well-being in harmony with nature, etc.) can and should actually be measured.
Just like the damage humans have caused, it can and should be measured.
Thus, science has arrived at certain figures. In order for an ecological balance to be achieved on the globe, at least 30 percent of land mass and oceans – which due to human activity are no longer intact – must be reclaimed. In particular, emphasis must be placed on rivers and lakes, rainforests, large savannas, mangrove forests and wetlands. This repair, Greenpeace points out, must only take place in an ecological way. For example, the Montreal Agreement aims to halve the risk of pesticides by 2030. Herein lies a gigantic challenge, as industrialized countries will then have to change their entire agriculture. Many more farmers must switch to organic production and fight harmful plants and insects with other methods. They are also encouraged to give back land to nature, an economic and practical Gordian knot.
This did not become easier after Russia attacked Ukraine, one of the most important grain suppliers in the world. They feared catastrophic consequences for global food production. European farmers' associations and conservative agricultural politicians immediately demanded that wheat be allowed to be planted on areas planned for biodiversity protection – despite the assurances of experts that this would bring minimal results.
And what exactly is organic land use?
In short – wetlands, bogs and moors are among the most effective protectors of the climate; laid dry, they are among the most dangerous climate culprits. Like hardly any other natural biotope, wetlands can bind carbon dioxide. If the water falls below a certain limit, on the other hand, the soil dries out, erodes and releases COXNUMX in addition to large quantities of even more climate-damaging gases – such as methane. It is only after droughts and floods have made climate change impossible to ignore that the experts are heard. The earth needs water. To achieve this, large heath landscapes must be fundamentally rebuilt. And those who use them must be convinced of this: arable farmers, dairy farmers and foresters.
The rich North must provide financial support to the global South, which is least to blame for the planet's warming, but most affected by the consequences.
The reconstruction will take many years and cost a lot. Who does that voluntarily? Agricultural researchers predict: Farmers will in the future return to organic land use – or give up. They can build solar plants. They can grow reeds, which are suitable for environmentally friendly insulation material, packaging, building materials or energy raw material. But this requires a colossal effort of persuasion – in addition to financial support. This is one of the goals of the Montreal Agreement.
At Fuglemyra
There is a place in Nordmarka that I like to turn to when I'm looking for silence. The trip goes over Vettakolltoppen. There it is good to take a breather on the ground and enjoy the view over the Oslo Fjord. Then I stroll on. After ten minutes I am where I want to be and sit down on a rock. It smells of earth and water. The only sound that reaches me here at Fuglemyra is the birdsong.
There are loose pieces in his head. Parts of a mosaic that will form a finished picture of everything needed. Because there is no single solution. All solutions must be used. Now: Science and industry must go hand in hand. The good of the community must prevail over (presumed) self-interest. The nations must urgently move away from fossil fuels and invest more in renewable energy. Agriculture must be revolutionized, wilderness and species diversity must be restored. The rich North must provide financial support to the global South, which is least to blame for the planet's warming, but most affected by the consequences. 30 percent of land and water must be protected – at the expense of indigenous peoples? Those who from time immemorial have used nature's services sustainably?
If we continue to cut down rainforests, rob the sea for fish, seal the ground with asphalt so that more and more people can drive everywhere, we will saw off the increasingly thin branch we cling to.
The most difficult realization of all is probably that we are in a new era. Nothing is or will be as before. Seeking solutions for the future the way we did in the past is doomed to failure. I think of Rachel Carson, her knowledge and courage. Large parts of academia never accepted her, because she was not a member of the club. But her name will forever be imprinted in history and connected to the future. She loved birds and refused to be silenced – like the silent spring.
Perhaps this is exactly where we need to start. With feeling one with the earth we walk on and will one day become one with. The philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe found poetic words about exactly this, published in the article "Hvad er tindesport" (What is mountaneering) in 1933.
"But the intention, the people ask, the meaning, the goal? There is no intention, there is no goal. Mountaineering is meaningless like life itself – therefore its magic will never die. One day – when that which had purpose and intention and meaning covers the earth like autumn leaves, then there will be pillars in your memory shining with an unquenchable flame. By them you will know, when you stand at the last cairn, that you have breathed the earth itself.»
