The climate threat
Stop scaring young people, they say - but who's nasty?
Pointing out threats isn't scary, being rational is
Jonathan Jeppsson
Digging manager and climate columnist
This is a commenting text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.
Updated 11.03 | Published 10.16
”Hope you're on your feet when you give our children climate anxiety."
The email comes from a "Lars" and he is not alone.
If there is a reaction that repeatedly appears from the more skeptical part of the readership, it is this.
"Don't spread climate anxiety to young people, they have enough problems", it is usually said.
The objection is not
unreasonable, on the contrary, it is understandable. If there is
anything that is difficult, it is talking to today's young people about
climate change. It is close at hand to want to talk about something else
or to sound excessively cheerful about the possibilities.
“How tiring you are. Loves to scare young people," writes one reader.
So what's so scary I've written?
Yes, among other things, I have written about this year being the warmest marmest ever.
That several planetary boundaries are at risk of being broken, which
can trigger tipping points, breaking points, where changes begin to
reinforce themselves. They then become basically impossible to stop.
According
to the IPCC's latest synthesis report, the risk is high that
irreversible changes, including for the large ice sheets or the tropical
forests, will be triggered somewhere in the range of 1.5–2.5 degrees of
warming. And that's where we're headed.
Despite all our global agreements and accords like the one concluded at COP29 in Baku last night, emissions continue to rise – fossil carbon dioxide emissions are expected to grow by 0,8 percent this year. In other words, the transition, the so-called "green" one, has not started yet.
Once
we pass 1.5 degrees, it will be very difficult to go back down -
especially given that the technology to reabsorb all the carbon dioxide
is in its infancy or not yet invented. If you are going to the moon
soon, a rocket is good - in this case, the rocket has barely started.
And, unfortunately, no one knows exactly how it will be completed.
To
this must be added great uncertainties that it would have been good to
keep at a safe distance - such as the risk of the AMOC ocean current
system, of which the Gulf Stream is a part, stopping and collapsing. A
brand new study
in Nature argues that the risks have been underestimated, that
regardless of what it is due to, a strong weakening of the AMOC has been
seen since the mid-20th century. The circulation that brings heat up
towards our latitudes could become 33 percent weaker with two degrees of
global warming. Such a weakening of the circulation would have
significant consequences for the climate: it would then become very cold
in northern Europe. "The breaking point of the AMOC can change the
lives of our children," writes Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, who has researched the AMOC since the early 90s.
Faced with these challenges,
it is easy to want to defend yourself. Anyone who points out the risks
in turn runs the risk of being singled out as a doomsday prophet. The
desire to provide a counter-image, a more hopeful scenario, is great.
I
sometimes return to one of the clearest examples of this, the book
"Apocalypse's gosiga mörker" from 2009, by the author and journalist
Anders Bolling. In the book, he believes that journalism views the world
too negatively. He claims, among other things, that the time of war is
basically over and that deadly violence in Sweden is a thing of the
past. Bolling rails against those who see Russia as a threat, believes
that the era of hyperinflation is behind us and downplays the climate
threat by referring to a snowy year here and there. There will be a lot
of arbitrary guesses and totally incorrect forecasts, one can state like
this a few years later. The book shows how difficult it is to predict
the future and how easy it is to make mistakes.
However, there is
a big difference between predicting societal development and climate
change. World politics is unpredictable. The impact of greenhouse gases
in the atmosphere, on the other hand, is a matter of relatively
predictable science.
In his book, Bolling refers several times to
economist Francis Fukuyama's book "The End of History and the Last Man"
from 1992. Fukuyama claimed there that history has reached its end in
our time, that the decisive battles in the great drama of humanity have
already been fought - liberalism, democracy and the market economy had
won. Fukuyama was right and everything that has happened has
strengthened his thesis, writes Bolling in his book in 2009. Now we know
that it didn't really turn out that way - there is a democratic decline
in the world and more and more people lever in dictatorships. Even Fukuyama himself admits today
his misjudgments and that he did not fully grasp the thoughts of
"political decay" - that once a country has become a democracy, it can
also go in the opposite direction.
For many years, some
politicians, writers and debaters have played down the climate threat.
They have argued that it is excessive and that it is politically
motivated. Like the SD member who claimed ten years ago that the warming
has stopped or the M member who thinks that the earth has basically not warming up at all.
But
pointing out threats isn't really scary. It is being rational.
Installing a fire alarm is not something to be intimidated by. Arming
the defense is not being a doomsday prophet.
"You
are scaring our children and young people so that more will seek help
at BUP!", writes one reader. But as I said, the concern is not entirely
justified - it is much better for both young and old to know what risks
exist. The world will not end, it will change. But humans, on the other
hand, are quite good at adaptation - if we understand the challenges.
There is also research that shows that a dark view of the future can become a driving force for change.
The really nasty are probably rather statements like these:
In 2018, Stefan Löfven promised Sweden's young people to fix the 1.5 degree target. Without ifs, without buts, without maybes,
the then Prime Minister stated. Today's young people didn't even have
to do anything, they would know "certainly in their hearts" that it
would work out, said the prime minister. And it was politicians like him
who would make it happen.
Recently there were estimates that indicate that we will break the 1.5 degree limit already this year.
But no one can demand any responsibility from Stefan Löfven anymore, he has been gone from the political scene for a long time.
Without having to be held accountable for the promises he made.
THAT is what scares
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