The time is ripe for a change of direction. If we succeed, both tomato soup against Rembrandt, burst oil pipelines and worse can be avoided in the future. When the activist Joachim Skahjem used the word violence in news’s Debatten recently, he later clarified it to sabotage. But he did not rule out that violence against people would also take place, without him himself having ambitions to contribute to it. Skahjem was inspired by Andreas Malm and his influential book How to Blow up a Pipeline (2021), which was discussed when Malm visited Oslo at my invitation a few months ago. Malm’s view is that non-violence rarely or never leads to system change. He makes a sharp distinction between sabotage against infrastructure and violence against people. However, the Indian climate activists in Kim Stanley Robinson’s widely discussed novel The Ministry of the Future (2020) do not. The book begins with a heat wave that kills 20 million Indians. Like the summer drought in Europe, the heat on the Ganges plain is well known, but never before has it had such intensity. There is thus a direct connection between fossil capitalism and the disaster in India, and ultimately it is the fossil fuel producers who bear the greatest responsibility. The Indian activists in the book call themselves Children of Kali (Kali is a feared Hindu goddess). They blow up passenger planes to show that they mean business. Is it inconceivable that something similar will happen in reality? While the Norwegian media talk paternalistically about the rich countries now having to “help” poor countries that are affected by a global problem they did not create themselves, researchers and spokespeople for the countries in the south talk more precisely about climate justice. The Norwegian media coverage of the climate crisis rarely emphasizes that Norway is part of the problem and not part of the solution. At a time like this, it is important to read the newspapers between the lines, both to assess the angles and to register what they do not write about. It is not only Russians who risk being manipulated by their mass media. Allow me to mention another example. Norwegian arms exports to Qatar and Norsk Hydro’s aluminum plant in the same country are rarely mentioned in our media, as it is felt to be more important to appear morally spotless by criticizing the Gulf state’s treatment of migrant workers, women and sexual minorities. The fact is that both the crown prince and the minister of business visited Qatar in 2019 to celebrate fifty years of successful economic cooperation. I don’t remember seeing this mentioned by football moralists in the Norwegian press. And it is no less gross derailment to talk about future carbon capture or electrification of ferries in Western Norway, as long as the Norwegian government assures the oil industry that they will continue the search for new deposits. This was Minister Marte Mjøs Persen’s message to the industry in Stavanger on 25 October this year. The statement was neither referred to nor discussed in the press afterwards. It is easy to understand the impatience in the action-oriented parts of the environmental movement, as Ragnhild Kvist Simonsen (Writing 29/11) expresses precisely. For my part, I would probably advise against the use of tomato soup and paint as tools, based on the general principle that anything reminiscent of carnival is better than tomato soup. In addition, there are many positive measures at local level and on a small scale. Regardless, the point is that with current national policy, it is inconceivable that a country like Norway will come close to reaching climate targets that have been adopted and adjusted regularly for thirty years. Why then do politicians claim that they will be able to meet the climate targets? Three interpretations immediately come to mind: * They juggle so that it flows off them. * They lack knowledge of the country they rule. * They believe in magic. A fourth interpretation is that the politicians assume that their existing toolbox contains the tools needed. Both researchers, activists and committed citizens have admittedly objected for a long time that the politicians are only capable of solving yesterday’s problems, which arose out of scarcity and not abundance. The dream of growth and prosperity was shared by politicians and the population a hundred years ago, and remained alive through the first post-war period, when there were long waiting lists to get a telephone, when farmers cheered when Gråtassen finally replaced Blakken, and many still lived in drafty gray bone farms with outdo. Now we have long found ourselves in a time of other challenges, but the road map lags behind. It is still talked about as if growth capitalism and overconsumption are not the main problem. The experiences from the pandemic could make a difference. It showed that politicians are capable of making unpopular decisions that lead to major changes in everyday life, and that most people accept this as long as the politicians treat us with respect. The state of emergency also showed that what matters most in life does not necessarily contribute to increased consumption and economic growth. When researchers asked people what they missed most, the answers were often about being with others and having something meaningful to do. It is not necessary to celebrate Black Friday, to install app-controlled heating cables in the cabin or to travel on five southern holidays a year to live well. A progressive climate policy will be able to meet the most important needs in an environmentally friendly and climate-neutral way. This is possible, it will not be easy, and everyone’s efforts are equally important (“everyone must participate”), but a general requirement must be that new measures should not contribute to further destruction of the future. For our own part, we will then be able to enter the history books as wise forefathers and foremothers, not as irresponsible and short-sighted egoists.
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Tomato soup, paint and climate spill – Expression
