The eternal crisis

Humanity has become its own greatest enemy. We have made progress, and improved the lives of millions, but at a high price. Our progress has been economical, not spiritual. We have chosen to exploit the earth, rather than to learn to live with it. We have pursued profit up to a point where we are depleted of resources, and not only those profits but our very survival is threatened.

These words are my own, and they all ring true to me. It is not a controversial statement - it is a more or less well formulated sum up of what ecologism stand for in today's debate.

Empirical data seems to support such a vision - no other animal has ever treathened Homo Sapiens. In the first quarter of 2010, 314,7 mn mobile phones were sold, which indicates the enormous scope of economic development. In spite of this, no one would argue that art or litterature has reached a higher level of development. As for how we treat the earth, think about the river Titas in Bangladesh or deforestation in the Amazon (or are we bettering?). Where there ain't much rubber left, anymore. In stead we have to make rubber from petroleum products. I guess you haven't missed we are running out of oil? It is hard to see how we will live in a world without oil, even harder in one more than two degrees warmer, the scenario that we should get used to.

The odd thing is that writing this feels relevant. A few years ago, when I was competition-blogging about climate change, I could easily have written something like this and being praised for it. But it is an old story, and should be so even to my grandmother. Earlier today I finished a neat litte book by the Swedish writer Elin Wägner - Fred med Jorden. Where she writes exactly the same thing. The book as written during the second world war. But the same idea, clad in better words, is easy to locate also in Gandhi's or Tolstoj's writings from the late 19th century.

Isn't is strange, how we can live a hundred year under an immidate threat to our existence? It is easy to think that the ecological question is maybe not so urgent after all, if we have managed so well until now. On the other hand a friend just yesterday told me how fast he had seen the glaciers in the Alps dissapearing, and there is a lot of hands-on information about the loss of ice in the arctic and antarctic regions as well. To presume that a world without ice will be a similar word seems to contradict physics.

Well, maybe there will come out something from the Large Hadron Collider that changes all we know about physics, and explains why ecological crises do not really affect us.

Or maybe this is a political question, as much as one about science. Maybe it is about the clash of two ideologies - one seeing man as master of the universe, and the other one seeing man as a species among others. A clash that has been raging since the beginnings of industrial society.

That is almost certainly a valid description of reality. Somewhere out there there is a reality - less ice and less life, but it is interpretated through our pre-determined minds. I guess that is why we can not really discuss climate change, or environment politics - such topics are most often perceived either as political correctness or as ill-guided radicalism.

The world in 2012

The climate in 2012 I am traveling to Bulgaria to celebrate New Year Eve and since I calculated to spend six hours traveling I got myself a copy of The Economist's The World in 2012. 24 hours later I am still traveling and so i could read it twice if I wanted. Which I might. The Economist is one of my favorite English language publications, and I am a big fan of the way the combine insight with a great prose. This time I feel a little let down. The 2011 I lived through was a year not so much of politics as of deep transformations. It was climate change, peak oil and #occupywallstreet. We have yet to see what comes out of that movement, and I did not expect the Economist to sympathize with a movement saying that the interest of 1% is contrary to that of 99%. But I was eager to read some analysis of the return of street politics in the western world. There was none, just a one sentence speculation that US Left wing populism might gt violent in 2012. Did they use a NYPD white shirt officer to edit the paper, or what?

Peak Oil is discussed in one article, that actually hopes that OPEC will use its influence to lower oil prices and boost global growth. Are there people at the Economist who actually believe that the current oil prices are inflated by greedy sheiks? During my 2011 countries like Saudi Arabia struggled to meet demand, and will continue to do so in 2012. As for climate change, the treatment of the issue was disheartening. The buzz phrase was sprinkled over the text were appropriate, but in every occasion described as a political choice, e.g. what will it mean for UK politics when the government tries to curb co2 emissions? That is a valid question, of course, but not at all what I expected from the Economist. If someone accepts climate change as a reality, it is also clear that it will have tremendous effect on all kinds of social and economical life. Floods might disrupt industries, or new crops can become profitable. An initiated analysis of how climate change will affect the global economy would be among the most relevant reading right now. How sad that the Economist fails to deliver that. The writers seem to presume that business and politics can exist somehow independently of the physical world they exist in, something that they know very well is not true. But I guess some graphs predictions about how severe weather will affect the US economy would cause furore, and anger the papers' readership. In publishing, you give the people what the people wants.

Climate change arrives in Sweden

2011 is likely to go to history as the year that the New Climate started affecting Sweden. Not only has this Christmas been one of the warmest ever - insurance costs caused by extreme weather was up 18% since last year according to the local insurance industry. A spokesman for the insurers explains that climate change will mean more extreme weather, with increased prices for insurances as a result.

The insurance industry has for a long time been the great hope of many industrialists, including me. Not because an inherent goodness - this industry is probably as controlled by greed as any other. Which is what makes insurance companies interesting - they are set to lose a lot of money from more volatile weather, and have a strict vested interest in combating climate change.

It is nice to see the Swedish insurers out of the closet - hopefully they can lend some weight to environmentalists demands for more robust climate politics. I have a secret dream that they would actually use their power and refuse to insure companies that work against them - like oil drilling companies. BP would not exist today if Deepwater Horizon had not been insured. On the other hand it is probably a very bad idea to let private companies use political power.

Nonetheless, climate change is now not only a question for environmentalists. It is a new business reality that has officially arrived in Sweden.

Ni är inte ensamma!

When I first visited Bulgaria, in the fall of 2007, I could not help but notice posters, billboards, buttons everywhere saying "Ne ste sami!" It means "you are not alone", and is probably the first full sentece I learned in Bulgarian. In Swedish it would be, literally "Ni är inte ensamma!", and when I come back to Sweden in January after this winter's Bulgaria trip I hope to see those word written all over town.

(The Ne ste sami-ribbon) The slogan was aimed at the five Bulgarian nurses that were sitting on death row in Libya, blamed for contaminating blood with HIV, and killing Libyan children. This was before the Arab spring, and Libya was still a dictatorship where it was easier to blame and jail foreigners than admitting mistakes. The Arab spring has yet to affect Ethiopia. The state is more suspicious of dissent than ever, maybe scared by the specter of public protest like those in the Mediterranean Arab states. Scores of local foreign journalists have been harassed. Two of them are the Swedes Johan Peterson and Martin Schibbye. They were earlier today found guilty of supporting terrorists and entering Ethiopia illegally. They have confessed of entering without VISA together with an ethnic militia that has been terror-labeled by the government in Addis Abebba, but maintain that their purpose was solely to investigate the work of the Swedish company Lundin Petroleum in the Ogaden province. My private opinion is this: Lundin Petroleum is a secretive company with a very bad reputation when it comes to Human Rights. Schibbye and Peterson should be praised, not jailed for trying to bring stories about their work in Ogaden into the light. Another opinion might be that Schibbye and Peterson were acting foolishly and should be reprimanded and thrown out of Ethiopia but not senteced to jail. This seems to be the official view of our Foreign Minister Carl Bildt (Link in Swedish), who himself worked for Lundin Petroleum when the company's activities in Ogaden were initiated. A lot of thing could be written about Carl Bildt's dubious role in this drama, but it might suffice to say that the best thing with having him in government is that it keeps him away from Lundin Petroleum where he might do more harm. A lot could also be written about the terrorism laws that Peterson and Schibbye are sentenced under. Western commentators point out that these laws allow the Ethiopian government to label anyone it doesn't like a terrorist. But it is hardly the first government to do so. It is simply abusing a system of black listing organizations that has been abundantly abused since 9/11. But right now, the main focus must be to get Peterson and Schibbye home. Sweden needs journalists like them, the world needs to know about Lundin Petroleum and they do need us. They need to know that they are not alone. The Bulgarian "Ne ste sami" campaign was succesful, and the nurses eventually returned to their families. There is no reason Sweden should not manage to get Peterson and Schibbye free. But it might take a stubborn campaign saying "Ni är inte ensamma!" Let us start it now.

(Foto: Scanpix)

Acidification

If China criticised Sweden over Human Rights would you believe them?

Revkin, again

This year has been ripe with climate-related news. Tornadoes, torrential rains and heat waves. Today the BBC reports that the deadly heatwave that has been lingering in the US midwest is moving east, and affecting approximately 50% of the nations inhabitants. As always, some are more affected than other's.

Sofia Bikes

Before heading south to Plovdiv I've spent a little less than 24 hours in Sofia. It was relentlessly hot, and to a large extent everything was as I remembered it. Lots of shabby houses still standing around, several new glass and steel buildings int he outskirts, and building sites everywhere which gives a sense of a constant work in process.

Besides from the better looking park in front of NDK, two things impressed me, though. One was the boom of small stores/bars/restaurant with a dedicatedly alternative and green image. The second thing was that it seemed everyone has bought a bike since I was last around.

This post is the first on my holiday blog maladets! - freewheeling. Stay updated with it, if you want to read more like this. 

(Picture grabbed from the  Among the Birds blog) (c) 2010 Zona Urbana

There are a lot of cool places to go nowadays for those living in, or staying in Sofia. A bunch of alternative water holes present themselves on this lovely cartooned map of Sofia. A must for anyone who wants to visit the best of Sofia. This kind of places, the common ground between them might be a shared clientèle, and shared values like alternative life style, small scale and environmental thinking. It is vegetarian restaurants, bio-shops, and craft stores producing jewelery form recycled material.

As a Swede, it is not without envy that I watch such places appearing one more and more street corners. In my home town, Lund, the development seems to be the opposite - small stores are rapidly pushed out of market by big retail chains and the shopping malls outside the city. It is curious how the numerous malls in Sofia has not yet managed to destroy this market for small scale commercial activities.

Two reasons are obvious - more and more young Bulgarians have developed a taste for this kind of things, and also some money to pay restaurant bills with. And due to the still rough state of many buildings in central Sofia, rents are still far from what they are in Western Europe, even in a place like Lund, which makes it easier to make money on small businesses. If I was a Sofia politician, I would think a lot about how to improve buildings in the center, without raising rents too much. Too many cities have made their centers tidy but boring. Sofia still has a chance to avoid that.

So for the bikes. When I was living in Sofia, some people did bike, but they were very rare. It was perfectly possible to go an entire day without seeing a single bike. Now, bikers are still a minority, they are a very visible minority. In almost every crossing you would see one biker navigating between cars.

Which is probably one clue why so many people do it. Biking is green, cheap and fashionable as in Western Europe, but except for that it seems to be the absolutely fastest way to move through central Sofia. Cars are usually stuck in two lines, buses and trams as well, but a daring biker find his way in between. A Swedish biker probably wouldn't, let's say that the bicyclists in Sofia bike pretty much as the drivers drive.

I look forward to coming back to this city twice a year for the rest of my life, and this is the kind of things I hope to see more of. Which reminds me of my everyday life back home... it is definitely time for me to buy a new bike.