The Climate Threat. Crisis for Democracy? 3031344707, 9783031344701

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Jon Naustdalslid

Crisis ? y c a r c o m for De

The Climate Threat. Crisis for Democracy?

Jon Naustdalslid

The Climate Threat. Crisis for Democracy?

With Foreword by Hans von Storch

Jon Naustdalslid Ängelholm, Sweden

ISBN 978-3-031-34470-1 ISBN 978-3-031-34471-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34471-8 Translation from the Norwegian language edition: “Klimatrusselen. Krise for demokratiet?” by Jon Naustdalslid, © Jon Naustdalslid 2022. Published by Kolofon (Colophon forl.). All Rights Reserved. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover photo by © Jon Naustdalslid. A mountain hiker looks towards a receding glacier in the Jotunheimen mountain area in Norway. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Helena

Foreword

This book is on climate, but not on climate dynamics or physics, but instead about climate policy and democracy. The author, the Norwegian policy analyst Jon Naustdalslid, argues that the best response to man-made climate change is through democratic will building, which allows for critical debate and discussion about options and science. He disagrees with the claim that governance should be taken over by experts with knowledge of the “climate catastrophe”, as he believes democracy’s openness to critical debate is its key advantage over authoritarian systems. Despite originally being written in his native Nynorsk language, Jon Naustdalslid’s book should not be dismissed as parochial due to Norway’s small size and remote location. In fact, this characteristic of the book is actually a strength. Naustdalslid is not simply another voice from the dominant anglo-saxon world, but rather an independent thinker who has travelled extensively and experienced a variety of cultures and policymaking systems. He presents the issue from both a global perspective and a uniquely Norwegian perspective, making his book a valuable contribution to the discourse. Naustdalslid acknowledges the severity of the climate problem. But, although the climate problem is a significant and threatening issue, it is not the only challenge we encounter, nor is it more important than all other problems. This perspective is not yet mainstream but is gaining attention in works like Mike Hulme’s “Climate Change Isn’t Everything” and my own German book “Der Mensch-Klima Komplex,” as people begin to recognize the importance of addressing climate change in a broader political context beyond a purportedly scientific dictate. Climate change is intertwined with all other problems, it is a “wicked problem”, and cannot be dealt with as a solitary issue that overshadows all others. There is no “silver-bullet” solution to dealing with climate change. The focus of present climate policy is mostly narrowed down to reducing emissions, and policymakers engage in a competition to demand the most stringent emission reductions. However, this approach may not be sustainable in the long run: The interests of the well-off middle class in developed countries are often prioritized over the underprivileged and poor parts of the world.

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Foreword

Climate change is no longer a neutral issue but has become politicized, and it is unlikely that this trend will reverse. This politicization has given rise to various challenges, including changing risks, conflicting perceptions and the construction of “us” versus “them”. The configuration of climate change as a political issue is better suited for democracy than authoritarian systems since democracy is designed to handle multiple challenges, options and interests simultaneously. The frequent belief that the climate issue takes precedence over all other matters is often associated with the claim that capitalism and economic growth are the primary threats to humanity’s future. This has led to calls for reduced consumption and economic output, also known as “degrowth.” However, even moderate measures to reduce fossil energy are met with resistance, particularly among economically disadvantaged groups, as demonstrated by Naustdalslid’s Norwegian examples. This resistance is interpreted by some as evidence that the general population is insufficiently informed or too stupid to adopt the necessary climate protection measures, which leads to the call for coercion. Coercion may take the form of forcing people to become informed or accept climate protection measures. Such an approach, known as eco-dictatorship, is similar to Lenin’s lecturing style. The proposed solution of “degrowth” entails a sustained recession. This approach would also limit the technological possibilities of mitigating and adapting to climate change. It is a viable option only for a well-fed post-material class in the wealthy regions of the world who want to show the rest of the world the supposedly right way. Instead, addressing climate change must be both environmentally effective and economically viable, resulting in growth and job creation. The green deal should not reduce energy but provide more energy for a carbon-free economy. Naustdalslid emphasizes two points, namely that economic growth is needed to support a carbon-free economy, and second, that adaptation to warmer conditions and unpredictable climate change is just as important as limiting emissions. Climate adaptation was a taboo topic for a long time, and it only entered the public agenda in Norway in 2010. Even today, many Norwegian municipalities do not include adaptation in their planning. Environmental administrators tend to overlook the social dimension. Consistent with the old insight that sovereignty over truth is essential in a war, also in case of the “climate war”, a “great narrative” is proclaimed to be “truth”—namely that the existence of humanity as a whole is threatened by emissions. In this regard, doubt is seen as immoral, as stated by Gro Harlem Brundtland. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of current climate protection policies is at best uncertain, as despite the significant growth of renewables, the majority of energy consumption still comes from burning fossil fuels. A challenge for climate science is the way politics consistently refers to “the science” as the basis for decision-making, when decision-making is portrayed as a direct implementation of ostensibly scientific necessities, while not taking into account the complex social dimensions of climate change. This approach, often presented as a way to avoid criticism of politics, actually undermines democracy, as it seeks to prevent open social debate. While climate research may provide important insights and frameworks, it cannot provide all the answers to the social challenges of

Foreword

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climate change. This is because these challenges are multifaceted and involve issues of power, which are beyond the scope of natural science. Therefore, while science can help to provide a framework for addressing these challenges, it is ultimately up to society as a whole to engage in open and democratic debate about the best way forward. Given the current state of our world, with a population of billions, many of whom are striving to escape poverty, there is a pressing need for massive amounts of energy. Despite efforts to increase renewable energy by 8% in 2021 and 6% in 2022, as suggested by the International Energy Agency, this will only meet half of the growing energy demand, with the remainder being met by fossil fuels. Solving the climate problem is a complex societal issue that cannot be tackled with simplistic solutions. The term “climate crisis” can give the impression that the problem is temporary and can be solved with quick fixes, but in reality, the issue will persist in different forms even after appropriate measures are taken. Therefore, it is essential to approach the problem with a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of its complexity. Naustdalslid’s book concludes with the “dream of paradise” that many climate activists yearn for—a return to the Holocene era, where humans and nature lived in harmony. However, this vision is unrealistic, as demonstrated by the greater environmental impact of pre-industrial Norway and the growing global population. Additionally, the accumulation of knowledge in today’s world cannot be ignored or undone, as Naustdalslid points out—“We ate from the tree of knowledge—and we know how that went the first time. People were thrown out of paradise. This time, too, the paradise of innocence is lost—and we can no longer escape this knowledge, the Anthropocene”. Naustdalslid draws a parallel between this harsh analysis and a scene in Holberg’s plays, where a patient dies from a medicine, and the bereaved widow is told that “Your husband is dead, but the fever is conquered”. A truly insightful and skillfully written book. Hamburg, Germany

Hans von Storch

Preface

This book is about how the climate problem threatens democracy, what kind of impact this threat has and how democracy can meet the threat. It aims to be a defence for democracy in the fight against climate change. The book was first published in Norway in 2022. During translation, the Norwegian manuscript has been slightly edited for a non-Norwegian public. The work on the book sprang from a genuine concern for the effects that global warming may have on society and nature. I am by no means alone in this anxiety. However, not as many people are concerned about how climate change also affects the conditions for political governance, and thus also the conditions for dealing with the climate challenge in a democratic way. Today, we see more and more often that climate activists, but also researchers, refer to the climate problem as so dramatic that we must set aside normal democratic rules of the game to force through “necessary” measures. On the extreme right, we see growing support for eco-fascism with long historical roots, which should not be underestimated. At the same time as I am worried about climate change, I am therefore also worried about democracy—and that parts of the climate fight may lead to undermining of democracy. The road towards more authoritarian responses to the climate problem may turn out to be shorter than we like to think. The book brings together documentation and analysis of the anti-democratic forces in the climate fight. At the same time, it is an attempt to show that despite all its shortcomings, democracy is a better form of government for meeting the climate challenge than any other form of government that the critics can point to. Writing, especially under the restrictions that were caused by the corona pandemic, was at times a lonely process. I am therefore grateful to a small group of people who took the time to read and comment on all or parts of the original Norwegian manuscript along the way: Nils Petter Gleditsch, Trond Iversen, Magnar Naustdalslid, Olav Refsdal and Inger Marie Stigen. The comments were professionally useful but were also important as support and encouragement during writing. Thanks goes also to the Norwegian foundation Fritt Ord, for financial support to the development of the original version of the book.

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Preface

A special word of thanks goes to Prof. Hans von Storch for support and encouragement to have the book translated for a wider public and for writing the foreword to this edition. During all phases of the work, my wife, Helena Dell’Ara, has been of invaluable support and encouragement. Her professional knowledge of English has been particularly supportive in my struggle to translate the manuscript from Norwegian to English. This book is therefore dedicated to my best friend and supporter, Helena. Ängelholm, Sweden April 2023

Jon Naustdalslid

Contents

Part I

The Climate Threat and Democracy

1 The Point of Departure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Global Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Gloomy Picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Do We Have to Discard Democracy to Save the World? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . My Point of Departure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What About the Precautionary Principle? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Climate Problem has Two Sides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3 4 5 6 8 10 11 15 17 19

2 The Climate Problem and Climate Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Mechanisms Behind Global Warming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Global Warming Versus Climate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An Example: “We Only Have 12 Years” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Does the IPCC Say? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Climate Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Wicked Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . From Rio via Kyoto to Paris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Failing Role Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Climate Policy as Management by Objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Global Strategy and the Frustration with Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

21 21 24 26 28 30 32 33 35 39 41 41 43

Part II

Anti-democratic Threats

3 The Anti-democratic Legacy and the Dream of Eco-Dictatorship . . . Historical Roots—Society as a Threat to Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Ecological Heritage of the Environmental Protection Movement . . .

49 49 51

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Contents

Anti-democratic Historical Roots in the Environmental Movement . . . . . The Extreme Variant to the Right—Eco-Fascism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Today’s Eco-Fascism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53 56 58 61 62

4 The Current Climate Debate and the Threat to Democracy . . . . . . . . . The Deep Ecological Roots of the Current Climate Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . Anti-democratic Activism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Vision of the Expert-Led Meritocracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Climate Change as a Threat to Free Debate and Critical Research . . . . . . Criticism of the Anti-democratic Response to the Climate Problem . . . . . Do Authoritarian Regimes Do Better? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Is an Authoritarian Climate Coup Likely? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

65 65 67 70 73 77 80 84 86 88

5 Popular Climate Revolts and the Undermining of Democracy . . . . . . The Car-Based Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Climate Revolts to “Save the Climate” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Road Toll Revolt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Ferry Revolt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Wind Power Revolt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Popular Uprising Against “The Climate Hysteria” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unrealistic Climate Targets and Undermining of Democracy . . . . . . . . . . The Problem with the Person-Focused Climate Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Polarized Climate Debate and the Undermining of Democracy . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

93 94 96 97 100 101 103 105 108 110 111 113

6 The “Non-political” Solution to the Climate Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Is Climate Fixing? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Global Heat Shield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Historical Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Problematic Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Search for Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Democratic Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

115 116 117 118 120 122 126 131 133

Part III Democratic Alternatives 7 An Unruly Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Crisis Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Why Is Climate Policy So Conflicted? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Bit of Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Theory and Climate Policy—With Wind Power as an Example . . . . .

139 140 144 145 148

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About Theory and Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lenin and Thunberg or Brox? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . About Future Generations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . About Eating an Elephant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

150 152 154 157 160 162

8 Contributions to Democratic Responses to the Climate Problem . . . . About Taking Pieces from the Elephant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Carbon Tax Rather than Emission Quotas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Green Growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Green New Deal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What About Nuclear Power? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Some Reflections on Adaptation to a Changing Climate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . No Quick Fix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

165 165 169 171 176 179 183 185 186 188

9 The Dream of Paradise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . About Recreating Paradise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Forward Towards the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Lost Paradise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Climate Problem, Democracy and Defence of an Open Society . . . . . Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

191 192 193 197 199 202 203

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

Part I

The Climate Threat and Democracy

Chapter 1

The Point of Departure

“The total annihilation of humanity is a good excuse for installing a dictatorship. You can’t question it in any way”.1 This outburst of frustrated resignation comes from Paul Abel, the main character in the Norwegian novelist Bjørn Vatne’s dystopian future novel, Nullingen av Paul Abel (The Zeroing of Paul Abel). Abel made the comment after the ecological extremist party Pan-Ethical Association had grabbed power in Norway through a coup d’état. The novel describes a future Norway where technology has made it possible to “stream” information to, and manipulate, the brain of each individual citizen directly. The Pan-Ethical Association had been “forced” to seize control of this system, because the Norwegian government had not taken seriously the depiction of how the world was on its way to annihilation due to the climate and environmental crisis. Norway was now to become a pioneer country that showed the rest of the world how it was possible to make a “transition to a completely sustainable way of life within relatively few years”. The novel is a sad narrative of how badly it ended for the poor professor of biology, Paul Abel, who managed to free himself from the science fiction technology of opinion manipulation, which even the president of China would have envied the leader of the Pan-Ethical Association. The Zeroing of Paul Abel is a dystopian future novel. It is a science fiction depiction of what a future society might look like, ruled by fanatical people who believe they act upon a higher knowledge about the need to “save the planet”. Yet, apart from the science fiction technology that lets the state connect directly to the brain of every citizen, the novel is still no more distant from today’s climate and environmental debate than that there are people who think along the same lines as those we find in the “Declaration of Revolution” from the Pan-Ethical Association. Also in today’s real world, there are people occupied with serious thoughts that the only thing that can save the world is some sort of “climate dictatorship” or “eco-dictatorship”. In a situation where the world is claimed to be in danger of becoming uninhabitable for human,2 and where democracy is claimed to be unable to handle the problem, such a dictatorship should put an end to political bickering and arguments and focus society’s common resources on this one threat that overshadows everything else. Like the leader of the Pan-Ethical Association in Bjørn Vatne’s novel, those who think © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Naustdalslid, The Climate Threat. Crisis for Democracy?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34471-8_1

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1 The Point of Departure

along these lines see the climate struggle as a unique opportunity to gather everyone around a common goal, the one good purpose that trumps everything. This book is about how the climate threat is also a threat to democracy—not only from climate activists and those who see the climate threat as the end of the world, but also from a growing eco-fascist movement, and from those who resort to anti-democratic methods when opposing climate activists and climate measures. I will be careful not to characterize all climate activists and researchers who look to more authoritarian forms of government as anti-democrats. Devoted anti-democrats do exist, and I will show some examples in this book. First and foremost, they exist on the darker right side of the political spectrum and with historical roots in parts of the ecological movement, but not only there. They also exist in the current climate debate and on the political left. However, the vast majority of those who lean towards the anti-democratic currents in the climate and environmental debate support democracy in principle. But they are often frustrated and feel that democracy is not able to make the “right” decisions or do what is “necessary” to “solve” the climate crisis. In despair that today’s democracies cannot reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they therefore feel tempted, or even forced, to look towards more authoritarian systems which, unlike democracy, do not depend on the will of the people and people’s short-term priorities. Also, climate activists and researchers, who neither see themselves as—or are— fundamentally negative towards democracy, often build on the argument that “it is the system that must change” if we are to save the planet from destruction. What the alternative “system” should look like is usually more unclear. This “system” should, in one way or the other, better than today’s open democracy be able to force through “necessary” and unpopular climate measures. What they are less concerned with, however, is to question if the problems may have more to do with the current climate policy, than with the “system”. How can we, within the framework of democracy, develop a climate policy that does not primarily affect the weakest, both in our society and in poor countries, and which creates the democratic resistance that the activists believe must be suppressed?

A Global Failure There is no doubt that today’s climate policy is a global political failure. Albert Einstein is occasionally quoted as having said that “insanity is repeating the same thing over and over and expecting different results”. But Einstein could hardly have said it like that. If, for example, we throw some dice over and over again, we expect to get different results. If, on the other hand, we were to get ones every time, we would strongly suspect that there was something wrong with the dice. A more accurate definition of insanity would therefore be “repeating the same thing over and over again, getting the same result, but continuing to expect something different”. It is nevertheless this form of “insanity” that we see in climate policy. Ever since the environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 created the Climate Convention [UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)], followed up with the

A Gloomy Picture

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Kyoto Agreement in 1997, the global climate strategy has been firmly established. It is a form of “global Management by Objective” which means that each individual country has quotas for how large emission reductions they must undertake. However, this has never worked. The countries are unable to keep their promises, and emissions continue to rise. This is where the question of “madness” comes in. After the summit in Rio in 1992 adopted the Climate Convention, 27 annual meetings have so far been held, gathering most world leaders to follow up on the goal of reduced emissions. Each time, and clearer and clearer as the years have gone by, it has become obvious that the strategy of setting national targets for emission reductions, and having them followed up, has failed. When the world leaders last met in Sharm el-Sheik for the 27th COP meeting, reported commitments for emission reduction to 2030 will only reduce emissions by around one per cent if implemented as promised.3 In order to have a chance to keep global warming within 1.5% above pre-industrial level, emissions should be reduced by at least 45% by 2030 according to IPCC. Still the answer has always been the same: We must try even harder. When the goal is not reached, the answer has been to set even higher goals. This was also the response of the UN climate chief, Patricia Espinosa, when she saw the lack of updated targets for the meeting in Glasgow in November 2021: Ambitions must be strengthened! To return to the picture with the dice: We roll it again and again and get a one, the answer has been just as tactful: We have to “shake” even harder, then we will probably suddenly get the six that we are looking for. It is this political failure that has caused many climate and environmental activists to doubt whether the politicians can handle the climate problem. More and more often we hear that we must resort to stronger measures. Today’s society, and people who live today, must make greater sacrifices to “save the climate” and secure the future for future generations. The price we will have to pay may be to renounce democracy to save the planet.

A Gloomy Picture “I want you to panic» the Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg said when she spoke to the European Parliament in April 2019. She said what many people obviously feel: The climate problem overshadows all other problems that humans face. In the world experienced by Greta Thunberg and other panic-stricken activists, the planet and society face doom if we do not quickly and dramatically reduce the emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, thereby bringing global warming under control. “How dare you!” she thundered at the world’s political leaders at the UN climate summit in New York on September 23, 2019:

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1 The Point of Departure You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economy growth. How dare you!4

Like Greta Thunberg and large parts of the climate and environmental movement see global warming and climate change as a question of the planet’s and civilization’s survival. The climate and environmental problem are perceived as an either or question: as a choice between the survival of the planet and humanity—and continued economic growth. The Norwegian philosopher Arne Johan Vetlesen, in an article in the newspaper “Klassekampen” on October 6, 2020, painted a future scenario in which global temperature during the next 100 years will rise by between 3.5° and 5.4° and …. at that time the year-round ice in the Arctic will have melted, the permafrost in Siberia has thawed and the rainforest in the Amazon will have been reduced to savanna on the way to desert. The world’s coastal cities will be under water and a large proportion of the Earth’s population on the run from uninhabitable regions.

A report on Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK.no) in the spring of 2019 painted the following gloomy scenario: The year is 2050, and Norway is one of the few countries in the world that still has clean drinking water. It has become our new export product, after oil. The Arctic is ice-free in summer. In southern Europe desertification is increasing. The tourist industry is gone because of the heat, Spaniards, Italians, and Greeks are escaping north. In Africa, large areas have become uninhabitable due to drought. 140 million people are on the run, twice as many as today.5

In a debate programme on the British BBC in October 2019, Roger Hallam, one of the founders of the organization Extinction Rebellion, was quoted as saying that more than six billion people will lose their lives due to climate change during this century.6 The same Hallam was also quoted as saying that “our children will die within 10–15 years”.7 No wonder that young people may suffer from climate anxiety.

Do We Have to Discard Democracy to Save the World? It is serious reports like these, with a dystopian picture of the future, together with the politicians’ lack of ability to stop the planet’s path towards the predicted catastrophe, that have caused large parts of the more activist climate and environmental movement in democratic countries to question the ability of democracy to handle the climate threat. The “climate clock” is approaching midnight, and the politicians just watch as the world heads towards doom. Time is running out, and we will probably have to give up democracy to save the world. That’s the story. The natural scientist and environmental activist James Lovelock8 claimed in a highly publicized interview with the newspaper The Guardian in 2010 that humans are simply too stupid to

Do We Have to Discard Democracy to Save the World?

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deal with such a big problem as the climate crisis. Modern democracy is the most important obstacle to meaningful climate action, he claimed. The climate threat can be compared to a threat of war, and in such situations, it is acceptable to put normal democratic rules aside.9 If we are to “save the world”, it is claimed, it will require such great sacrifices from us in the form of reduced consumption and changes in our lives, that it cannot be implemented within the framework of democratic politics. The Norwegian philosopher Arne Johan Vetlesen has claimed that “[p]arliamentary democracy, as we know it, is a form of government that is not suitable for solving environmental and climate problems”.10 The Swedish philosopher Torbjörn Tennsjö is more explicit: “[I] believe that the solution to the problem must not be global democracy, but global despotism. […] If humanity will at all be saved, which is highly uncertain, then it will happen with the help of a global enlightened despotic rule”.11 In Chap. 3, I will show how anti-democratic voices are nothing new in the environmental struggle and also look further into how the anti-democratic argument is expressed in today’s climate discourse (Chap. 4). Democracy is also under pressure from another angle. Populist (and often climatesceptic) movements gather support from groups who feel increasingly marginalized in modern society. They want a greater share in the consumption that climate activists protest against, and they react to a policy that widens social and economic gaps in western societies. They react against a climate policy which primarily imposes burdens on “ordinary people” in the form of taxes, more expensive electricity and fuel prices. The results have been seen in the form of, for example, “the yellow vests” in France, and to some extent the rebellion against road tolls in Norway and soaring energy prices all over Europe. What we see is probably only the start of a sharper conflict, where the issue of social justice in climate policy becomes more important. We are witnessing a polarization of the political climate debate which does not bring us closer to sensible answers to the huge problem of climate change, but which rather contributes to undermining the chances of sensible democratic answers to the problem. This can also be seen as a cultural conflict. Climate activists are partly seen as representatives of an elitist culture and a lifestyle that others do not recognize. Many people live their “ordinary” lives, enjoy their trips to the south, own fossil-fuel cars, have never thought of their eating habits as a climate problem, feel looked down upon and despised by these activists. When, for example, vegetarians and vegans assert their own eating habits as a condition for “saving the planet”, it probably only creates greater resistance, also against climate policy more generally. It makes the climate fight stand out as something for people with “special interests” and an elitist lifestyle. We can therefore see a harsher conflict between climate activist protest movements on the left that demand stricter climate measures, reduced economic growth and restrictions on consumer society and on the other side right-wing populist (and partly “climate denying”) movements that mobilize dissatisfaction with the current political system by fighting against the social and economic effects of climate measures. The more various climate measures demand sacrifices from “ordinary people”, the

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stronger become popular protests against such policy measures. Popular protests, on the other hand, provide ammunition for climate activists and researchers who turn their gaze towards totalitarian and authoritarian forms of governance as a response to the climate problem. In turn this leads to an even more polarized climate discourse. A democratically based climate policy is also threatened from another angle. The clearer it becomes that the prevailing climate policy does not reduce emissions, the stronger the pressure to initiate “Plan B”, “geoengineering” or “climate fixing”. The technology mentioned most often is spreading large amounts of sulphur in the atmosphere, thereby obstructing the radiation from the sun and cooling the planet. Plan B can in principle be carried out by individual actors with sufficient resources (countries or resource-rich constellations of persons/institutions) without global agreement and outside political control. This will be a 1:1 experiment with the entire globe as a laboratory and with unknown and uncontrollable consequences. With the knowledge climate science has about the global climate system, the danger that certain actors will use the “climate weapon” in the global power struggle increases.

My Point of Departure My point of departure is that we are not faced with the choice between saving the world and renouncing democracy. Firstly, the most dystopian scenarios, which parts of the environmental movement are describing, lack a basis in climate science. Secondly, even if these predictions were real, there is nothing to suggest that an authoritarian regime, or what the Swedish philosopher Torbjörn Tennsjö calls “a global enlightened despotic regime”, will better than democratic governments be able to handle the challenges that the world will then face. Quite the opposite. Before Christmas in 2019, Time Magazine named Greta Thunberg as “Person of the Year». It was well deserved. Hardly any individual has succeeded better than this Swedish teenager in putting the climate problem on the global agenda. It is still allowed to be more optimistic than Greta Thunberg is. For my own part, I do not see that the climate scientists herald the doom of the planet and civilization. Neither does the latest IPCC reports, which came in the 2021/2022, although they confirm and reinforce the message from earlier reports.12 Even 1.5° or 2.0° average global warming could have dramatic effects on the climate. Therefore, all IPCC reports also emphasize how important it is to adapt society to the climate changes that will occur, even if the world manages to keep warming within the 2.0, or preferably 1.5° as the Climate Convention set as a target at the Paris summit in 2015. It is only when warming exceeds five degrees that the report measures the completely dramatic effects, but even with such warming there is no question of the end of the planet or civilization.13 At the same time, the report underscores that the risk it outlines can be significantly reduced through climate measures and adaptation. In other words, the future, including the climate future, is primarily characterized by uncertainty. While Vetlesen in the above-mentioned article in “Klassekampen” presents as scientifically documented that the world is most likely heading towards global

My Point of Departure

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warming of more than five degrees, in January 2020 the director of research at the Norwegian climate research centre CICERO, Glen Peters, and a scientific colleague published an article in the journal Nature in which they warned against using the IPCC’s “worst-case scenario” as the basis for today’s climate policy. This most extreme scenario, which suggests a global temperature increase of five degrees during this century, is highly unlikely, the two researchers write.14 Presenting such an extreme scenario as realistic can lead to defeatism and make us believe that no matter what we do, it is of no use.15 We do not know today how future societies will succeed in meeting and handling climate change. We should listen to science, and science seems to present us with a highly uncertain and risky climate future, but it does not predict the world’s doom, due to climate change. The horror scenarios of many metres of sea level rise, melted Greenland ice, Southern Europe as more or less a desert, hundreds of millions of people on the run, a world ravaged by wars due to global warming, famine, the spread of diseases and epidemics are theoretically conceivable future scenarios.16 However, such horror scenarios do not reflect scientifically based knowledge. Doomsday prophecies and predictions about the end of the world are nothing new but have existed since ancient times.17 The threat that climate change represents has led to such dystopias now being easily linked to global warming and painted as predictions about how the globe will become uninhabitable for humans and for life on earth as we know it.18 It is probably unrealistic to keep the global temperature rise within 1.5°.19 There is still no serious research that predicts the end of the world. We also do not know the capacity and technology which future societies will have to deal with a different climate. Climate science, as reflected by the IPCC, outlines a wide range of possible scenarios. The media and the most far-reaching climate activists tend to seize on the most extreme hypothetical development trajectories and change them from “worst-case” scenarios to depictions of the most likely future. There is, however, no reason to deny that two to three degrees of global warming will change the conditions for life on earth. Today we are unable to describe in detail what these changes will be and how the global warming will have different outcomes in different parts of the globe. Those who are single-mindedly in favour of turning economic growth into degrowth and regulating society back to the time before global warming are right that democratic means will not accomplish this.20 They listen to Greta Thunberg and ask people to panic. But is panic a reasonable reaction? A flock of sheep panicking may end up running off a cliff instead of facing the threat chasing it.21 Politicians who act in panic can easily become disoriented and resort to ineffective symbolic actions which are more an expression of the will to act than actual action. The climate problem is too serious to be met with panic. And in any case, it cannot be “solved” with symbolic policies. It should be met with rational action and with strategies that consider what the problem is, how it is connected to other problems in the real world, and what is practically and politically possible to do without destroying the society that is “to be saved”. The British climate researcher and geographer Mike Hulme has warned against letting the threat of climate change lead to hysteria. We should rather focus on how climate change is an opportunity to shape future society under different conditions.

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In the book Making Climate Change Work for Us, which he edited together with Henry Neufeldt, he invites the contributors to look at climate change with new eyes: The editors firmly believe that the risks and challenges of climate change must be viewed as opportunities to improve quality of life for all peoples, both now and in the future, i.e. as a means of moving towards greater sustainability, rather than portrayed as the first sign of an inevitable global catastrophe.22

It is in times of crisis that people come up with new solutions to problems. Climate change can be seen as just such an opportunity to create something new. Instead of trying to turn the world back to a state before modern society led to global warming, one can combine measures to reduce warming with new developments and innovation, to create good societies in a warmer world. Then the alternative is not to stop the economic growth and development, but to manage the economic growth to create a fossil-neutral society and at the same time improve the living conditions for everyone, not “save the stumps” for us in our rich part of the world. The stated or unstated premise of the claims that democracy makes it impossible to “save the climate” and prevent the downfall of civilization is that the answer to the “climate crisis” is the downsizing of today’s consumer society and the reversal of economic growth. This strategy—often called “degrowth”—goes back to the ecological and deep ecological movement, as it took shape in the 1970s in response to neoMalthusian predictions that the world’s natural resources were about to run out.23 It is such a change, with the hardships and sufferings it will entail, that cannot be carried out by democratic means. My point of departure is that it is possible to meet climate change with technological measures, innovation, economic and social restructuring and without returning to earlier forms of society. I therefore part with the most dystopian and deeply ecologically oriented climate activists and researchers on this point. They largely reject technological development and restructuring as a response to the climate problem. Most fundamentalists also reject the possibilities for a green shift. My claim is that such responses to the climate problem are counterproductive. It contributes to undermining its own purpose, namely to find sensible and workable answers to the climate challenge. The problem is not economic growth, as I see it, but the content of it and the direction of it. Here, in other words, political governance and democracy should be the answer, not the opposite.

What About the Precautionary Principle? Should we not, after all, consider the possibility that the most dystopian scenarios could become reality? The world can be claimed to be at the “tipping point”, and nobody today can guarantee that it will not “tip over» or disregard how bad it could get. It will nevertheless be quite problematic to use the precautionary principle as a “precaution” against the most serious doomsday scenarios. The question that quickly arises is: What should we be precautious about? Those who demand drastic measures

Democracy

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now, with reference to the precautionary principle, often argue precisely from the “worst-case scenario”. As we know how bad it can get, we must prepare ourselves (and future generations) by taking drastic precautionary measures now and do it quickly. But what they tend not to ask themselves is what could be the possible consequences of, for example, changing to an emission-free global economy by 2025, as one of the demands from Extinction Rebellion reads. Doesn’t the precautionary principle also apply regarding what might be the consequences of subjecting the world to such a dramatic political and economic cure? Apart from the fact that it is not practically possible to carry out, the transformation of the world economy to zero emissions in a few years would mean the destruction of the basis of life for the entire globe and probably represent a more dystopian scenario in our time than what the most alarmist climate activists envision for the future. Not even Tennsjö’s “global enlightened despotic rule” would be able to carry out such a project without destroying today’s civilization. I therefore have no better answer to this dilemma than to look for measures against the climate threat that have a chance of reducing the threat, but which do not at the same time throw the baby out with the bathing water and create the same Armageddon on earth today, which the activists claim they want to prevent in future.

Democracy This book argues for democratic responses to the serious challenge that climate change undeniably is. We will therefore take a closer look at what we mean by democracy and at certain aspects of democracy that are also important for the climate struggle. What primarily characterizes democracy, compared to totalitarian and authoritarian forms of government, is that the politicians are accountable to the citizens. Democracy literally means government by the people. In classical Greek democracy, the citizens came together and ruled the city-state directly. In modern democracy, the citizens elect representatives who govern on behalf of, and with authority from, the citizens. The voters have the power to replace them and choose others to represent them at the next election. In most democracies, politicians are elected for four years. In principle, and ideally, all citizens should have an equal say in the governing of society. This is the ideal, and in this sense, there is no perfect democracy. It is not immediately easy to say how democratic a society is.24 Democracies are different, shape their institutions differently and build on different historical traditions.25 There is also no sharp line between democracy and non-democracy.26 Most dictatorships also have some form of election to legitimize the regime. The dictator is usually elected with close to 100 per cent of the vote. Moreover, there are more or less authoritarian regimes that allow several parties, but where the regime places such strong obstacles in the way of the opposition that it can hardly threaten the regime in elections. Russia can be a relevant example.

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All democracies can be criticized for having greater or lesser shortcomings. One critique often heard is that decisions are transferred from the national to an international level. In Britain this ended in Brexit. In Norway, since the 1970s, there has been a continuous debate about democracy and popular government vis-à-vis the EU, both through two referendums, and as a debate about how far Norway’s EEA membership delimits Norwegian democracy. This has nevertheless been determined through the democratic processes. Not least in the climate area, most democracies have imposed restrictions on themselves through participation in international organizations and binding international arrangements. One of the hallmarks of democracy is precisely that, more than authoritarian regimes, they are open to participating in international agreements and arrangements.27 When this happens through open democratic processes, it is difficult to see that it breaks with basic democratic principles. Moreover, democracy is not only a question of formally free elections where the voters can replace politicians, and where the elections determine the balance of power between political parties. Whether this works also depends on the institutions within which democracy functions. A real democracy requires a functioning and independent judiciary. It requires that society allows open opinions and freedom of expression that the political processes are open to inspection, among other things by a free and independent press, and that citizens are free to organize, independently of intervention by the state. At a time when knowledge and expertise are becoming increasingly important as a basis for making informed decisions, democracy also depends on research and knowledge production taking place openly and through critical discussion. This applies, not least, to the climate field, where we are completely dependent on the knowledge that climate science provides. Democracy also requires a certain minimum of shared societal values.28 It is this whole set of democratic institutions within the nation-state that constitutes democracy.29 Seen in this light, dictatorship can be defined as the opposite of democracy, in that it is a form of government in which these institutions and the principle of democratic processes function to a small or limited extent.30 The democratic ideal that all citizens should have an equal impact on how a country or local community is governed is, as I said, an ideal. In practice, there is also within a democracy a question of degrees of inequality in political influence. Political power is unevenly distributed. An important discussion here is based on one of the classic articles in political science, Professor Stein Rokkan’s article from 1967, which gave rise to the pointed formulation: “Votes count, but resources decide”.31 Here Rokkan distinguishes between two channels for political influence: the electoral channel, where the principle in democracy should be one citizen, one vote, and the corporative, or the organizational channel, where it is resources and capacity to influence the decisions that govern society. This fundamental distinction has been followed up through later research and has created an extensive research literature on how democracy is a mixture of influence from organizations that represent various special and sectoral interests in society and the impact that citizens have through political parties, elections and the more open political processes.

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Today democracy is under pressure in many countries, both in the Western world and in Africa, Asia and Latin America.32 The wave of democracy that started in Latin America in the 1970s and which gave hope for a democratic path towards social and economic development, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, seems to have partly stopped. Brazil recently had an authoritarian leader, who also rejected the climate problem, until the election in 2021 gave hope for change. Development in several other Latin-American countries seem to be going in a more authoritarian direction. The development of democracy in many African and Asian countries seems to have stalled, or it is going in the wrong direction. Russia is not only waging war on its neighbour country Ukraine but is at the same time being turned into an open de facto dictatorship. In Europe, populist movements, some with clear authoritarian and nationalist features, have gained ground. Rassemblement National (RN) in France and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany have strengthened themselves. The hope that democracy would flourish in Eastern Europe after the Soviet Union disintegrated has backfired, and in countries such as Poland and Hungary authoritarian parties are in power. Perhaps the clearest global “danger signal” for liberal democracy was Donald Trump’s path to, and the exercise of, presidential power in the USA from 2017 to 2021. The USA was then also placed in the group of incomplete democracies in The Economist’s democracy index for 2019, together with countries such as Estonia, Botswana and Italy. In general, the democracy index for 2019 shows a negative development for democracy globally, where the development is most alarming in Latin America.33 Although democracy is under pressure, it is equally right to claim that democratic ideals stand strong, even in countries where democracy is currently under threat. That is why it is so important that the climate battle does not contribute to a development that undermines democracy. If climate activists in democratic countries help undermine trust in democracy, they also undermine their own purpose, since, as will be argued later in this book, weakening democracy will also weaken the climate struggle. It is possible to look at the problems that democratic countries face today as an expression of the fact that modern democracy has had limited success in absorbing and solving the problems facing modern society. Here, the climate problem is just one out of many. A common—and growing—criticism, which goes much further than the criticism from environmental and climate activists, is that democracy does not have rational tools to solve problems in today’s society. The voters are uninformed, they don’t care, and they vote based on feelings, ideology and prejudices, rather than based on knowledge and insight into the problems that politics has to deal with.34 This is a general criticism that many climate researchers and climate activists have perceived and which they link to democracy’s lack of ability to “solve the climate problem”. Part of today’s radical criticism of democracy claims that heavy economic interests, capital and business are too powerful, control politics and undermine democracy. “The impact of democratic decisions is nowadays greatly reduced by the fact that organizations other than those recognized as capable of making decisions have grown in power and wealth”, the Norwgian philosopher Arne Næss wrote in the 1970s.35 In more recent radical critiques of democracy, today’s democracy is often

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referred to as post-democratic. In “post-democracy”, voters are apathetic and disinterested. They only respond to signals from the outside, without forming their own reflected perceptions. The real policy is shaped through an interaction between the people’s elected representatives and an elite that primarily represents business and capital interests.36 Hence the British geography professor Erik Swyngedouw writes: “Elections have become representation of an absurd comedy, shameful, where the participation of the citizen is very weak, and in which the governments represent the political commissioners of economic power”.37 Politics, it is argued, has abdicated in favour of market management and technocratic problem solving.38 The argument nevertheless largely ignores the fact that the trade union movement is a significant political force in many democratic countries. It is an elitist and condescending view of “ordinary people”, which there is good reason to problematize. The post-democratic criticism of democracy nevertheless has a relevant point in that in today’s globalized world the forces of capital and the forces of the market in different ways limit politics, something which must rightly be seen as a democratic problem. They are also right that the politicians have steered towards a development that has created great social and economic differences, also in our part of the world.39 This, which we shall return to, is also relevant for climate policy. Here, the post-democratic criticism is undoubtedly right in that today’s climate policy has not considered how climate measures can have a socially skewed effect and have negative distributional consequences. Climate policy has so far been a technological and technocratic response to the climate problem.40 In my view, it is problematic to dismiss voters as apathetic, stupid and uninterested. In climate policy, we see, on the contrary, increasing public involvement and interest and organizations mobilizing for a more active climate and environmental policy as well as movements protesting against climate measures. The claim that today’s governing powers—also in democratic countries—are in the pockets of big capital and the interests linked to the coal and oil industry stands strong among those who claim that democracy is unable to “solve” the climate problem, and that democracy should therefore give way to more authoritarian and totalitarian forms of government. The second main argument has to do with the fact that politicians—those in power—are dependent on support from the voters. The climate problem is long term, while democracy operates in a four-year perspective. The voters are, as James Lovelock puts it bluntly, too stupid to be able to take responsibility for the climate challenge.41 We humans are, he writes in the book A Rough Ride to the Future, “[…] not yet sufficiently intelligent to control or regulate ourselves or the Earth”.42 Therefore, the claim is that the climate problem requires forms of governance where competent rulers steer society away from the disaster it is otherwise claimed to be heading towards.43 But they have no clear picture of what the alternative should look like. Here the critics of democracy are vague and indistinct. Some, primarily on the left, link liberal democracy to capitalism, globalization and market management and envision some form of socialist upheaval.44 Others, who primarily cite ideological arguments from ecology and deep ecology, or only refer to climate science and dystopian predictions about the collapse of the globe, are often even more unclear. To the extent that they

The Climate Problem has Two Sides

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concretize an alternative governance model at all, it moves in the direction of more authoritarian, or downright totalitarian, forms of governance. At the same time, it is in a way true, as the philosopher Arne Johan Vetlesen claims, that “(p)arliamentary democracy, as we know it, is a form of government that is not suitable to solve the environmental and climate problems”.45 Firstly, environmental and climate problems cannot be “solved”. Humans have struggled with the environmental problem since the early days of civilization. The climate problem is here to stay. Even if the global temperature in 2050 has risen by less than 1.5°, the climate problem will not be “solved”. A 1.5° global temperature increase will also mean major climate changes, and today’s emissions will have effects long after 2050. Humans will (we hope) still have the technology and capacity to influence the climate. The climate has become, and will continue to be, a political problem. And secondly: democracy is not a system to “solve” one specific social problem at the expense of all others. Democracy is a system for dealing with many different problems at the same time, and the environmental and climate problem is not the only problem facing the world. If it should be the case that the climate problem trumps all other societal problems—life and death, war and peace, poverty, development, welfare, social and economic inequality, biological diversity and health challenges— it is probably right that democracy is not a proper form of government. But the climate issue is not, as Vetlesen writes in the Norwegian paper “Klassekampen” October 6, 2020, “One issue over all other”. The climate problem is a big and threatening problem, but it is not the only problem we face, and it should not trump all other problems. It is, however, connected to many other problems, and precisely because the climate problem is connected to so many other problems in society and in the world, it requires a political approach that handles it as part of the political whole, not as one problem that trumps all other.

The Climate Problem has Two Sides The aim of this book is limited to trying to show a direction out of the dead end and the threats to democracy, which the anti-democratic currents in climate policy represent. The way we perceive and define the climate problem also determines how the problem can and should be handled. The key to a more offensive, democratically based climate policy therefore lies in formulating the climate problem as a social problem in such a way that it can more easily be attacked as a challenge within the framework of democratic societies. Climate science has shown us that we have a serious climate problem. But natural climate science is not a science about climate change as a societal problem.46 Actual knowledge about the climate, or scenarios for future climate, does not necessarily lead to action. Climate science is the science of the physical climate, not of how society can best handle the climate challenge. Much of the climate debate seems to assume that the climate problem will be solved, and only climate science gets its message across clearly enough and “speaks the truth to power.47 Then it is probably

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wiser to listen to Louis XVIII’s foreign minister, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, who is quoted as saying that “war is too important to be left to the generals”. If the climate problem can be likened to a state of war, it can similarly be argued that it is too important to be left to the climate experts. It may be relevant to ask if climate science has been given a role which it cannot fill, namely as science about how the climate problem should be met and handled by society. The Nobel Prize winner in economics, William Nordhaus,48 has pointed out that climate science and social science play different roles in dealing with the climate problem: [U]nderstanding the natural science of climate change is only the first step. Designing an effective strategy to control climate change will require the social sciences – the disciplines that study how nations can harness their economic and political systems to achieve their climate goals effectively. These questions are distinct from those addressed by the natural sciences. They involve not only estimation the economic impacts of climate change along with the costs of slowing down climate change, […], but also designing policy tools that society can deploy to attain the desired emission reductions.49

The global climate policy from Kyoto to Paris—and later Katowice, Madrid, Glasgow and most recently, Sharm el-Sheik—has attacked the climate problem as an emission problem (“pollution problem”) and assumed that through global regulation of emissions we will force the restructuring of society and energy production that is necessary to control global warming. I agree with those who claim that the climate problem to a much greater extent should be attacked as an energy problem. It is climate policy, modelled after pollution policy, that is not working. It leads to political frustration; it creates fertile ground for anti-democratic responses to the climate problem and can tempt individual actors to act on their own initiative. The world should attack the very core of the problem, the energy problem, more directly. It is only by changing the world’s energy regime, away from fossil to emission-free energy sources, that we can hope to overcome global warming. This would change the centre of gravity in climate policy in the direction of strategies that can provide win–win situations, rather than strategies that require a loss of welfare and prosperity, (especially) for those who have the least. It will change the focus away from a policy that requires the dismantling of what people perceive as social and economic good, to a policy for the development of emission-free energy sources, to investment in innovation and positive transformation of society towards a fossil-free economy and technology. This also includes technology development for carbon capture, alternative tax regimes, mechanisms for financing clean energy and green land use strategies. The IPCC points out that such a strategy also requires massive development of nuclear power. We have numerous examples of some such strategies. An interesting case is the so-called Green New Deal movement (GND), which we will return to in Chap. 8. The transformation of society towards a carbon neutral economy requires a climate policy that is something more than traditional sector policy. A policy that reduces social and economic gaps in society, and that consciously builds a society based on solidarity and trust, will also be better able to handle the transition, and the conflicts, that the development towards a fossil-free society will bring with it. A policy that

Notes

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reduces social and economic inequality will therefore also be an important part of a democratic climate policy. Without the world being able to develop competitive and easily available emissionfree forms of energy, we will not do away with CO2 emissions. Much of today’s climate rhetoric is about reducing emissions by shutting down coal power and ceasing to produce oil. That’s all well and good, but it won’t work if there aren’t enough alternative energy sources, and that’s not the case today. The former Saudi Arabian oil minister, Sheikh Ahmad Zaki Yamani, is often quoted as saying that it was not a lack of stone that ended the Stone Age. He was right about that. Nor will it be a shortage of coal or oil which will eventually end the age of coal and oil. Therefore, it seems somewhat meaningless when the climate meeting in Glasgow in 2021 nearly broke down due to disagreement about the extent to which the world should aim to phase out or phase down coal power. Both formulations are equally meaningless if the world fails in revolutionizing access to emission-free forms of energy. But neither the Paris Agreement nor the final document from the 27 COP meetings has goals or strategies for that. In the next chapter, I will try to penetrate more closely into the relationship between the climate problem as a natural scientific problem and climate policy’s attempt to handle the problem as a social problem.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

Vatne (2018, p. 83). Aitkenhead (2008), Lovelock (2015), Wallace-Wells (2019). Reliefweb (n.d.). Transcript of the speech, see: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Environment/How-dare-youTranscript-of-Greta-Thunberg-s-UN-climate-speech. Eriksen (2019). Minutes from the programme reproduced in Shellenberger (2020, p. 10). Ibid. p. 11. See also (Hallam, 2019). James Lovelock is the man behind the so-called Gaia hypothesis: the notion of the globe as “a living self-regulating organism”. If the world does not get control over climate emissions, the earth will therefore “fight back” and regulate the population on earth back to its “natural level”. In the year 2100, he has predicted, the population on earth will be reduced by 80%. See: Aitkenhead (2008). Hickman (2010). https://fritanke.no/reportasje/demokrati-ikke-egnet-til-a-lose-klimautfordingen/19.7796. The Swedish newspaper “Dagens Nyheter” 5.12.2018: “Then the climate crisis could lead to a global despotism”. Elsewhere he writes that what is needed is “… a policy so drastic that, in the absence of a global democracy, it must be implemented by a global despotic regime. Therefore, my last hope lies in this” (Gafvelin and Lappin 2021, p. 49). IPCC (2021b), Wood et al. (2013). Most people who envision global warming as the end of the planet usually do not rely on the IPCC either, but on the “worst-case scenarios” which are taken out of context in the IPCC’s reports and reformulated into plausible predictions. Alarmists, such as the aforementioned James Lovelock, are also clear that he sees the IPCC’s consensus as an expression that the IPCC has in reality suppressed how bad it can get (Lovelock, 2009, p. 24).

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14. Fair enough with reference to the previous IPCC report (AR5). 15. Hausfather and Peters (2020). 16. See for example (Ehrlich and Ehrlich, 2013; Farrell et al., 2019; Hamilton, 2010; Linker, 2019; Wallace-Wells, 2019; Welzer, 2017). The World Organization for Migration predicted in 2008 that there will be 200 million environmental refugees in 2050. In 2011, it was predicted that the world would have 50 million environmental refugees in 2020 (Zelman, 2011). 17. On an old Assyrian clay tablet from 2800 BC, it says that “the end of the world is indisputably approaching”. Elsewhere, there is a whole range of predictions from the world will end due to gas from comets, to religious predictions of various kinds, the Mayan calendar which set the end of the world to December 21, 2012. The list can be extended (AS, n.d.). 18. Wallace-Wells (2019). 19. Bergskaug (2020b). 20. Beckerman (1976, p. 244f). 21. “In a climate of panic, decisions are taken which are likely to harm sections of the community (….), possibly on a catastrophic scale”. Beckerman op. cit. p. 115. 22. Hulme (2010a, 2010b, p. xx). 23. Meadows et al., (1972). 24. There are global democracy indices that attempt to measure how different countries score on a range of democracy-relevant criteria. See for example: https://www.eiu.com/topic/democr acy-index or https://www.idea.int/data-tools/tools/global-state-democracy-indices. 25. Ringen (2007, p. 26f). 26. The Economist’s “Democracy Index for 2019” counts with 22 full-fledged democracies, 54 deficient democracies, 37 “hybrid regimes” and 54 authoritarian regimes. According to this division, only 5.7% of the world’s citizens live in full-fledged democracies, and here Norway ranks as No. 1. The 54 authoritarian regimes comprise 35.6% of the world’s population, with North Korea at the bottom of the ranking (Democracy Index, 2019 u.y.). 27. Payne (1995, p. 46). 28. Tingsten (1965, p. 61). 29. Dahl (1989, p. 2). 30 Knutsen and Thorsen (2015, 467). 31. Rokkan (2010). 32. For an overview and critical discussion of democracy’s development—and democratic crises— from the First World War to the present day, see (Runciman, 2013). 33. Democracy Index (2019 n.d.). 34. Achen and Bartels (2017), Brennan (2016). 35. Næss (1976, p. 176). 36. Crouch (2004, p. 4). 37. Swyngedouw (2011, p. 1). 38. For an overview of the criticism of today’s democracy from a post-political perspective, see (Wilson and Swyngedouw 2015). 39. Thomas Piketty’s monumental work on modern capitalism has also shown how today’s form of economic growth necessarily creates and widens the economic gaps in society (Piketty, 2014). 40. See (Vinthagen, 2013) who proposes a social scientific climate panel. These are issues that will be discussed in more detail in Chap. 3. 41. Hickman (2010). 42. Lovelock (2015, p. 16). 43. For a list and review of all the problems democracy faces in the face of climate change, see (Paola & Jamieson, 2018). 44. Baer (2019), Hamilton (2010), International Youth and Students for Social Equality (n.d.), Klein (2014), Molyneux (2019). 45. https://fritanke.no/reportasje/demokrati-ikke-egnet-til-a-lose-klimautfordingen/19.7796. 46. Naustdalslid (2011).

References

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47. Grundmann and Rödder (2019)—Sociological Perspectives on Earth System Modeling.pdf (n.d., 3878). 48. In 2018, William Nordhaus won the Swedish Riksdag’s prize in economic science in memory of Alfred Nobel. 49. Nordhaus (2013, no. 3259).

References Achen, C. H., & Bartels, L. M. (2017). Democracy for realists: Why elections do not produce responsive government: With a new afterword by the authors. Princeton University Press. Aitkenhead, D. (2008, mars 1). James Lovelock: «Enjoy life while you can: in 20 years global warming will hit the fan». The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/mar/ 01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange Baer, H. (2019). Democratic eco-socialism as a real Utopia. Transitioning to an alternative world system. Berghan. Beckerman, W. (1976). In defence of economic growth. Cape. Bergskaug, E. (2020b, February 20). 1,5-gradersmålet er urealistisk, men politikerne vil ikke slutte å snakke om det. https://www.abcnyheter.no/a/195650574/ Brennan, J. (2016). Against democracy. Princeton University Press. Crouch, C. (2004). Post-democracy. Polity. Dahl, R. A. (1989). Democracy and its critics. Yale University Press. Democracy Index 2019. (n.d.). Henta 1. februar 2020, frå http://www.eiu.com/Handlers/Whitepape rHandler.ashx?fi=Democracy-Index-2019.pdf&mode=wp&campaignid=democracyindex2019 Ehrlich, P. R., & Ehrlich, A. H. (2013). Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided? Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 280(1754), 20122845. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb. 2012.2845 Eriksen, H. M. (2019, February 12). Norge kan bli eneste land med rent drikkevann i 2050. NRK. https://www.nrk.no/urix/xl/de-unges-klimaoppgjor-1.14419489 Farrell, C., Green, A., Knights, S., & Skeaping, W. (2019). This is not a drill: An extinction rebellion handbook. Gafvelin, Å., & Lappin, L. (Red.) (2021). Filosofi och pandemi. Norma. Grundmann og Rödder—2019—Sociological Perspectives on Earth System Modeling.pdf . (n.d.). Downloaded September 21, 2020, from https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/ 10.1029/2019MS001687 Hallam, R. (2019). Common sense for the 21st century. Wern Dolau/Goldden Grove. Hamilton, C. (2010). Requiem for a species: Why we resist the truth about climate change. Earthscan. Hausfather, Z., & Peters, G. P. (2020). Emissions—The business as usual story is misleading. Nature, 577(30 January 2020). Hickman, L. (2010, March 29). James Lovelock: Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock-cli mate-change Hulme, M. (2010a). Cosmopolitan climates hybridity, foresight and meaning. Theory Culture & Society, 27, 267–276. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409358730 Hulme, M. (Red.). (2010b). Making climate change work for us: European perspectives on adaptation and mitigation strategies. Cambridge University Press. IPCC. (2021). Climate change 2021. The physical science basis. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/ wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Full_Report.pdf Klein, N. (2014). This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate (First Simon&Schuster hardcover edition). Simon & Schuster. Knutsen, C. H., & Thorsen, D. E. (2015). Diktaturet—Demokratiets motsats. In I. R. Malnes & D. E. Thorsen (Eds.), Demokrati. Historien og ideene. Dreyers forlag.

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Linker, D. (2019, mai 7). Will climate change destroy democracy? https://theweek.com/articles/839 648/climate-change-destroy-democracy Lovelock, J. (2009). The vanishing face of Gaia: A final warning. Allen Lane. Lovelock, J. (2015). A rough ride to the future. Penguin Books. Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens, W. W. (1972). The limits to growth. Universe Books. Molyneux, J. (2019, oktober 1). Socialism is the only realistic solution to climate change. Climate and Capitalism. https://climateandcapitalism.com/2019/10/01/why-socialism-is-theonly-realistic-solution-to-climate-change/, https://climateandcapitalism.com/2019/10/01/whysocialism-is-the-only-realistic-solution-to-climate-change/ Næss, A. (1976). Økologi, samfunn og livsstil. Universitetsforlaget. Naustdalslid, J. (2011). Climate change—the challenge of translating scientific knowledge into action. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 18, 243–252. https:/ /doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2011.572303 Nordhaus, W. D. (2013). The climate casino: Risk, uncertainty, and economics for a warming world. Yale University Press. Paola, M. D., & Jamieson, D. (2018). Climate change and the challenges to democracy. University of Miami Law Review, 72, 57. Payne, R. A. (1995). Freedom and the environment. Journal of Democracy, 6(3), 41–55. https:// doi.org/10.1353/jod.1995.0053 Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the Twnty-First Century. Cambridge Massachusetts. Ringen, S. (2007). What democracy is for: On freedom and moral government. Princeton University Press. Rokkan, S. (2010). Numerisk demokrati og korporativ pluralisme: To beslutningskanaler i norsk politikk. I Stat, nasjon, klasse. Universitetsforlaget. Runciman, D. (2013). The confidence trap: A history of democracy in crisis from World War I to the present. Princeton University Press. Shellenberger, M. (2020). Apocalypse never: Why environmental alarmism hurts us all (1st ed.). Harper. Swyngedouw, E. (2011). Interrogating post-democratization: Reclaiming egalitarian political spaces. Political Geography, 1–11. Tingsten, H. (1965). Demokratiets problem. Aschehoug. Vatne, B. (2018). Nullingen av Paul Abel: Roman (2. opplag). Gyldendal. Vinthagen, S. (2013). Ten theses on why we need a “Social science panel on climate change”. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 12(1), 155–175. Wallace-Wells, D. (2019). The uninhabitable earth: A story of the future. Welzer, H. (2017). Climate wars: Why people will be killed in the twenty-first century (P. Camiller, Oms.). Polity. Wilson, J., & Swyngedouw, E. (Red.) (2015). The post-political and its discontents: Space of depoliticisation, spectres of radical politics (Paperback edition). Edinburgh University Press. Wood, R., Gardiner, S., & Hartzell-Nichols, L. (2013). Climatic change special issue: Geoengineering research and its limitations. Climatic Change, 121(3), 427–430. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10584-013-1000-4 Zelman, J. (2011, 29:31). 50 Million environmental refugees by 2020, experts predict. HuffPost. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/environmental-refugees-50_n_826488

Chapter 2

The Climate Problem and Climate Policy

In its latest report, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that the human impact on the climate system is indisputable and that today’s man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are at a historic high.1 Ongoing climate change has extensive effects on human and natural systems. The report further states that there is no doubt that a warming of the climate system is taking place and that many of the observed changes after 1950 are without parallel over several thousand years.

The Mechanisms Behind Global Warming Let us first take a very brief look at the mechanisms that create global warming. When the sunrays meet the earth in the form of short-wave radiation, part of this radiation is reflected into space when it meets bright surfaces such as snow, ice or light clouds. Sunlight that meets dark surfaces, on the other hand, is changed to longwave (and invisible) heat radiation. In contrast to short-wave radiation, this is slowed down by the atmosphere. The atmosphere consists of different gases that contribute to this reduction of radiation back into space, often referred to as greenhouse gases. The most important, and the most abundant, is water vapour (H2 O), but the one we hear most about is carbon dioxide (CO2) . Other such as methane (CH4) , nitrogen dioxide (N2 O) and various fluorine gases also have a greater or lesser effect in slowing the return radiation of heat from the earth. The reason why it is CO2 that dominates the climate debate is because it is our man-made emissions of CO2 that primarily contribute to changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere, and thus contribute to global warming. In the climate debate, greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect are often referred to as a problem, and CO2 is sometimes referred to, almost as an environmental toxin. However, as with so much else, it is not the phenomenon (in this case CO2 ) that is the problem, but the amount. Without the greenhouse effect, the sunrays would have a free path both to and from the earth, and it would be unbearably hot during the day and correspondingly freezing at night. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Naustdalslid, The Climate Threat. Crisis for Democracy?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34471-8_2

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Then, we would have a global average temperature of minus 18 °C. Today, the average temperature is approximately plus 15°, which makes most of the earth habitable and a living space for humans, animals, and plants. Within reasonable limits, increasing CO2 concentration also has positive effects in that it stimulates plant production. Those who are sceptical of climate change like to refer to CO2 as “the gas of life”.2 We also see that the globe has become greener with climate change.3 The forest line is moving upwards to higher altitudes. Climate scientists have also pointed out that moderate warming can have positive effects on agricultural production and energy production in the northern part of the globe. By increasing CO2 concentration in this way as “food” for the photosynthesis, global warming works to a certain extent to “counteract itself”, as a form of negative feedback. The broad consensus within climate science is nevertheless that the negative effects of global warming will be far more serious in the long term than certain negative feedback can be. From pre-industrial times to the present day, the global average temperature has increased by approximately one degree Centigrade, according to the latest climate report from the IPCC.4 According to the Climate Panel, the most important part of this increase in temperature is due to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, primarily CO2 . Most of the global temperature increase has occurred after 1970. This increase in temperature has coincided with how the man-made CO2 emissions have increased. In 1960, global emissions were less than 10 billion tonnes per year. Today, they stand at more than 37 billion tonnes. The increase has occurred steadily and reliably throughout the period, with a few “notches” in the curve in connection with temporary economic downturns in the early 1980s, in 1991/92 and in connection with the financial crisis in 2008. In 1997, when world leaders adopted the Kyoto Agreement and agreed to reduce global emissions back to the level of 1990, the total emissions were approximately 23 billion tonnes. Since then, they have steadily increased.5 With the corona crisis, we got another notch in this curve, but there is little indication that the reduction will last when the global economy starts up again. Since the 1990s, the world has perceived the climate problem as a formidable global threat, the global temperature has continued to rise, and global emissions have continued to increase. Along with the increase in the emission of greenhouse gases, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has consequently also increased. This is measured in parts per million (ppm), and since the industrial revolution, it has risen from about 280 ppm to more than 415 ppm. The legendary climate researcher Charles Keeling started the measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere on Mauna Loa in Hawaii in 1958, and since then, we have been able to follow these measurements year by year. Today’s level is the highest in approximately 800,000 years and is rising by about 2 ppm per year. The natural carbon cycle would, in principle, balance the release of CO2 with the binding of CO2 that occurs through the photosynthesis. But when we burn large and increasing amounts of carbon in the form of oil, coal and gas that have been stored underground for millions of years, we disturb the carbon balance.

The Mechanisms Behind Global Warming

23

The industrial revolution, and the rise of our modern society, is built on increasing use of energy. There is an unambiguous and almost linear connection between global economic growth and energy use.6 Until now, most of this energy has come from fossil energy sources, primarily coal, oil and gas. In 2021, 83% of the world’s primary energy production was based on oil, coal and gas, less than 15% on renewable and around 2% on nuclear energy.7 There has also been a dramatic increase in energy consumption worldwide. From 1990 to 2021 global energy consumption increased from around 98,000 TWh (billion tonnes) to almost 160,000 TWh. It is true that emission-free energy (including nuclear) more than doubled in the same period, from ca. 13,000 TWh to more than 28,000 TWh. But whereas carbon-based energy accounted for approximately 70,000 TWh in 1990, it soared to more than 136,000 TWh in 2021.8 It is not only the man-caused emissions of CO2 that affect global warming. Also, other greenhouse gases contribute. Here, methane (CH4 ) is considered as the most important. It exists in far smaller quantities in the atmosphere, but it acts far more strongly than CO2 . In the short term, the emission of one tonne of methane has the same climate effect as the emission of more than 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide. The most important potential problem, however, is that large quantities of methane are stored in the permafrost in the northern regions. We risk that further global warming and thawing of the permafrost will release these methane deposits. This type of reinforcement effect is referred to as “tipping points” in the climate debate. The most important man-made emissions of methane are linked to livestock production. Cattle and other livestock produce significant amounts of methane, and as much as 10% of the feed that livestock ingests is converted into methane. Other important sources internationally are rice cultivation and landfills. Extraction and transport of natural gas and extraction of coal also contribute to methane emissions. Of the total methane emissions in the world, it is estimated that man-made emissions account for around 60%. Another important source of the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is changes in the world’s land use. The global population has increased dramatically in the last 200 years. At the start of the industrial revolution, around 1800, the population on earth was about one billion. Today, we have passed eight billion. Most of this increase, over four billion, has occurred after 1900. The cities are also growing. About 3.6 billion people live in cities today. All these people have seized more and more land. Civilization seizes “unspoiled nature”, and deforestation takes place to make room for livestock, humans, food production, roads and other infrastructure.9 The decimation of the world’s rainforests is seen as one of the major threats to the climate as we know it. The fact that civilization spreads and seizes more and more land means that there will be less land left to bind up CO2 . On the other hand, as mentioned earlier, increased CO2 concentration in the air leads to stimulating photosynthesis and thus counteracting some of this effect, by increasing the vegetation’s ability to bind CO2 . The fact is that the globe has become greener since the turn of the millennium. This has partly to do with climate change and more CO2 in the air, but also with large forestry programmes, especially in China, and more intensive agriculture both in India and China and other countries.10

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Other conditions that affect the global temperature are the emission of particles from such as forest fires, smoke from coal-fired power plants and from households. Cars, aeroplanes and boat traffic produce particles (aerosols) which partly end up in the atmosphere. Bright particles reflect sunlight and thus contribute to reducing the global warming that would otherwise occur. It is claimed that the pollution from the big cities in Asia is helping to reduce global warming and that if, for example, China was to succeed in cleaning the air above its big cities, the global temperature could rise sharply.11 Dark particles (soot or “black carbon”), on the other hand, has a warming effect. In general, this is an aspect of the climate system where knowledge is not particularly well developed. It is nevertheless claimed that soot can be responsible for as much as five to ten per cent of the total human impact on the climate system.12

Global Warming Versus Climate The global temperature is a collective measure of the temperature on earth, based on thousands of measurements around the world. It is the sum of these measurements that leads the climate scientists to conclude that the average annual global temperature is now about one degree higher than at the end of the nineteenth century. But this does not mean that the temperature has risen by the same amount everywhere. There are big variations. In general, the temperature has risen most in the polar regions, especially the Arctic, and less close to the equator. In March 2019, the Meteorological Institute in Norway reported that since 1961, the average temperature on Svalbard had risen by 5.6°. By comparison, it had risen by two degrees in Oslo.13 There are also limited areas on the globe where the temperature has decreased. It is not the global temperature increase we experience when we enjoy warm summers, complain about autumn storms, landslides and floods or worry about drought in Africa or typhoons in the Caribbean Sea. It is the weather we see, and it is the weather we care about. It is the weather we encounter when we go out in the morning on a cold winter’s day or sunbathe on the beach on a warm summer’s day. We do not experience the climate. The climate in meteorological sense is a theoretical quantity. It is average weather, as meteorologists measure it in the form of temperature, precipitation and wind over a 30-year period. Global warming has different effects on the climate in different parts of the globe. When we are afraid of global warming, we are basically afraid of what kind of climate impact global warming will cause. The most pessimistic predict that man-made warming will lead to climate changes that will make the globe almost uninhabitable for humans.14 They predict sea level rise of several metres, desertification, extreme weather of all kinds, food shortages, refugee trauma and wars—all as an expected consequence of the ongoing global warming throughout this century and beyond.15 No one can guarantee that the worst-case scenarios will not turn out to be true one day. Still, we must remember that the Climate Panel, while warning against dramatic global climate changes, does not predict the end of the world, or climate changes that will be impossible to handle by society in the future.

Global Warming Versus Climate

25

In other words, it is the future climate-related effects of global warming that are frightening. It is these that make Greta Thunberg appeal to world leaders to panic and to do the seemingly impossible. It was also such dystopian prospects that led James Lovelock to declare a global state of war and to write off the possibilities of democracy to handle the crisis.16 The climate problem is undeniably serious. There is still reason to clarify the status of different parts of our knowledge about climate change. The development of knowledge about the connection between the concentration of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and global warming was developed by the natural sciences from the beginning of the nineteenth century. This is sound scientific knowledge.17 Apart from “climate sceptics”, there are few who question this connection, and that we are witnessing a human-induced global warming. There is also no reason to doubt that this warming will have a dramatic effect on the climate in the future and that climate effects will vary greatly in different parts of the world. In some northern regions, moderate climate change may also be positive, for example, by improving conditions for agriculture, forestry and energy production. But climate science is more than this. As science has gradually acquired more systematic knowledge about the relationships in the climate system, it has also used this knowledge as a basis for constructing mathematical models for future climate development. Partly, these are models of the entire global climate system, so-called “Earth System Models” (ESM), and partly, it is a matter of downscaling the global models to a regional level.18 The models describe physical and biochemical processes in the atmosphere, oceans and land. They divide the earth system into threedimensional “bricks”, and with the help of a large system of mathematical equations for known natural laws, they try to calculate the climate on the globe under various external assumptions. This includes historical climate based on known assumptions, and the possibilities for future climate, given different scenarios for societal development. Such model calculations are the basis for the scenarios the IPCC presents for the possible climate development up to the year 2100 and for the difference between a warming of 1.5° and 2.0°.19 Whether the scenarios described by the models will agree with the climate that different parts of the globe will experience in the future depends on two basic conditions. Firstly, how well the individual model simulates the connections in the extremely complicated climate system.20 And secondly, how society will develop in the future. The latter also includes assumptions about how large the future emissions of greenhouse gases will be. Here it should be added that the climate models cannot say anything about what ability future societies will have to handle, and live with, a different climate. The IPCC report on the differences between 1.5 and 2.0° of global warming also concludes that future climate-related risk will be significantly reduced by effective climate adaptation.21 We know that rich and developed societies can handle extreme climate-related events better and more effectively than poor societies. Here, we see the outline of a conflict of goals that I will come back to in more detail later. Economic growth requires increased energy use. And as long as development and growth in the poorer parts of the world are based on the exploitation of fossil energy sources, there is a

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necessary and compelling connection between economic and social development and increased emissions of greenhouse gases. On the other hand, economic and social development is a condition for handling the climate effects of global warming more effectively. I call this the “climate and development paradox”.22 It is this context (or conflict of goals) that the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics for 2018, William Nordhaus, is concerned with.23 He claims that the challenge is to find a sensible balance between economic growth and the use of resources to keep global warming down.24 We should take for granted, and as based on solid scientific knowledge, that there is a connection between the release of man-made greenhouse gases and global warming. The knowledge of how this warming will affect the actual climate in the future, regionally and globally, is far more uncertain. Here we also see different claims, but science cannot give decisive answers to such questions: Is there a real danger that Golf Stream could be greatly reduced? How quickly can the Greenland ice sheet melt? And what about “tipping points”? The model calculations of such potential reinforcement effects are uncertain. In general, we can say that the further forward in time, and the further down on a geographical level we try to look, the greater the uncertainty. To what extent the model calculation of the climate in 2100 agrees with reality, we will only get empirical knowledge about, at the turn of the next century. Whether the model calculations will turn out to be successful depends on many factors. How the world and the global system will change throughout this century, also for completely different reasons than those connected with the climate, we do not know. The model calculations of the climate are not forecasts, but scenarios or projections. And there is not just one such scenario. There are at least 20 climate centres around the world that have built their own climate models. The models calculate future projections for the climate, based on a set of different scenarios for social development. What we are presented with from the IPCC and in the media as predictions of how much the global temperature will rise throughout this century is based on the average of several different projections. The difference between forecasts and projections is often poorly understood and climate scientists are not always explicit in clarifying the difference either. Thus, the high-profile climate researcher Michel E. Mann has claimed that it is okay for most people to perceive the projections as forecasts, because this makes the climate threat appear more certain, and therefore more threatening, to most people.25

An Example: “We Only Have 12 Years” An illustration of how model-based scenarios can be misunderstood, and misused, in the climate battle can be found in the discussion after the IPCC published the so-called “1.5-degree report” in October 2018.26 After the climate summit in Paris in 2015 formulated an ambition to keep the global temperature increase below 1.5°, IPCC was commissioned to prepare a report on what this would mean. The report has received a lot of attention. The message that has taken hold most strongly in the

An Example: “We Only Have 12 Years”

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climate debate is that we had 12 years to avoid a climate catastrophe. In the many climate demonstrations, we have seen since the report was published, posters and slogans that refer to “we only have 12 years left”, abound. Climate activist and author Naomi Klein refers to the youth activists when she in her book published in 2019, “On Fire. The Burning Case for a Green New Deal” writes: Again and again at the strikes and protests, we hear the words «We have only twelve years». Thanks to the IPCC’s unequivocal clarity, as well as direct and repeated experience with unprecedented weather, our conception of this crisis is shifting. Many more people are beginning to grasp that the fight is not for some abstraction called “the Earth”. We are fighting for our lives. And we don’t have twelve years any more now we have only eleven. And soon it will be just ten.”27

There is still no scientific evidence for the claim that in 2018 we had only 12 years to avoid climate catastrophe. So, what does the IPCC report actually say? It says that from pre-industrial times until today, the global temperature has probably increased by between 0.8 and 1.2°. This is based on temperature measurements from several different measuring stations around the world. These measurements differ, and some measurements indicate that the global temperature increase may already have passed 1.5°. Others indicate that it is perhaps “only” about 0.8°. The average for all these different measurements is calculated to approximately one degree. This uncertainty is of course further propagated when the report tries to calculate when global warming will exceed 1.5°. It does not say that this will happen in 2030, given today’s pace, and that this is the time we have to avoid the major climate catastrophe. What the report actually says is that if global warming continues at the same pace as now (0.20 °C per decade), it is likely that global warming will reach 1.5° increase sometime between 2030 and 2052. And then, the question is what the climate activists, who have set 2030 as the deadline, think will happen in 2030. Is it the case that if we do not reduce climate emissions with 50% before 2030, climate collapse will happen immediately? Or is it the case that in 2018 the world had 12 years to avoid passing a “point of no return”? Today’s climate activists are less clear about this. But both parts are wrong, says one of the main authors of the report, Myles Allen28 He writes in his comment that he spent several days in October 2018 explaining to world leaders what we can say and what we cannot say about how close we are to 1.5° of warming. Perhaps, we have already passed 1.2°, and perhaps, the warming is happening at 0.25° per decade and not 0.20, as the report is based on. Maybe it happens more slowly. What the report presents, says Myles Allen, is model-based projections and estimates. Climate change is under way, and 2030 is a completely fictitious year as far as the chances of getting global warming under control are concerned. It is an illustration based on model-produced projections. 2030 is not a deadline. But that must not make the world take a less serious view of the problem, he writes. The faster and stronger climate measures are implemented, the greater the chance of slowing down global warming, and the lower the costs in the future. On the other hand, one can, like the profiled climate researcher Michael Mann, claim that the climate threat is so serious that it might be right to set up a short “deadline” to mobilize for action. We then also see that this actually works. Young

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people, but also researchers and academics, are mobilizing for action under slogans about action now because we “only have 12 years”. Myles Allen, but also other researchers, nevertheless has cautioned against this type of deadline thinking and claimed that it can backfire negatively.29 It can help to legitimize anti-democratic forces in the climate fight, because we are facing an imminent crisis that democracy cannot respond to. This does not necessarily mean that the young people who campaign are governed by an “anti-democratic attitude”. But the effect could easily contribute to the undermining of democracy. This is a problem I will return to in more detail later. A more serious problem with deadline thinking, which I will comment on here, concerns the long-term consequences it may have for trust in climate science. This is what Myles Allen is most concerned about. An extra quarter of a degree temperature increase until 2030 will not be experienced as Armageddon for the vast majority of today’s climate-striking youth, he writes—and what will they think then? The danger is that researchers and activists have cried “wolf, wolf” for so long that people are losing confidence in climate science. In other words, betting that the threat of dramatic changes in the short and medium terms would scare people into changing their behaviour is not a good strategy.30 An illustration of how the use of climate research for “deadline thinking” can contribute to creating confusion in the climate debate can be the following two reports that have circulated in the press in recent years: The UN’s former climate chief, Christiana Figueres, together with several leading researchers, warned in 2017 in an appeal in the journal Nature that the world then only had three years to reach the climate goals in the Paris Agreement and prevent devastating global warming.31 This means that the deadline was set for 2020. At about the same time, a group of researchers published a study which could indicate that the world might have a good deal more time and that it could be more realistic than previously thought to meet the 1.5-degree target.32 While the first report is used by “alarmists” to emphasize how critical the situation is, and how time is running out, the second is used by “climate sceptics” to question the reliability of previous climate science.

What Does the IPCC Say? Having said this, it may be appropriate to look at what IPCC’s latest report (AR6) actually says about the outlook for the future climate. While the previous IPCC report that was published in 2013 (AR5) predicted that the future average temperature in 2080 to 2100 would be between 0.3 and 4.8° higher than for the period 1986 to 2005, AR6 describes the likely temperature increase for five different emission scenarios. For the most dramatic scenario, where CO2 emissions will more than triple by the turn of the century, the report calculates that the global temperature increase could be between 3.3 and 5.7. In the most optimistic scenario, where emissions become negative after 2050, the report nevertheless calculates a global temperature increase of between 1.0 and 1.8°. This means that AR6 envisages an uncertain future within a slightly higher temperature range than AR5 did. On the other hand, the report does

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not take a position on the socio-economic assumptions for the scenarios or how likely they are.33 AR6 is generally less precise in quantifying degrees of uncertainty than AR5 was, but links uncertainty to effects on such as sea level rise, extreme weather, effects on agriculture, drought, storms, cyclones to the various scenarios. As is reasonable, the report envisages more dramatic effects the larger CO2 emissions the scenarios assume. For every half degree of additional global warming, the effects on nature and society will become more serious. Even with “only” 1.5° of global warming, we will more often experience certain extreme events, which we have not seen before in history, the report claims.34 The most certain we can say about this, as well as about previous IPCC reports, is that the outlook for the future climate is characterized by a large degree of uncertainty and risk, but with greater risk of dramatic effects for both society and nature with increasing emissions. At the same time, neither this nor previous reports describe “the end of the world”. We cannot envision a rise in sea levels of up to six metres, the melting of the entire ice sheet in Greenland or the disappearance of the Gulf Stream. When it comes to forecasts for the melting of the ice in Antarctica, the report admits that these are not very certain. Compared to many high-profile contributions in the national and international climate debates, the IPCC is relatively restrained in predicting the most dramatic climate changes.35 At the same time, it is important to emphasize that the scenarios outlined in the report could mean dramatically changing conditions for all life on the planet, should the most dramatic scenarios turn out to be true. In other words, it is important to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. What the IPCC report does not say anything about is how well societies in different parts of the world will be able to face, and live with, the climate changes that will come. What we can be equally sure of is that society, locally and globally, will also change. Climate change will have different effects in different parts of the world, and different parts of the world will have different abilities and capacities to meet climate change. One of the assumptions in the climate models is that global economic growth will continue. We know today that rich countries are better equipped to deal with climate change than poor countries. Economic growth and development, especially in the poorer parts of the world, will therefore be important for dealing with climate change. On the other hand, it is claimed that economic growth cannot be sustained if we are to “save the climate”. In that case, one of the assumptions for the climate models’ worst-case scenario also fails, and the climate changes will be less dramatic.36 We had a small hint of this during the corona crisis. This crisis illustrates the “backside” of a no growth development. The positive development we have seen in recent decades with reduced poverty in the third world, better health and reduced child mortality might stop. The report also does not assess whether all the future changes, which it outlines with greater and lesser risks, will be equally negative for all parts of the globe. Many would, for example, say that an open Arctic Ocean for large parts of the year could also have positive effects. Likewise, as previously mentioned, it is pointed out that within more moderate limits, a warmer climate could have positive effects on, for example, agriculture and energy production, at least in northern latitudes. However,

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the most important conclusion that can be drawn from the IPCC’s report is that there is a great degree of uncertainty attached to the predictions. As we saw, the risk of global temperature increases until the turn of the next century ranges from 1.0 to 5.7°, if we see the five scenarios together. This means that climate policies cannot be based on certain knowledge about the future, but on highly uncertain, modelproduced knowledge, both about how dramatic global warming will be and about what consequences the warming will have on nature and society in various parts of the world. More important than predicting the end of the world is to concentrate efforts on ways and mechanisms to reduce emissions and thus avoid the most destructive effects. It is also unwise to predict thresholds for “tipping points”, self-reinforcing “snowball effects”, which can create more dramatic changes than those we can imagine today. The IPCC’s reports do not say anything about what would be the right policy to meet the development towards an uncertain climate future. In the current climate debate, we find those who use uncertainty to claim that things will probably turn out better than we think, thus playing down the need for climate measures. On the other side, we find activists who take the most dramatic scenarios as their starting point and who even advocate setting aside democracy in order to “save the world”. There is a third alternative; to shape a broad and comprehensive climate policy that is primarily based on measures that can both face an uncertain climate future, and independent of climate change, make society better for people to live in. Such a strategy will also help to adapt society to a more uncertain and changing climate.37 The argument in this book is based on the idea that this is possible. It is another way of thinking about the climate problem, which has long been lost in a more and more polarized debate about how we can avoid the great climate disaster, and therefore something I want to highlight. It is called “no regret measures”—measures that we do not want to regret anyway. I will come back to this. But first we shall take a closer look at how the world community has so far chosen to meet the climate challenge.

Climate Policy The climate problem is global. The emission of one tonne of CO2 from the fishing fleet in the Barents See has the same effect on the global temperature as the emission of one tonne of CO2 from a coal-fired power plant in China. This is also the case with the methane release from the livestock of a farmer in England. They have the same climate effect as the equivalent emissions from a herd of cattle on the pampas in Argentina. In the same way, the effect of reducing emissions from car traffic in Norway by one tonne of CO2 (by, for example, switching to electric cars) will have the same climate effect as if the reduction came from a village in Tanzania switching from electricity from diesel generators to electricity from solar cells. It is the overall global reduction or growth in emissions of greenhouse gases that matters, no matter where the growth or reduction occurs. This simple fact lies behind perhaps the most fundamental problem for climate policy: the collective action problem.38 Why should I reduce my emissions, by,

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for example, stop driving to my cabin in the countryside and become a vegetarian, when my emissions mean vanishingly little, and at the same time, others continue to increase their emissions? Then, I will be the looser while everyone else can carry on as before. Norway, as an example, roughly accounts for one per thousand of the world’s total CO2 emissions. What does it mean if Norway reduces its emissions from 50 to 25 million tonnes (as is the current goal), if emissions in the rest of the world continue to rise? More concretely and tangibly, this type of reasoning relates directly to a burning issue in the climate debate in the oil-producing country Norway: Why should Norway reduce or end its oil and gas extraction if the result will only be reduced welfare for people, while other countries fill the void in the market? We also see this problem reflected in the increasing debate on wind power in several countries. Until quite recently, the environmental movement was generally positive to wind power. Wind power is renewable energy. We must have more of it to reduce climate emissions. Simple and indisputable, one would think. As the development of new wind power has picked up speed, the wind turbines have become more numerous and larger and dominate nature, and the positive mood has turned. We are experiencing a conflict between two “good purposes”: the development of renewable energy and the preservation of “unspoiled nature”. This conflict has become even more obvious after the UN Nature Panel (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in 2019 published the report on how nature and biological diversity in the world are threatened.39 Then, we see that different parts of the environmental movement go separate ways. Some prioritize the climate problem, others the conservation of nature. Then, we also see how the collective action dilemma characterizes much of the debate. Each individual wind power project means vanishingly little in the overall energy production in Europe and the world, it is claimed. We only destroy our nature, while emissions in China and India continue to rise anyway. If we accept the wind power project, we are left at a loss because we have “given away” our nature without it meaning much in the larger global context. The same environmental activists are nevertheless happy to take part in actions to “save the planet” and demand an end to oil extraction, even if the climate effect in isolation is highly doubtful. The dilemma is often attempted to be resolved by pointing to reduced consumption and economic “degrowth” as an answer to the dilemma.40 I highlight these cases as illustrations of how climate policy is an extremely complex problem, which intervenes in almost all aspects of social life. The climate problem is not primarily an “environmental problem”. It is more of a complex societal problem. It is our whole way of life, our industry, our business life, our eating habits, travel habits, our welfare, population growth, globalization, energy production and all the aspects of society that it is possible to enumerate. In our rich part of the world, this means that the climate problem is basically the reverse side of the prosperity and welfare that our societies have achieved. Consequently, most attempts to do something about the problem will also intervene in the complex interaction that exists between society and nature. Thus, climate policy quickly becomes a threat to our way of life. In the poorer parts of the world, it becomes a threat to ambitions for growth and development. As a result, all attempts to attack the climate problem will

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quickly collide with one or the other societal interest and be met with exactly the kind of response that we see more and more frequently in the windmill debate. Most people accept that the problem exists, and that society should do something (much more) about it, but if climate measures conflict with one’s own strong interests, the answer is to point to other climate measures as more important and better. In this lies much of the explanation of the fact that many climate activists direct their gaze towards anti-democratic “solutions” and point to coercion as an answer to the climate problem. An example of concrete measures that have met this type of problem is, as mentioned, the development of emission-free and renewable energy. Such measures usually seize land and/or are seen as threats to the local environment. As a result, they usually encounter the so-called NIMBY syndrome (Not in My Back Yard). Again, the conflict surrounding the development of wind power is a prime example. Many are generally in favour of wind power, but not where they live.

A Wicked Problem The climate problem is often referred to as a “wicked problem” as opposed to “tame problems”. This distinction between “wicked” and “tame problems” was introduced into planning theory in 1973, in an article by Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber. They claimed that many of the problems faced by planning and politics in society are such that they do not have a definitive or unambiguous solution. Such problems are ungovernable in the sense that they do not have a clear definition. Problems are entangled in each other, so that if you tackle one part of a complex system, you can easily end up creating new problems in another part of the system.41 The conflict over wind power is a good example of the climate problem as a wicked problem. Other examples are how increasing fuel taxes to reduce car traffic, and thus CO2 emissions, in the worst case can create social unrest, as in France with the “yellow vests”, or how current campaigns to reduce meat consumption can threaten agriculture.42 Such problems are connected in different directions, making it more or less impossible to break them down into manageable sub-problems that can be solved separately—or piecemeal and divided. Wicked problems cannot be “solved” since they simply have no clear solution. This contrasts with “complicated” problems, which may often be difficult to solve, which may also (and usually do) encounter conflicts of interest and technological challenges, but where at the end of the process, there is nevertheless an identifiable solution. Examples of this type of conflict are traditional environmental problems, such as the discharge of pollution from industry into a watercourse or the like. The problem of climate change is from time to time compared with the scientific and engineering triumph of mankind in landing man on the moon. When this could be done sixty years ago, why is it so seemingly impossible to solve the “climate problem”? So, the argument goes. An editorial on USA TODAY put it very simply:

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If there is a great scientific and engineering puzzle that needs to be solved now, it is climate change. The same combination of determination and smarts that landed men on the moon can, and must, be deployed to avert the catastrophe of rising sea levels, extreme weather and other disastrous effects of the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.43

What the editorial fails to see is the fact that “solving” the climate problem is less of an engineering problem than it is a political challenge. The Apollo space programme was a “tame” problem, whereas climate change is one of mankind´s most serious “wicked” problems. The Apollo programme was a path breaking scientific and engineering success, but it could be broken down into various smaller or greater sub-problems to be solved and put together to construct the spaceship and the programme organization that succeeded in bringing the two astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Adrian, to the moon and back again, whereas the climate problem, as we have seen, has no final “solution”. There is no yardstick by which we can say that now the problem is solved. In the case of Apollo, on the other hand, the distinction between success and failure could hardly be more crystal clear. Global climate policy attacks the climate problem as a “tame” or “complicated” problem. This is not to say that it is perceived as easy to solve. On the contrary, everyone who is seriously involved in today’s climate debate agrees that the problem is large and extremely difficult. Notice the language used. Consciously or unknowingly, politicians, scientists and activists refer to the goal of “solving” the climate problem. Let us therefore take a closer look at the global programme to “solve the climate problem”.

From Rio via Kyoto to Paris The foundation of today’s global climate policy was laid at the UN environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The meeting brought together the countries of the world to follow up the report from the World Commission on Environment and Development—the Brundtland Commission.44 This was the first time that the climate problem was brought on the global agenda to gather all the world’s countries around a strategy to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and stop global warming. The result of the negotiations was the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change—UNFCCC). The convention was followed up with negotiations over five years, eventually leading to the first global climate summit in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, which resulted in the Kyoto Protocol. The agreement allocated quotas for the reduction of CO2 emissions to the industrialized countries (so-called Annex I countries), which in total should result in a 5.2% overall emission reduction until 2012, compared to the level in 1990. Developing countries were excepted from obligation to reduce emission. With this as a framework, it was up to the individual country to find out how they were to fulfil their obligations. When the Climate Convention was adopted in Rio in 1992, the climate problem had already been on the global agenda for at least 20 years since the UN’s major environmental conference in Stockholm in 1972. The year before, an international

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research group, funded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences, had published a comprehensive report on human impact on the climate.45 Later in the 1970s and 1980s, the question of the human impact on the atmosphere came to be given a constantly increasing place, both scientifically and in the general environmental debate. It did not only apply to global warming and the climate problem, but at least as much to the “discovery” of the ozone hole, which was explained by human emissions of fluorocarbon gases from the production of refrigerators, freezer technology and as propellant gas in spray cans. In 1987, the politicians succeeded in reaching a global agreement to limit the release of fluorocarbon gases (the Montreal Protocol). The following year, in 1988, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) established what was to become the central international organization for the coordination and evaluation of research on the global climate: the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The following year, the IPCC was admitted to the UN system, and together with the Climate Convention, the IPCC is now the central global institution for following up and evaluating the knowledge base for global climate work. The Kyoto Agreement did not work. Countries were unable to live up to the obligations imposed on them in Kyoto. To the extent that emissions decreased at the start of the 2000s, it was due to the financial crisis in 2008, and the collapse of the Eastern European economy, in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union. In 2009, the world’s countries were to gather again in Copenhagen to renew the agreement, set new goals and agree on remedies. The meeting was a resounding failure. It proved impossible to reach an agreement on new emission reduction targets, and the delegates had to leave each other without an agreement. The proposal for an agreement that was on the table was “taken into account” without a decision. The next attempt to get an agreement in place was in Paris in 2015. The meeting has been characterized as a success in that it adopted sharper ambitions and a will to hold down the global temperature increase. The climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, in 2010 had established two degrees as the “permissible” limit for global warming but suggested that this too was too high. After strong pressure from exposed coastal and island states in developing countries, the Paris meeting decided that the ambition must be to keep global warming within 1.5°. The Paris Agreement does not allocate emission reductions to the individual countries, as did the Kyoto Agreement. Now, it is up to the individual countries to formulate their targets for emission reductions and report these to the UN. The hope is that all countries will report sufficiently large cuts so that total emissions will remain within the “budget” for CO2 emissions that the IPCC has calculated which will be necessary to keep global warming within 2.0 or 1.5°.46 From Kyoto in 1997 to Paris in 2015, in other words, the global regime and the framework for global climate policy have changed direction, from a “top down” policy, where targets for emission reductions were determined at a global level and distributed among the individual countries, to a “bottom up” strategy where the individual countries themselves formulate and report their ambitions so that the world as a whole will achieve the ambition of sufficient major cuts to keep the global temperature increase below 1.5°. One of the arguments for the chosen solution is

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that the individual countries will feel more committed to targets that they themselves have formulated and submitted. Despite ambitious targets and great political activity to follow up on the targets, the emission of greenhouse gases has continued to rise, only with a dip caused by the corona pandemic in 2020–2021. The agreement in Paris only established the framework and principles for further climate work. This was then to be followed up through the later and annual COP meetings.47 What was missing, among other things, was rules and a reporting system for how the principles in the Paris Agreement were to be achieved. This was to be the main topic at the COP meeting in Katowice in Poland in 2018, but no agreement was reached. It did not proceed better at the meeting in Madrid in autumn 2019. Here, all the fundamental problems with how the agreement should be followed up were postponed until the next meeting, which was planned to take place in Glasgow in 2020. This meeting was stopped by the corona crisis and postponed until 2021. If one is to be critical, it seems almost parodic that while the countries were unable to agree on how to realize the emission targets that were already on the table, the most important result of the meeting in Madrid was the appeal to submit even more ambitious targets at the next deadline in 2020. In November 2021, the climate meeting in Glasgow finally took place. The most positive that can be said about this meeting is that it did not break down. Here, a final document was agreed on, which laid down rules for the purchase and sale of climate quotas. What remains to be seen is how the system will work in practice. Ambitious promises were also formulated regarding such as forest protection and ambitions to end coal-based energy. Here there is, if possible, even greater reason for scepticism about compliance and implementation. Just the day after the meeting, countries that had committed themselves to phase out coal signalled that they were about to regret what they had promised. And still, after this meeting, there is a long way to go before all countries have reported sufficient emission cuts for there to be any hope of realizing the goal that also this meeting confirmed: keeping global warming below 1.5°.

A Failing Role Model The Climate Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, with the follow-up in Paris, fit into a pattern of such agreements in the 1980s and 1990s.48 The climate problem was far from the only cross-border environmental problem that was on the agenda at the end of the twentieth century. It is interesting to note that several of these problems were attacked in the same way: as pollution problems, which they quite rightly were. One of the closest models for dealing with the climate problem is the example of acid rain. Acid precipitation is primarily associated with sulphur emissions from industry. The sulphur particles can be transported many hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometres and fall as acid rain in countries other than where they are released. In 1979, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNICA) adopted the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LAPA). In 1985, most

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of the member countries had joined the convention and committed themselves to reducing emissions by 30% until 1993. All countries also managed to fulfil this objective. Later, the agreement has been followed up with new objectives and milestones and is generally regarded as a success and a good example of what can be achieved through international agreements between countries. A similar agreement for reducing the emission of nitrogen oxide (NOx ) is the Sofia Protocol from 1988. Here, too, the member countries undertook to reduce the emission of NOx by 30% during a ten-year period. This agreement has resulted in all new fossil-fuel cars now having to be fitted with a catalytic converter. The most important model for the Climate Convention and the Kyoto Protocol is probably still the Vienna Convention from 1985 and the Montreal Protocol from 1987. Through the 1970s and 1980s, it became increasingly clear that the ozone layer was thinning. The explanation was simple: Increasing emissions of chlorofluorocarbon gases (CFC gases), primarily from industries that produced refrigeration equipment such as refrigerators, deep freezers, and air conditioners, were eating away at the ozone layer in the atmosphere, which protects us from ultraviolet radiation. If this radiation passes certain limits, the risk of skin cancer increases. The climate problem and the ozone problem were perceived as similar types of problem. In both cases, we are talking about emissions that lead to harmful changes in the atmosphere that protects us. In both cases, this is also a cross-border problem. The problem had to be handled across national borders. No single country can “solve” them, and whoever tries to do so will be met by the collective action mechanism: He will incur costs and inconveniences on himself without the problem being solved because all the others can keep on as before. The answer to the climate problem is a blueprint of the answer to the ozone problem, but with a fundamental difference that is often overlooked. I will come back to that. The Climate Convention from the environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro follows the pattern from the Vienna Convention seven years earlier. It formulates goals and ambitions for reducing emissions. Like the Montreal Protocol, the Kyoto Protocol concretized the objectives of the framework convention and distributed tasks and duties to the countries that join the agreement. The pattern is also unmistakably like the other international agreements from the same period. All of these had in common that they were international agreements between states, and they set targets for the reduction of emissions and institutionalized monitoring systems to follow up and check that the countries lived up to their obligations. Within this framework, it is then the responsibility of each state to use the national political instruments required to fulfil their obligations. Apart from the Kyoto Agreement, all these international agreements have been reasonably successful. They have worked to reduce the emissions. After 30 years with 27 international rounds of follow-up and including two new global summits in Copenhagen in 2009 and in Paris in 2015, the world is not just as far, but even further away from realizing the goal of reducing the emission of greenhouse gases and stopping global warming. The big question—and the question that is very seldom asked—is why this is so. Why do the other international agreements—those which in many ways were

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models for international climate policy—seem to have succeeded reasonably well, while climate policy has been a failure? It has become a failure to the extent that the most concerned envision a global Armageddon, making the planet uninhabitable for our descendants—maybe even for those who are relatively young today.49 Despite this, the Montreal Protocol’s success is still held up as proof that it is possible to “solve” the climate problem if the political will is strong enough. On October 21, 2019, the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen had an article, jointly signed by representatives of a number of environmental and climate organizations, with the title: Norway’s climate bomb. The chronicle begins with the following introduction: “When the world realized that CFC gases were destroying the ozone layer, we phased out production. What do we do with our oil”? The comparison fails on almost every point but is an excellent illustration of how the climate problem is a completely different type of problem than the ozone problem, acid rain, the NOx problem and several other emission problems. All of these are manageable problems, in the sense that they have a solution. They have identifiable causes, and there are remedies and technology that can remove the problem. They are what Rittel and Webber would call “tame problems”.50 The climate problem, on the other hand, is perhaps the most wicked problem that the world has ever had to deal with. The most important difference, however, is that the Montreal Protocol was an agreement to reduce/end the use of CFC gases in production, not to regulate how much CFC gases could be released. The climate agreement is not an agreement that regulates the use or extraction of oil, coal and gas, but an agreement that attempts to regulate emissions from the use of carbon-based energy. Norway will not get closer to its national climate goals by ceasing to produce oil and gas. And it will not get the world closer to reducing global warming since other producers would quickly replace the Norwegian production. We have to do with a typical collective action dilemma. The climate problem does not have a specific cause. It is not caused by emissions from one or a few sources. The ozone problem could be traced back to a few industries in a limited number of (mainly) developed industrial countries. The chemicals that cause the ozone problem could relatively easily be replaced with other substances. The production of refrigerators and freezers could continue as before. No taxes were placed on the purchase and use of refrigerators to reduce emissions of CFC gases, like taxes which are placed on cars and car use to reduce CO2 emissions. People did not have to give up their fridges and freezers to “save the planet”. The release of CO2 can be traced back to almost all activities in all societies, industry, households, transport, food production—in practice everything. James Lovelock’s comment to Mario Molina, the Nobel Prize winner who first pointed out the dangers of the CFC emissions, is “to the point”: “How unfortunate that there are not just six large companies making CO2 as there were with the CFCs”.51 With the possible exception of the few people on earth who still live as gatherers and hunters, every single individual on the entire planet contributes to the release of CO2 . But also, the collectors and hunters release at least one kg of CO2 every day just by breathing, and the number of people is still increasing by around 80 million, or about one per cent, every year.

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The ozone problem, like the other environmental problems that have been tried to be solved with international agreements and the distribution of quotas, is a pollution problem. They can be complicated and politically difficult, but they have simple causes and identifiable solutions. They are “tame” problems. The climate problem is not a pollution problem. It is a wicked problem, which is inextricably linked to the way modern society functions. Despite this, it is met with measures and policies as if it was a simple emissions problem, only much bigger and more serious. Almost every single day we see in the press and in climate debates CO2 emissions referred to as pollution that we all, each and every one of us, must contribute to reduce by flying less, driving less, eating less meat and more generally reducing consumption. The columnists in Klassekampen are not alone in referring to the success of the Montreal Protocol as a model for climate work. “This shows that international environmental cooperation works”, stated the then Environment Minister Kristine Sundtoft on her way to the Paris meeting in 2015, with reference to the Montreal Protocol: The Montreal Protocol’s success provides inspiration for solving other major environmental problems because it shows that it is possible to find solutions that work for both developed and developing countries. It should not be denied that the climate challenge is more complex, but we can take with us the methodical approach from the Montreal Protocol, which with a well-functioning financing scheme has made it possible for developing countries to commit themselves to the reduction and phasing out of ozone-depleting gases.52

It is precisely this comparison with the “methodical approach from the Montreal Protocol” that does not fit the world’s attempt to attack the climate problem. The various countries were not given quotas for how much fluorocarbon gas they would be allowed to release. The attack was directed at the production. By attacking the use of fluorocarbon gases in the production of freezers, air conditioners and a lot of other products, emissions have been reduced. The key was that there was an alternative to chlorofluorine gas, and the Montreal Protocol also facilitates technology development and support for phasing out the use of CFC gases in production. In climate policy, one has chosen to attack the release of CO2 , not to develop alternatives to the carbon-based energy that creates the emissions. The idea is that when the individual countries get quotas for CO2 emissions, they will be forced to change their energy use to emissionfree energy and reduce emissions in other ways, such as through energy conservation. If we were to compare the climate policy with the policy to reduce ozone emissions, we would have to attack the energy problem more directly, not just the emissions. In other words, the climate problem is fundamentally an energy problem. How a problem is defined determines to a large extent how it is handled. The fact that the climate problem, ever since it was put on the global political agenda, has been understood and handled as a traditional—but very large—environmental and pollution problem is an important reason why it has proved so difficult to reduce CO2 —emissions. In other words, the world’s leaders have failed to convert the natural scientific climate problem into a manageable social problem. When, through the international agreement framework, they have tried to handle this emission problem through the distribution of quotas and targets for emission reductions based on modelproduced “budgets” for how much CO2 can be emitted in the future, they have also

Climate Policy as Management by Objective

39

resorted to a popular political tool from the end of last century, namely Management by Objective and New Public Management.

Climate Policy as Management by Objective There is good reason to claim that it is the basic principles from Management by Objective and New Public Management that underlies and has inspired, today’s climate policy. The basic principle is that the political leaders—here the politicians at global level—set the global goals and the framework for implementation. The global goal is then divided into sub-goals and distributed down the system to the individual countries, which in turn distribute national sub-goals. There may, for example, be targets for emission reductions in certain sectors. The point is that the goals, as in all Management by Objective, are determined politically at the top and left to subordinates down through the system to determine how they are to realize the assigned sub-goals in practice. The second basic principle, taken from New Public Management, involves using the market mechanism as a management tool as far as possible. This is most directly expressed in the scheme for buying and selling climate quotas. Although this is a simplified picture, I would claim that the New Public Management ideology is the skeleton on which global climate policy is built. The very fundamental problem with how this system has worked in practice is that the world’s politicians, through the climate summits in Kyoto, Copenhagen and Paris, and in the annual COP meetings, have failed to connect goals with mechanisms to realize them. This primarily applies to the distribution of sub-goals down the system. The direct paradox is that when the politicians have been unable to agree on the mechanisms for implementation, they have instead made it even more difficult for themselves by raising their ambitions and moving the limit for global warming to 1.5°. When in Paris they realized that it would be impossible to agree on a distribution of emission reductions, the meeting instead set up a “voluntary” arrangement to realize the overarching goal of reducing emissions by 40% by 2030. Climate policy has become a competition in setting high targets for emission reduction. The political party or country that sets the highest emissions reduction target wins the climate battle. The most important reason why the protests are now rising in the form of street demonstrations, climate uproar and Extinction Rebellion53 is not so much that the politicians lack high goals and a clearly stated will to put the climate problem at the top of the political problem list. In this sense, it is not true that they have not taken the climate problem seriously. On the contrary, with reference to climate science in particular, the politicians have set up an ambition to “solve” the climate problem, but it has turned out to be an ambition that they have not been able to fulfil. It is the politicians themselves who have formulated the goals that the activists are now criticizing them for not being able to fulfil.

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Expressed in a nutshell, the overall ambition is to control and regulate the global temperature by means of a global Management by Objective programme. The emission reductions, the changes in people’s eating habits, the development of wind power, and so on are only means to reach the big goal: controlling the global temperature, so that it stays below 1.5° increase. This started in Kyoto, as a “top–down” project. It was followed up in Paris, but now as a “bottom–up” project, where the premise is that the individual countries themselves must formulate their targets, so that it adds up to a sufficiently large reduction in emissions. In any case, the question is whether the world’s politicians are not guilty of a form of hubris. Is it possible to “solve” the world’s biggest collective and “wicked” problem through such a project for global Management by Objective? Firstly, such a strategy requires clear and unambiguous objectives. We must know what we are aiming for, and we must be able to tell how far from or how close we are to reaching the goal at any given time. About 1.5° global warming is not such a goal. Like with all wicked problems, we will never know whether we are within this target or not. Here, we are dependent on model-produced knowledge which may turn out to be right or wrong, but to what extent it turns out to be right or wrong, we will only find out after it may be too late. The global temperature changes unevenly, also for natural reasons. Emissions today will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Knowledge of “tipping points” is not well developed, and we do not know whether we have already released greenhouse gases that can trigger unexpected reactions, which the models have not considered. Even if the global mean temperature in 2050 was to be below 1.5° of warming, we do not know whether the goal has been achieved. If the world had wanted a more manageable target to steer by, it would probably have made more sense to use the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere (ppm) as a target. The climate activist organization 350.org has, as the name suggests, set the limit for what they think that the planet can tolerate at 350 ppm.54 That limit is far exceeded, and such a target will therefore require efficient technology to take CO2 back from the atmosphere if it is to be realized. We are not there today. A more realistic target, but which will probably also be difficult to achieve, is to keep the concentration below 500 ppm. It would still have been better, since such a target does not depend on global temperature fluctuations, which occur completely independently of human influence. Secondly, Management by Objectives requires control over means of action. As we have seen, the current climate strategy aims to control emissions. In Management by Objective terms, this means that the strategy aims to influence the behaviour of every single individual of the now more than 8 billion people on the planet. True, this is an influence that is supposed to occur via “intermediaries” such as states, municipalities, organizations, companies and so on. As long as the strategy is aimed at the emissions—against global warming as a “pollution problem”—it still ends up with a demand on each and every one of us to change our behaviour: We must travel less, change our diet, accept more expensive fuel prices and more road toll stations, save energy and generally accept a decline in living standards, economic growth and welfare levels. Since it is the discharge that is in focus, it is difficult to escape the fact that the “bill” ultimately ends up with the individual citizen. The strategy involves

The Global Strategy and the Frustration with Democracy

41

everyone in a “social dilemma game”: Why should I stop driving to my cabin, when the only one who loses is myself, while everyone else carries on as before and the “climate gain” is as good as microscopic. Idealists exist, and in many ways, they are the ones who set the moral agenda, but the effect on climate emissions is marginal at best. In a global perspective, this becomes even more problematic: Here it is not so much a question of a decline in consumption and living standards, as it is a question of putting a stop to further economic growth and development, which will take away the opportunities for the citizens of poor and middle-income countries for growth, development and raising living standards. Herein lies an important key to the fact that it has been so difficult, if not impossible, to reach a global agreement on the distribution of future emission reductions.

The Global Strategy and the Frustration with Democracy The most important point for our further discussion is that these mechanisms lead to the frustration with democracy that is now expressed in many research and activist circles. Idealists exist, and they often dominate the climate debate. But the vast majority of citizens in both rich poor countries are reticent—if not downright unwilling—to take on the individual sacrifices necessary to “save the world before it is too late”. That is why we constantly hear the demand for more coercion, and that we are forced to resort to more authoritarian forms of governance, to force people to accept “necessary” climate measures. More and more people seem to agree with the biologist quoted below about what is more important, democracy or the environment: The answer is obvious (….) if we don’t take care of the environment and the biological conditions so that humanity can continue to live on the planet, it means very little if we nurture democracy. There will no longer be a people here who can exercise popular government.55

The Norwegian philosopher Einar Øverenget agrees with this when he concludes that “An enlightened autocracy or a totalitarian leader could produce faster and more effective results when it comes to climate challenges and the fight against terrorism and poverty”.56 Is this really so? This is the question we take with us to the next two chapters. The way the climate problem has been understood lies beneath a global and national climate policy which helps to explain the rise of anti-democratic reactions and responses to the climate problem, which we see today.

Notes 1. 2. 3.

IPCC (2021b). Brinsmead (2015). A study that the American space agency NASA presented in February 2019 thus shows that the world today “is a greener place than it was 20 years ago” (Tabor 2019).

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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

IPCC (2021b). See Our World in Data (https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions). Kander (2013). See Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy. Ibid. There is nevertheless reason for a certain nuance of this picture. Contrary to what most people seem to assume in the climate policy debate, the area occupied by grazing animals is actually decreasing over almost the entire globe at the same time as livestock production is increasing. This is primarily due to more productive agriculture. The result is less pressure on the green area on the ground, which actually appears to be increasing. See for example (Blaustein-Rejto and Blomqvist 2019; Plumer 2018) Chen et al. (2019). Hamilton (2013a). Gwyn Prins et al. (2010). Institute of Meteorology (2019). Wallace-Wells (2019). In the book Climate Wars. Why people will be killed in the twenty-first century, the author, Harald Welzer, writes that “…. In the not so distant future, it will no longer be possible to distinguish between refugees and climate refugees. New wars will be environmentally driven and cause people to flee from the violence, and, since they will have to settle somewhere, further sources of violence will arise—in the very countries where no one knows what to do with them, or on the borders of countries they want to enter but which have no wish at all to receive them.” (Welzer, 2017, p. 5). The following is a quote from an interview with the newspaper The Guardian in 2010: “One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is “modern democracy” (….) Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while” (Hickman, 2010). See e.g. (Peters, 2012; Whitesell, 2011). Neelin (2011). IPCC (2018). Hastrup and Skrydstrup (2012). Op.cit. An example of this was illustrated by the cyclone that hit Mozambique in the spring of 2019. A comment in the Norwegian magazine Bistandsaktuelt pointed to a fact that is often overlooked in the debate: “The special thing about this cyclone is not that it is particularly powerful, but that it affects a country and a population that are very vulnerable. The damage will thus be enormously greater than if this were to affect a country that is richer and more robust.” (Bistandsaktuelt, n.d., p. 177). Or more precisely: Sweden’s Riksbank’s prize in economic science in memory of Alfred Nobel. Nordhaus (2013) Nordhaus claims that the “balance point” - where the costs of climate measures and adaptation balance the disadvantages of global warming - is around 3.5 degrees. See also (Geir HM Bjertnæs 2020). Mann (2009). IPCC (2018). Klein (2019a, 2019b, p. 25). Allen (2019). Asayama et al. (2019), Mike Hulme (2019). Asayama et al. (2019). Figueres et al. (2017). Millar et al. (2017). IPCC (2021a, p. 15). Ibid. p. 19.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

References

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35. Shearman and Smith (2007), Gore (2007). 36. Nordhaus (2013). 37. Adger et al. (2009), IPCC—Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014b), Orderud and Naustdalslid (2018, 2019). 38. Another name for this is the tragedy of the commons (Hardin 1968). 39. Díaz et al. (2019). 40. Kallis (2018), Aall and Næss (2019). 41. Rittel and Webber (1973). See also Jamieson (2014, 97) and Head and Alford (2015). 42. We will return to this in more detail in Chap. 5. 43. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/07/16/apollo-moon-landing-climate-change-pla net/1707937001/. 44. World commission on environment and development (1987). 45. Study of Man’s Impact on Climate (1971). 46. According to Glenn Peters, researcher at the Norwegian research centre CICERO, the “budget” approximately 150 billion tonnes of CO2 to keep global warming to stay within 1.5 degrees, and 800 billion tonnes to stay within the 2-degree target. But it is also emphasized that these are uncertain calculations. 47. COP stands for Conference of the Parties and is the body under the Climate Convention that takes ongoing decisions to follow up on the current climate agreement. The COP meeting takes place annually and must also monitor the follow-up of the agreement. 48. Prins and Rayner (2007, p. v). 49. Lovelock (2015) “Our kids would be dead in ten to fifteen years”, Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, claimed in 2019. Source: (Shellenberger, 2020, p. 11). 50. Rittel and Webber (1973). 51. Lovelock (2015, 3). 52. Comment on the UN report which showed that the ozone layer was becoming thicker: Press release from the government. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-bd&q=anr nstein+Vestre+trine+sundtoft+montrealprotocol. 53. The “declaration of rebellion” for Extinction Rebellion and a series of articles presenting the organization can be found in Farrell et al. (2019). 54. https://350.org/. 55. Higher Council (2010). 56. Ibid.

References Aall, C., & Næss, P. (2019, juni 30). «Reell grønn vekst»: Noe nytt eller bare mer av… [Text/html]. Harvest Magazine. https://www.harvestmagazine.no/pan/reell-gronn-vekst-noe-nytt-eller-baremer-av-det-samme Adger, W. N., Lorentzoni, I., & O’Brien, K. (2009). Adapting to climate change: Thresholds, values and governance. Cambridge University Press. Allen, M. (2019). Why protesters should be wary of «12 years to climate breakdown» rhetoric. The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/why-protesters-should-be-wary-of-12-years-toclimate-breakdown-rhetoric-115489 Asayama, S., Bellamy, R., Geden, O., Pearce, W., & Hulme, M. (2019). Why setting a climate deadline is dangerous. Nature Climate Change, 9(8), 570–572. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558019-0543-4 Bistandsaktuelt. (n.d.). Nordmenn gir millioner til syklon-ofrene—professor applauderer. NoradDev. Henta 12. januar 2020, frå https://bistandsaktuelt.no/nyheter/2019/professor-helgeronning-fronter-innsamling-for-syklon-ofre-i-mosambik-3/

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Bjertnæs, G. H. M. (2020). Det påstås at forskningen støtter 1,5-gradersmålet. Det er misvisende. Aftenposten. https://www.aftenposten.no/article/ap-EW2gqj.html Blaustein-Rejto, D., & Blomqvist, L. (2019). Achieving peak pasture. The Breakthrough Institute. https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food/livestock-revolution Brinsmead, R. (2015, October 20). CO2 er selve livets gass! Klimarealistene. https://www.klimar ealistene.com/2015/10/20/co2-er-selve-livets-gass/ Chen, C., Park, T., Wang, X., Piao, S., Xu, B., Chaturvedi, R. K., Fuchs, R., Brovkin, V., Ciais, P., Fensholt, R., Tømmervik, H., Bala, G., Zhu, Z., Nemani, R. R., & Myneni, R. B. (2019). China and India lead in greening of the world through land-use management. Nature Sustainability, 2(2), Artikkel 2. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0220-7 Díaz, S., Settele, J., Brondízio, E., Ngo, H. T., Guèze, M., Agard, J., Arneth, A., Balvanera, P., Brauman, K., Watson, R. T., Baste, I. A., Larigauderie, A., Leadley, P., Pascual, U., Baptiste, B., Demissew, S., Dziba, L., Erpul, G., Fazel, A., Fischer, M., María, A., Karki, M., Mathur, V., Pataridze, T., Pinto, I.S., Stenseke, M., Török, K., & Vilá, B. (2019). Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (p. 45). Farrell, C., Green, A., Knights, S., & Skeaping, W. (2019). This is not a drill: An extinction rebellion handbook. Figueres, C., Schellnhuber, H. J., Whiteman, G., Rockström, J., Hobley, A., & Rahmstorf, S. (2017). Three years to safeguard our climate. Nature News, 546(7660), 593. https://doi.org/10.1038/546 593a Gore, A. (2007). An inconvenient truth: The crisis of global warming (Rev. ed.). Viking. Hamilton, C. (2013a). Earthmasters: The dawn of the age of climate engineering. Yale University Press. Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162, 1243–1248. Hastrup, K., & Skrydstrup, M. (Red.). (2012). The social life of climate change models: Anticipating nature. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203093870 Head, B. W., & Alford, J. (2015). Wicked problems: Implications for public policy and management. Administration & Society, 47(6), 711–739. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095399713481601 Hickman, L. (2010, March 29.). James Lovelock: Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock-cli mate-change Hulme, M. (2019). Climate emergency politics is dangerous. Issues in Science and Technology, Fall, 23–25. IPCC—Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2014). Climate change 2014. Impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. Summary to policymakers. IPCC. (2018). Global warming of 1.5°C. Summary for policymakers. http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ sr15/ IPCC. (2021a). Climate change 2021a. The physical science basis. Summary for policymakers. file:///Users/jonnaustdalslid/Dropbox/Min%20Mac%20(Mac-mini.local)/Downloads/ IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf IPCC. (2021b). Climate Change 2021b. The Physical Science Basis. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Full_Report.pdf Jamieson, D. (2014). Reason in a dark time: Why the struggle against climate change failed—and what it means for our future. Oxford University Press. Kallis, G. (2018). Degrowth. Agenda Publishing. Kander, A. (2013). Power to the people: Energy in Europe over the last five centuries. Princeton University Press. Klein, N. (2019a). On fire the burning case for a green new deal. Allen Lane Penguin Random House. Klein, N. (2019b). On fire: The (burning) case for a green new deal. Lovelock, J. (2015). A rough ride to the future. Penguin Books.

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Mann, M. E. (2009). Is there a better word for doom? Seed Magazine. http://seedmagazine.com/ content/article/is_there_a_better_word_for_doom/ Meteorologisk institutt. (2019). 100 måneder med temperatur over normalen på Svalbard. Meteorologisk institutt. http://www.met.no/nyhetsarkiv/100-maneder-med-temperatur-over-normalenpa-svalbard Millar, R. J., Fuglestvedt, J. S., Friedlingstein, P., Rogelj, J., Grubb, M. J., Matthews, H. D., Skeie, R. B., Forster, P. M., Frame, D. J., & Allen, M. R. (2017). Emission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C. Nature Geoscience, 10(10), Artikkel 10. https://doi. org/10.1038/ngeo3031 Neelin, J. D. (2011). Climate change and climate modeling. Cambridge University Press. Nordhaus, W. D. (2013). The climate casino: Risk, uncertainty, and economics for a warming world. Yale University Press. Orderud, G. I., & Naustdalslid, J. (2019). Climate change adaptation in Norway: Learning–knowledge processes and the demand for transformative adaptation. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 0(0), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2019.167 3500 Orderud, G. I., & Naustdalslid, J. (2018). The understanding and role of uncertainty and risk in climate change adaptation: Local and central authorities in Norway. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 25(7), 579–591. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504509. 2018.1443524 Peters, E. K. (2012). The whole story of climate: What science reveals about the nature of endless change. Prometheus Books. Plumer, B. (2018, December 5.). Can we grow more food on less land? We’ll have to, a new study finds. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/climate/agriculture-food-glo bal-warming.html Prins, G., & Rayner, S. (2007). The wrong trousers: Radically re-thinking climate policy. Joint Discussion Paper of the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilisation, Oxford and the MacKinder Centre for the Study of Long-Wave Events, London School of Economics. Prins, G., Galiana, I., Green, C., Gundmann, R., Hulme, M., Korhola, A., Laird, F., Nordhaus, T., Pielke jnr, R., Rayner, S., Sarewitz, D., Shellenberger, M., Stehr, N., & Tezuka, H. (2010). The Hartwell Paper. A new direction for climate policy after the crash of 2009. London School of Economics. http://www.google.se/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd= 2&ved=0CDYQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Feprints.lse.ac.uk%2F27939%2F1%2FHartwel lPaper_English_version.pdf&ei=Vw96U_ClCqz_yAOJ04C4Bw&usg=AFQjCNFKO56G7cV Vp14pNyoPwiP2w6uCig&sig2=pMHcT2HHiC0mlCtL3kTY4w&bvm=bv.66917471,d.bGQ Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4, 155–169. Shearman, D. J. C., & Smith, J. W. (2007). The climate change challenge and the failure of democracy. Praeger Publishers. Shellenberger, M. (2020). Apocalypse never: Why environmental alarmism hurts us all (1st ed.). Harper. Study of Man’s Impact on Climate. (1971). Inadvertent climate modification: Report of the study of man’s impact on climate. The MIT Press. Tabor, A. (2019, February 8.). Human activity in China and India dominates the greening of Earth [Text]. NASA. http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-and-indiadominates-the-greening-of-earth-nasa-study-shows Wallace-Wells, D. (2019). The uninhabitable earth: A story of the future. Welzer, H. (2017). Climate wars: Why people will be killed in the twenty-first century (P. Camiller, Oms.). Polity. Whitesell, W. C. (2011). Climate policy foundations. Science and economics with lessons from monetary regulation. Cambridge University Press. World commission on environment and development. (1987). Our common future. Oxford University Press.

Part II

Anti-democratic Threats

Chapter 3

The Anti-democratic Legacy and the Dream of Eco-Dictatorship

Today’s climate battle fits into a historical tradition, where nature and the survival of humanity are seen as threatened by human activity. There have always been people who think they have a knowledge that is above what “ordinary people” can understand and who therefore believe it is necessary to “overrule” ordinary people and everyone who does not accept “the real knowledge”, to save society from its own destruction. Mostly this is about us humans over-consuming our own natural resource base. We must in one way or another adapt society to nature. In the case of the climate problem, the challenge is to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases to what the globe can tolerate, to keep the global temperature in check. This ecological way of thinking says that to “solve” the climate problem, we must return to a society that can function within the limits set by nature. This will impose such great costs, loss of welfare and restrictions on today’s people that it cannot be carried out with democratic means. This way of thinking is still not new. It has roots back to the early days of industrialism. Therefore, in this chapter I want to take a closer look at the ideological background for the ecological and deep ecological way of thinking, which dominates so much of today’s climate debate.

Historical Roots—Society as a Threat to Nature Today’s climate activists and deep ecologists are not the first in history to believe that the planet and civilization are in danger, and that we humans are about to steer towards our own doom. Back to the early days of industrialism, there have been thinkers and activists who have taken it upon themselves to “speak for nature”. An important part of the narrative has been that the destruction of nature will also tear away the foundations for humans on earth. All the way back to the Roman Empire, philosophers were concerned that the city-state with its pollution and unhealthy living conditions indicated that the earth was heading towards the end times. The classics in “modern times” can be found from the early 1800s, in the romantic era of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Naustdalslid, The Climate Threat. Crisis for Democracy?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34471-8_3

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European culture. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s book Nature was published in 1836. Here he protested against forestry, which he saw as a result of the rise of industrial society. Society should seek to return to a state where humans lived in harmony with nature, rather than looking at nature as something that should serve human purposes, he said. It is less well known that we find similar ideas, here clearly linked to nationalism and racism, in Germany at the same time. Ernst Moritz Arndt is mentioned in German history as the first example of ecological political thinking. Like Emerson, he was concerned with preserving the wilderness and nature as untouched as possible, and precisely like Emerson, he saw deforestation as a major problem. One example is the article “On the Care and Conservation of Forests”, which was written in 1815. With his combination of ecology, nationalism and racism, Arndt is seen as one of the forerunners of eco-fascism in modern times.1 Henry David Thoreau is better known as a classic role model, for many of today’s nature conservationists and outdoor enthusiasts. He followed up Emerson’s ideas to such an extent that for two years he settled down alone in the forest to live in harmony with nature. Thoreau is the “prophet” of wilderness and untouched nature. Nature has its own value and must be protected against human destruction. He can also stand out as almost prophetic in his claim that human destruction of nature will also undermine humans’ own existence. “What is the use of a house if your haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on”, he wrote.2 Today’s climate activist critique of democracy is like an echo of Thoreau’s critique of civilization 150 years earlier. In 2010, the claim was that “it means very little if we take care of democracy. There will no longer be a people there who can exercise popular government”.3 And in 2020, the Norwegian philosopher Arne Johan Vetlesen formulated it like this in the newspaper Klassekampen: No planet, no business – no democracy to preserve either. That one issue - the preservation of an ecologically intact globe - is the prerequisite for all others, so that socio-economic rights and civil liberties in the future will have a floor to stand on, is not something that today’s environmental movements and parties have invented, but quite the contrary among the most important things they have to teach.4

The early American and German nature romantics and environmentalists can be seen as precursors to a more systematic and scientifically based, ecological way of thinking and social criticism. Also inspired by the rapidly emerging knowledge of the interrelationships in nature, as we find in the work of, among others, Charles Darwin5 and Alexander von Humboldt6 , they came to emphasize how nature is an interaction between species, and how nature thus had its own dynamics. They saw the modern and emerging industrial society as a threat to a nature that had its own value and its own dynamics, which humans were about to run over. Thus, we have arrived at a very central conceptual framework which is much of the key to understanding the basis for the anti-democratic movement in the climate debate, namely ecology, and particularly the deep ecological movement. Here, the climate problem is linked to a wider understanding of a globe that is overloaded by human activity. Today’s discussion links to another historical tradition: the legacy of Thomas Malthus and the conviction that humans are in the process of overloading the planet’s resources, so that we are thereby undermining our own existence. The

The Ecological Heritage of the Environmental Protection Movement

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solution to both the environmental problem and the threat to biological diversity and global warming is to reduce the human footprint—which is perceived as man’s destruction of nature. This is what most people are too stupid to understand, to use James Lovelock’s terminology, and therefore the world cannot be saved, neither from the climate catastrophe nor from other threatening environmental disasters, except through coercion and measures that it would be impossible to carry out in a democratic society.

The Ecological Heritage of the Environmental Protection Movement The originator of the term “ecology” is the German zoologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel. He based his ideas about the coherence of nature on Darwin’s work. He saw nature as a composite and natural whole, which had its own dynamics. His ecological view of nature also coloured his political and normative perception of the world and society. Nature and society formed a holistic whole, as parts of a common ecosystem. It is here that we find the source of the perception we see even today that humans and animals have the same moral rights. It is through knowledge of the connections in nature that we achieve truth and insight. This should be used by people as guidance for a better life, he thought. Society should also be organized according to nature’s principles, and people and society should be adapted and subordinated to nature’s needs. Politics and economics should be based on ecology—on knowledge of how nature works and sets limits for society.7 Nature follows—and should be allowed to follow—its own rules and its own dynamics. The big problem that humans have is that they have pushed nature out of its natural balance. People, claimed the geographer and anarchist Élisée Recluses, as an echo of Haeckel’s thoughts, have only caused damage to nature.8 This ecologically based view of nature and society is often referred to as ecocentric (nature-based), in contrast to an anthropocentric, human-based view on nature. In the anthropocentric perspective, nature should be protected and taken care of, but this is important primarily because it meets our needs for so-called nature services. The ecocentric perspective, on the other hand, assumes that nature has priority on “its own terms” and implies that society must adapt to nature’s demands. According to this way of thinking, nature exists for itself, not to serve human needs.9 The problem arises when this is to be realized in practice. Nature does not speak for itself, only through our interpretation of what “needs” it has. Ultimately, this becomes a question of knowledge. What kind of knowledge about nature is valid when we must decide what nature’s needs are, and where the limits should be for various interventions in it. There is no scientific knowledge of what constitutes “nature’s needs”, regardless of society’s interpretation of this knowledge. In other words, decisions about what benefits nature will always be human decisions and thus political. This does not mean that democracy is unable to take care of nature, or care for the interests of non-human

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creatures. But: “[I]t does mean that decisions about how these may be identified, and about whether and to what extent they should be considered, will necessarily be human decisions”.10 In common, simple language, this means that those who claim to have knowledge of nature and nature’s needs, which is above—and exists independently of—society and politics, can hardly substantiate this scientifically. The Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss has played a central role in forming ecological thinking through his writing on “deep ecology”.11 In contrast to “shallow ecology”, which can be understood as the usual sector-oriented environmental policy, “deep ecology” includes the great interaction within the biosphere. It “touches almost all aspects of human society”, as Næss himself has written.12 The general goal of deep ecology is to preserve nature as “wild and free” as possible. To achieve this, the human impact on nature must be reduced as much as possible.13 In the light of this, one can gather the deep ecological answer to the relationship between society and nature under three headings: (i) conservation of untouched/wild nature, (ii) population control and (iii) a simple life.14 Deep ecological thinking has gained a central place in the argumentation of the climate and environmental movement. The explanation for the emission of greenhouse gases, and otherwise the environmental changes behind global warming, can quite rightly be traced back to modern society’s production and way of life. The science and technology of the Age of Enlightenment is also behind explosive population growth, which is part of both the general environmental problems and global warming. According to deep ecological thinking, there is only one way out of the crisis the planet is thus facing: adapting our production and our consumption to “what the planet can tolerate”. One of the problems with this is that, ever since Thomas Robert Malthus’ time, we have changed our minds on the question of what the globe can tolerate many times. It has always been in flux and marked by interpretations, which, in any case up until to today, have proved to be incorrect.15 I shall distinguish between two traditions in this critique of the deep ecological way of thinking. The first also covers the climate problem but has longer historical roots than the current climate debate and extends further. It is based on a general eco-political view that assumes that nature is above society, and that looking after and protecting the ecological system is more important than looking after the individual. Here, it is often the population problem that is placed at the centre and which must be “solved” to save the planet. The extreme variant of this trend has its roots back to a view of nature that we also find within German Nazism and which finds its current expression in the elements of eco-fascism in the environmental policy debate. The second tradition is more directly linked to the climate problem. It correctly links the climate problem to the broader set of ecological challenges, but initially sees the climate threat—and since 2019 and the UN Environment Panel’s report, also the threat to biological diversity—above everything else.16 The criticism is often aimed directly at democracy, and democracy’s alleged lack of ability to handle both the climate threat and the threat to biological diversity. Both traditions meet in rejection of democracy: one mainly from the right of the political spectrum and the other more often from the left.

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Anti-democratic Historical Roots in the Environmental Movement The environmental movement that is currently leading the fight against climate change has its roots back to the 1970s and was linked to the left side of the political landscape. It was a reaction to the environmental problems that became visible because of economic growth, industrialization and the pollution problems that followed in the wake of this development. Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, about how environmental toxins had killed the insects, and therefore also the birds, so that spring came without birdsong, in many ways represents an iconic milestone in the environmental struggle.17 This was a movement that largely called for centralized, and more or less authoritarian responses to environmental problems.18 We also find this centralist approach represented in the development of many countries in the 1970s. Environmentalists have largely been sceptical of all forms of local management of nature and the environment. In line with Garrett Hardin’s epoch-making essay from 1968, in which he describes the “tragedy of the commons as a result of the freedom to exploit natural resources, it was widely accepted that the protection of nature required superior coercive power.19 For Hardin this was also about the power to limit population growth, which he, like many in this tradition, saw as the reason behind the threat to the earth’s natural resources. The American economist Robert Heilbroner concluded in 1974 that the only hope for humanity lay in a religious government, combined with military discipline.20 Another leading theoretician in this movement in the 1970s and right up to our days, William Ophuls, referred to Plato’s political philosophy about the need for an enlightened elite with competence to rule society: The emerging large, highly developed, complex technological civilization operating at or very near the ecological margin appears to fit Plato’s premises more and more closely, foreshadowing the necessity of rule by a class of Platonic guardians, the “priesthood” of responsible technologists who alone know how to run the spaceship.21

Norway may be seen as one of the strongholds in Europe for this line of deep ecological thinking, partly due to the key role of the philosopher Arne Næss. Steinar Lem, who was the leader of the organization “The future in our hands”, claimed in 1994 that “democracy is terror against the unborn”.22 He also added: “If there is a conflict between consideration of the ecological basis for an indefinite number of future generations and democracy—democratic rights must give way”.23 Another Norwegian eco-political thinker and agitator at the end of the twentieth century, Hartvig Sætra, stated that the “equilibrium society” could not be an “herbal tea party”, and that to save the world from ecological collapse, there was a need for a “time-limited enlightened ecological autocracy”. The only way out of the ecological predicament humans are in is for us to hand over the command over resource use and distribution to competent supranational bodies of ecologists “with wax in the ears”. The commanders of our time must allow themselves to be tied to the mast as long as it takes, so far everything is fine and understandable.24

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Like several others in the ecological movement at the end of the twentieth century, Hartvig Sætra defended the introduction of a “time-limited ecological dictatorship”. He thought it was reasonable, as the world now lived under a “capitalist dictatorship”. The aim of the ecological dictatorship should be to restore democracy on the global level: “We must […] be willing to bind Western public opinion and governing bodies to the mast for a period of history, until global democracy has become as natural as national democracy has been”, he claimed.25 Like everyone else who then or later have expressed similar thoughts, it becomes unclear how the dictatorship will be able to restore democracy. An articulate critic of democracy’s chances of handling the environmental and climate crisis was one of the pioneers of Norwegian political science, Professor Thomas Chr. Wyller. In countless debate articles from the 1980s to after the turn of the millennium, he criticized society’s philosophy of growth and claimed that the only thing that could save the world was a dramatic change in lifestyle and consumption patterns. All the way back in 1988, in a debate article in the paper Stavanger Aftenblad, he raised the question of whether the earth “can only be saved through an enlightened depotism”.26 In a situation where life on the planet is threatened, a dramatic choice of values arises, he wrote: [It] seems sensible to me to maintain a “precautionary” principle in light of the most serious alternative: that the life of the planet is threatened. … (The crisis) can only be resolved through negotiations between states – democracies and non-democracies. Or - if the negotiations do not succeed - through dictation and the use of force. And how strong will democracy be in such a situation?27

A consistent theme in the ecological and deep ecological movement was—and is—the global population increase. This problem gained real momentum in the middle of the twentieth century and was most clearly put on the environmental policy agenda with Paul Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb from 1968.28 It will probably surprise many that the father of deep ecology, Professor Arne Næss, also expressed scepticism about democracy’s ability to implement a “necessary” ecological policy. A central element in his programme for such a sound policy was to advocate population reduction, although he believed that it was difficult to find acceptable political tools to reduce the number of children. He wrote that there was no “technical or cultural goal that seems to require a population of homo sapiens over 500 million”. He also believed that economists had to do a better job to measure “the social and global costs of billions of homo sapiens spreading across the globe”. Like many within this school, he even went as far as referring to humans as a cancerous tumour on nature.29 In other words, humans (homo sapiens) are a “cost” to the planet, according to this perspective. The perception of man as “nature’s cancer” is something we can still find expressed by extreme environmentalists even today. “Humanity is nature’s cancer”, the American environmental activist and founder of The Wilderness Society, David Foreman, is said to have claimed, for example.30 The same Foreman has welcomed the AIDS epidemic, as it would help reduce the population on earth. If the AIDS epidemic had not existed, radical environmentalists would have to invent it. Foreman himself believes that the population on earth should be reduced to 100 million:

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My three main goals would be to reduce the human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness with its full complement of species, returning throughout the world.31

Paul Ehrlich predicted in his famous bestseller The Population Bomb that the increase in population on earth would lead to mass starvation and total global catastrophe and thus regulate itself.32 This has far from happened, but David Foreman is by no means alone in seeing the need for a drastic reduction of the population on earth as a condition for a liveable planet in the future. “Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet”, says Agent Smith in the film The Matrix. The controversial leader of the environmental organization Sea Shepherd, Paul Watson, completely agrees. In these “corona times”, it undeniably evokes special feelings when he refers to humans as “the virus of the globe”: We need radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion. […] Curing a body of cancer requires radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach.33

How this can be carried out “intelligently”, we do not get an answer to. What we see, however, is a total lack of respect for human beings and for human rights. Extreme deep ecologists welcome famine, war and epidemics because they will reduce the population on earth.34 In an interview with the Norwegian newspaper Morgenbladet on January 25, 2019, Jørgen Randers35 argues for a global one-child policy, following the Chinese pattern. In the same interview, he reveals that he had rejoiced over Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans in 2005 and killed around 2000 people. The hope was that the disaster would wake people up to take the climate crisis seriously. When asked if it is not a dangerous thought to rejoice over environmental disasters, his answer was that the goal justifies the means: “At the start, we thought that the climate issue was just a political issue like any other. As I see it now, what is happening is total madness. When it comes to the survival of the planet, I look for events that can wake people up”, he stated.36 All these who are in favour of a dramatic reduction of the population on earth, mostly lack an answer (at least a democratic answer) as to how this should be achieved. The discussion is largely limited to welcoming war, epidemics and natural disasters. Or they assume, like James Lovelock, that the planet as a living organism will regulate itself through ecosystem collapse, so that the population will be reduced to what “the planet can tolerate”. It is also often pointed to China’s “successful” one-child policy, as Randers did. At the same time, those who argue for this will nevertheless have to resignedly accept that there is no world regime that can force such a policy through, on a global scale. The closest is perhaps Kenneth Boulding’s little-known idea that the world’s leaders should agree on a system of “negotiable child quotas”. Everyone should have the right to have one child, but those who could not, or did not want to, should be allowed sell their right to those who wanted more. The idea was that this would simultaneously reduce poverty in the world, as the sellers would mostly be the poor, who in this way could obtain a better income. More children would grow up in well-off families, and the population on earth would stabilize, the argument goes. Kenneth Boulding must have realized that the idea was

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“stillborn”, as it was difficult to get people to join such a scheme voluntarily. He was, as he himself said, no dictator.37 This is precisely the point: All those who want to save the planet from human destruction by reducing the number of people have not shown how such a project can be carried out with popular acceptance. It would require a global dictator with at least the same control over the eight billion people in the world, as Deng Xiaoping had over China’s one billion when the one-child policy was introduced in 1979.

The Extreme Variant to the Right—Eco-Fascism In today’s climate debate, the anti-democratic currents are often linked to the left. Climate sceptics and others who want to cast suspicion on climate activists like to refer to them as political watermelons: green on the outside and red on the inside. In other words—climate activism is a disguised form of left-wing politics and socialism. There are obviously left-wing activists who are at least as interested in abolishing capitalism as they are in overcoming global warming. In any case, they are convinced that the first is an absolute condition for achieving the second.38 But in a longer historical perspective, it is not the left, but elements on the extreme right, who have anchored their world view in ecological thinking and who want to shape society according to ecological principles. The contempt for people and the lack of respect for human rights that we can read from the extreme deep ecology has its black and brown roots in ideas with a much longer history than when Arne Næss put the label deep ecology on the idea of a fundamentally ecologically based organization of society. As I explained above, the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel was the originator of the term ecology. For Haeckel nature and society were connected in a total whole. He based his thinking on Darwin’s theory of evolution but transferred this to apply also to the development of society, hence the term social Darwinism.39 Here we also find the theoretical basis for racism: Some parts of humanity have developed further than others, and the transition between man and animal is only a difference in degree. Consequently, Haeckel could claim that the difference between the highest and lowest humans is greater than the difference between the lowest humans and the highest animals. Haeckel’s teaching became an important theoretical basis for the later development of Nazism.40 In the tradition after Haeckel, from the end of the nineteenth century and later in the twentieth century, a strong right-wing ecological movement emerged in Germany. It claimed that there was an “order of nature” which had to govern the organization of society as well, and that much of the development that took place worked to break down this natural order. The transition from an agricultural society to an industrial society, urbanization and mobility worked to destroy it, among other things by leading to racial mixing, while nature was ravaged by pollution and the extermination of species. Half a century before Rachel Carson wrote her dystopian tale of the future about a Silent Spring without birdsong, Ludwig Klages could write that:

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[…] in no conceivable case will human beings ever meet with success in their attempt to “correct” nature. Wherever the population of songbirds dwindles, we find an immeasurable proliferation of blood-sucking insects and caterpillars, which can devour whole vineyards and forests in a matter of days; whenever one shoots the buzzard and exterminates the adder, a plague of mice swiftly erupts to bring destruction to beehives. As a result, the fertilization of the clover, which depends upon the bees, will not occur.41

Ludwig Klages saw the cause of the decay in the world and the destruction of the order of nature in the Age of Enlightenment and modern science’s attempt to subjugate and control nature. The goal of human existence was to utilize man’s spiritual insight (“Spirit”) to gain insight, not modern science, which has only contributed to the destruction of the planet, he claimed. Such a rejection of rational thinking can only have devastating political implications and consequently lead to the most brutal authoritarian thinking, writes Peter Staudenmaier in his criticism of how this ecological tradition forms an important basis for German Nazism. Nevertheless, he writes, was Klages’ historical essay “Man and Earth” republished in 1980, in connection with the establishment of the Green Party in Germany.42 As Anthony Giddens has also pointed out, there is no reason to deny the fact that Nazism was based on some of the same ideas about a mystical return to nature, which have also inspired today’s green movement.43 At the same time, it must be emphasized that even if today’s Green Parties are based on a fundamental ecological way of thinking, they define themselves far from the Nazi and fascist ideology. Far more famous in posterity than Ludwig Klages is the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Although Klages is considered one of Nazism’s ideological sources of inspiration, he was not himself a member of the Nazi Party. Heidegger, on the other hand, was not only an active member and an outspoken anti-Semite, but also an open admirer of Hitler. Even after the war Heidegger did not distance himself from Hitler and Nazism. Despite this, he has helped to inspire parts of today’s green movement.44 One of the deep ecologists who has taken inspiration from Heidegger is Michael Zimmermann. However, and more lately in a self-critical article, Zimmerman has warned deep ecologists against the danger that authoritarian solutions to the environmental problem represent: I am once again hoping to influence deep ecology, but this time by warning it on the dangers posed not only by Heidegger’s thought, but also by movements that justify politically oppressive policies because they allegedly conform to nature’s laws.45

Zimmermann’s warning should be welcomed in today’s environmental and climate policy debate. For many “modern” deep ecologists, it has gradually become important to distance themselves from Heidegger as a historical role model and to emphasize how the ecocentric strategy stands on its own feet independently of Heidegger and the Nazi-infected legacy.46 This brief review of the connection between ecological thinking and the extreme right would still not have been relevant if this connection had not existed today. But it does. Most deep ecologists who are active in today’s open environmental and climate debate will probably—and with good reason—protest against being identified with eco-fascist thinking. Nor do I accuse them of being influenced by

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it. We shall, nonetheless, see that the anti-democratic features we still find on the extreme right have their roots in this rather dark chapter in the history of European ideas.

Today’s Eco-Fascism There is an extreme right-wing current in our society today with roots going back to Nazism and fascism. This movement brings with it parts of the ecological thought that was developed in the first part of the twentieth century and which became a central part of German Nazism. Political scientist Maria Darwish has documented how the neo-Nazi movement Nordiska Motståndsrörelsen (NMR) (Nordic Resistance Movement)—which has its main base in Sweden but has also branches in the other Nordic countries—builds its ideological house of cards on the idea of saving the world from environmental crisis and ecological collapse. The ideas have their direct parallel in the German Nazi Party’s ideology and are linked to the “need” to save humanity from destruction. This is coupled with the notion of a “natural order” which in turn underpins racism, the oppression of women and the legitimization of a “führer cult”, which should make it possible to resist decay in liberal society. By linking its ideology to the climate and environmental crisis, the party also attempts to present its ideology as “non-ideological”. It is presented as an expression of precisely the natural order, while the ideology is also based on a genuine acceptance of, and fear of, what is perceived as a global crisis. As it says in Darwish’s review of NMR: Even though environmentalists themselves serve to mask discrimination ideology, it is not a tactic used solely for strategy reasons by the NRM. The palpable consequences of climate change are probably as distressing to the members of the NRM as two people in general. Since the crisis is driven by fear, the environmental crisis might be emphasized by the feeling that the modern-day society is drifting further away from Nature, misled by industrialization and technology.47

The crisis for nature and for society is also linked to internationalization and the capitalist world economy. The answer is nationalism and taking care of one’s own people—“blood and country”—to stick to the Nazi terminology. Real environmental and climate activists should be against immigration, because “mass immigration to the West means that people who used to consume few resources will consume much more”, it says.48 I am quite sure that the Norwegian father of deep ecology, Arne Næss, would define himself as far from Nazism and fascism as it is possible to get. In an overall presentation, it would also be wrong to characterize him as an antidemocrat. However, the reasoning we see here could just as well, frighteningly, have been taken directly from Arne Næss’ deep ecology: Because today’s lifestyles in the richest countries of the world ensure gigantic waste per capita, compared with lifestyles in poor countries, immigration from poor to rich countries creates more ecological stress. It is clear that children of immigrants will adopt the fatal consumption patterns of the rich countries, thereby adding to the ecological crisis.49

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It can of course be argued—and with good reason—that a Nordic Nazi organization with an estimated 500 (admittedly extreme) activists does not in itself represent an imminent danger to the Nordic democracies. Nevertheless, there is reason to take seriously the fact that the ideology that the organization stands for has a wider impact. In the darker rooms of the internet, chat sites abound where members embrace precisely eco-fascist ideas, characterized by a combination of the climate crisis, ecological collapse, immigration, racial mixing and nature conservation.50 There is a strain of ecological apocalypticism, claims Graham Macklin, … percolating online among extreme right-wing grouplets that agitate for the acceleration of Western civilization’s destruction since it is only through such a cataclysm that nature can be restored to its pristine state, free from racial pollution and capitalist exploitation.51

Brenton Tarrant, the man who shot and killed 51 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on March 12, 2019, for example, presents himself as an eco-fascist in the “manifesto” he left behind. Here he claims that climate change, birth rates and immigration are basically just different sides of the same problem. “Kill the invaders, kill the overpopulation, and in doing so, save the environment”, he writes.52 The same Tarrant also proved to be a source of inspiration for Philip Manshaus, a Norwegian extremist who attacked the Al-Noor mosque near Oslo on August 10, 2019, after killing his stepsister because she had the “wrong” skin colour. Another terrorist who was inspired by Tarrant, the 21-year-old Patrick Crucius, shot and killed 22 people in a supermarket in El Paso, Texas on August 3, 2019. He also left behind a “manifesto”, directly inspired by Tarrant, where he paraphrased Al Gore’s famous climate documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth». Here he attacks consumption and overconsumption in modern society and concludes that the readers are too stubborn to change their lifestyle, and that the next logical step is therefore to get rid of people. Crucius concentrated on singling out and killing non-white Hispanics. In the threat assessment of Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) from February 2020, it was said that the threat from the far-right was now as great as the threat from extreme Islamists, also in Norway. Here PST refers precisely to the activity on the web based on the “manifesto” that Brenton Tarrant spread after the terrorist attack in New Zealand. In the threat assessment for 2021, in addition to the terrorist threat from extreme Islamism and right-wing extremism, it is also pointed out that there was a potential terrorist threat within the environmental movement: Anti-state currents, where the state is considered illegitimate, are considered to have the potential to radicalize some people in 2021. Environmental activism is considered to be an issue that has the potential to radicalize some people in the long term.53

The Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) also warns against how fascist and national socialist movements mix the green challenges with racial ideology, where the responsibility for the climate crisis is put on non-white. It has been more generally claimed that climate change “is increasingly recognised as a strategic security concern for most states and its seriousness in this regard is growing rapidly”.54 There are also signs that right-wing populist parties in Europe are opening for green and ecological legitimation of the politics they stand for. In a report in the

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newspaper Klassekampen which I have referred to earlier, it is also claimed that the youth association of Alternatives for Germany (AfD) was furious that the parent party still denied that climate change had occurred at the same time as the green ideas won the election. Marine Le Pen’s party, National Rally [Rassemblement National (RN)], in France, has launched a new platform that will “make Europe the world’s first ecological civilization”. This is to be achieved by protecting national borders in Europe. Also, on the extreme right in Italy, around groups like Forza Nuova and Alternative Sociale, we find corresponding ideological ideas.55 In the USA, fascist-oriented groups are active on the extreme right and were, for example, clearly present during the storming of the Capitol building in connection with the change of president in the USA in January 2021.56 Among these movements, we find, among others, the group that calls itself “The Green Brigade”. The group was founded in 2019 and describes itself as a national socialist group that sees nature above all else. They take inspiration from Hitler (among other things that he was a vegetarian) and from Haeckel’s social Darwinism. The group “The Base” emerged in 2018 with largely the same ideological structure but, if possible, even more action oriented, with the stated aim of hastening the collapse of the existing society. Two Swedish youths who in January 2021 were convicted of terrorism and attempted arson when they set fire to a mink farm had direct links to these networks. The purpose of their campaign was, as they themselves explained in the court case, to campaign for the rights of nature and animals.57 There is reason to note, and take seriously, Peter Staudenmaier’s warning against green politicians and activists who claim that in today’s political landscape they belong neither to the right nor to the left, but only “are in the front”. Such a view is historically naive and can be politically fatal, he writes: The necessary project of creating an emancipatory ecological politics demands an acute awareness and understanding of the legacy of classical ecofascism and its conceptual continuities with present day environmental discourse. An ecological «orientation» alone, outside of a critical social framework, is dangerously unstable. The record of fascist ecology shows that under the right conditions such an orientation can quickly lead to barbarism.58

This is a warning that there is good reason to listen to when we enter the debate about climate change and democracy in the next chapter.59 Here we find virtually no direct references to eco-fascist thinking, but the idea that climate and environmental problems trump all other problems, that we can face the total collapse of the planet and that ecological thinking trumps right and left in politics stands equally strong. On the radical left side too, there is an increasing amount of talk about terror as a “wakeup” in the climate debate. We should take seriously the headline in an article by Swedish Television’s (SVT’s) climate reporter, Erika Bjerström: “Doomsday mood in the climate discussion increases the risk of terrorist offences”.60

Notes

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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

Staudenmaier—2012—Fascist Ecology The “Green Wing” of the Nazi Part.pdf , n.d. (Staudenmaier, 2012). Cited here after (Giddens, 2009, p. 51). Øverenget (2010). Vetlesen (2020). Darwin (1859). Wulf (2015). For a discussion of policies that are guided by ecological principles, see (Atkinson, 1991). If humans do not adapt society to the framework set by nature, we will destroy the entire basis for our human existence within a short time, claims Atkinson. Similarly, ecologically oriented economists have discussed how economics can be turned into an interdisciplinary “ecological economy”, where ecological principles set the framework for production and consumption. See Costanza (1991). Sörlin (1991, s. 141). Vetlesen (2015). Lafferty and Meadowcroft (1997, p. 2). Næss (1976). Næss (1976, p. 16). Barry (1999, p. 14). Ibid. Gleditsch (2021). Díaz et al., (2019). Carson (1962). Dryzek (2013, p. 38). For a critique of Hardin, see (Ostrom, 1990), and for a critique with particular relevance to the current climate debate, see (Ostrom, 2009). Here refer to Dryzek (2013, p. 38). Ophuls and Boyan (1992, 210). Lem (1994, p. 148). Ibid. p. 146. Sætra (1990, p. 232). Ibid. p. 233. Wyller’s many articles and debate posts are collected in Wyller (2007). For the quotation in question, see p. 123. Ibid. p. 136. Ehrlich (1968). Næss (1976, p. 188f.). Top 20 quotes by David foreman (n.d.). Ibid. Ehrlich (1968). Cited here after (Ridley, 2012). Dryzek (2013, p. 188). Professor Jørgen Randers is one of the co-authors of the Limits to growth report from 1972 (Meadows et al., 1972). Quoted here after Snoen (2013). This information is taken from an interview with one of the leading figures in ecological economics, Herman Daly, in the New Left Review in 2018. See (Kunkel, 2018, p. 92). Baer (2019), International Youth and Students for Social Equality (n.d.), Molyneux (2019). See also Biehl and Staudenmaier (2011, p. 79–80). Biehl and Staudenmaier (2011, p. 18). Klages (n.d., p. 5).

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42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

Staudenmaier (2012, p. 23). Giddens (2009, p. 52). Blok (2014), Garrard (2010). Zimmerman (1993, p. 196). Blok (2014), Garrard (2010), Zimmerman (1993). (Darwish, 2018, p. 78). Darwish (2019). Næss, A. (1995) “Politics and the ecological crisis—An introductory note” in (ed.) Sessions, G., Deep ecology for the twenty-first century. Boston: Shambhala. P. 445–453. Cited here after (Darwish, 2018, p. 40–41). See, for example, Klassekampen for 21.08.19: (“Tilbake til røttene”, 2019), and for an overview of eco-fascist movements both in the USA and in Europe, see (Josephsen, n.d.). Macklin (2022, s. 980). See also (Bartlett, n.d.). My reproduction of a quote from the “manifesto” in Klassekampen ibid. Nasjonal trusselvurdering 2021 (n.d.). Silke and Morrison (2022, p. 884). Biehl and Staudenmaier (2011, p. 5). Seymour (2021). Sarnecki (2021). Staudenmaier (2012, p. 42). There may also be reason to listen to Frank Uekötter’s warning when he describes how conservationists in Germany allowed themselves to be “seduced” by Nazism because they saw themselves blind to Nazism’s view of nature and were more concerned with nature conservation than with ideology: “The history of the conservation movement in Nazi Germany provides a sobering reminder of the extent to which intellectuals can be seduced” (Uekötter, 2006, p. 4). Bjerström (2021) See also: (Macklin, 2022; Silva, 2019).

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

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References Atkinson, A. (1991). Principles of political ecology. Belhaven Press. Baer, H. (2019). Democratic eco-socialism as a real Utopia. Transitioning to an alternative world system. Berghan. Barry, J. (1999). Rethinking green politics: Nature, virtue, and progress. SAGE. Biehl, J., & Staudenmaier, P. (2011). Ecofascism revisited: Lessons from the German experience. New Compass Press. Bjerström, E. (2021, October 12.). Undergångsstämning i klimatfrågan ökar risken för terrorbrott. SVT Nyheter. https://www.svt.se/nyheter/utrikes/utrikesbyran-do-for-klimatet-undergang sstamning-i-klimatfragan-okar-risken-for-terrorbrott Blok, V. (2014). Reconnecting with nature in the age of technology: The Heidegger and radical environmentalism debate revisited. Environmental Philosophy, 11(2), 307–332. https://doi.org/ 10.5840/envirophil20149913 Carson, R. (1962). Silent spring (25th anniversary). Houghton Mifflin Co. Costanza, R. (1991). Ecological economics. Columbia University Press. da Silva, J. R. (2019). The eco-terrorist wave. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression. https://doi.org/10.1080/19434472.2019.1680725 Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. John Murray. Darwish, M. (2018). Green neo-Nazism. University of Oslo. Darwish, M. (2019, January 21). Når grønt blir brunt. morgenbladet.no. https://morgenbladet.no/ portal/2019/01/nar-gront-blir-brunt

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Díaz, S., Settele, J., Brondízio, E., Ngo, H. T., Guèze, M., Agard, J., Arneth, A., Balvanera, P., Brauman, K., Watson, R. T., Baste, I. A., Larigauderie, A., Leadley, P., Pascual, U., Baptiste, B., Demissew, S., Dziba, L., Erpul, G., Fazel, A., Fischer, M., María, A., Karki, M., Mathur, V., Pataridze, T., Pinto, I.S., Stenseke, M., Török, K., & Vilá, B. (2019). Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (p. 45). Dryzek, J. S. (2013). The politics of the earth: Environmental discourses (3rd edn). Oxford University Press. Ehrlich, P. R. (1968). The population bomb. Buccaneer Books. Garrard, G. (2010). Heidegger Nazism ecocriticism. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 17(2), 251–271. Giddens, A. (2009). The politics of climate change. Polity Press. Gleditsch, N. P. (2021). This time is different! Or is it? NeoMalthusians and environmental optimists in the age of climate change. Journal of Peace Research, 58(1), 177–185. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0022343320969785 Klages, L. (n.d.). Man and earth. Cosmogonic Reflections. Henta 28. januar 2020, frå http://www. revilo-oliver.com/Writers/Klages/Man_and_Earth.html Kunkel, B. (2018). Herman Daley. Ecologies of scale. Interview by Benjamin Kunkel. New Left Review, 109. Lafferty, W. M., & Meadowcroft, J. (Red.). (1997). Democracy and the environment: Problems and prospects (Reprinted). Elgar. Lem, S. (1994). Den tause krigen mot de fattige og mot miljøet. Forum. Macklin, G. (2022). The extreme right, climate change and terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09546553.2022.2069928 Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens, W. W. (1972). The limits to growth. Universe Books. Molyneux, J. (2019, oktober 1). Socialism is the only realistic solution to climate change. Climate and Capitalism. https://climateandcapitalism.com/2019/10/01/why-socialism-is-theonly-realistic-solution-to-climate-change/, https://climateandcapitalism.com/2019/10/01/whysocialism-is-the-only-realistic-solution-to-climate-change/ Næss, A. (1976). Økologi, samfunn og livsstil. Universitetsforlaget. Nasjonal trusselvurdering 2021. (n.d.). www.pst.no.Henta 18.februar2021, https://pst.no/alle-art ikler/trusselvurderinger/nasjonal-trusselvurdering-2021/ Ophuls, W., & Boyan, A. S. (1992). Ecology and the politics of scarcity revisited: The unraveling of the American dream. Freeman. Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons. Cambridge Univewrsity Press. Øverenget, E. (2010, august 6). Vil ofre demokrati for klima. Dagsavisen. Ridley, M. (2012, august 17). Apocalypse not: Here’s why you shouldn’t worry about end times. Wired, 20(9). https://www.wired.com/2012/08/ff-apocalypsenot/ Sætra, H. (1990). Jamvektssamfunnet er ikkje noko urtete-selskap. Samlaget. Sarnecki, H. P. (2021). Fascismens gröna rötter. Konspirationsteorier, kris och kollaps (FOI-R-- 5161--SE). Totalförsvarets forskningsinstitut. file:///Users/jonnaustdalslid/Dropbox/ Min%20Mac%20(Mac-mini.local)/Downloads/FOIR5161.pdf Seymour, R. (2021, januar 8). A return to civility will not begin to quell the threat of fascism in the US. The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/08/threat-fascism-usstorming-capitol-far-right-trump Silke, A., & Morrison, J. (2022). Gathering storm: An introduction to the special issue on climate change and terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence, 34(5), 883–893. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 09546553.2022.2069444 Snoen, J. A. (2013, May 20). Var nazistene grønne? https://www.minervanett.no/var-nazistene-gro nne/140594 Sörlin, S. (1991). Naturkontraktet: Om naturumgängets idéhistoria. Carlssons.

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Staudenmaier, P. (2012). Fascist ecology: The ‘Green Wing’ of the Nazi party and its historical antecedents. Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies, 13(10), 4–21. https:// doi.org/10.1558/pome.v13.i10.14577 Staudenmaier—2012—Fascist Ecology The ‘Green Wing’ of the Nazi Part.pdf . (n.d.). Downloaded 20. January 2020, from https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1155& context=hist_fac Tilbake til røttene. (2019). Klassekampen 2019–08–21. https://www.e-pages.dk/klassekampen/ 13200/ TOP 20 QUOTES BY DAVID FOREMAN. (n.d.). A-Z Quotes. Retrieved 21, January 2020, from https://www.azquotes.com/author/26203-David_Foreman Uekötter, F. (2006). The green and the brown: A history of conservation in Nazi Germany. Cambridge University Press. Vetlesen, A. J. (2015). The denial of nature: Environmental philosophy in the era of global capitalism. Routledge. Vetlesen, A. J. (2020, October 6). Én sak over alle andre. Er miljøbevegelsen en fare for demokratiet? Klassekampen. Wulf, A. (2015). The invention of nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s new world (First American Edition). Vintage Books. Wyller, T. C. F. (2007). Ytringer. Transit. Zimmerman, M. E. (1993). Rethinking the Heidegger-deep ecology relationship. Environmental Ethics, 15(3), 195–224. https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics199315316

Chapter 4

The Current Climate Debate and the Threat to Democracy

Apart from the small but frightening elements of Nazism and eco-fascism that have gradually appeared, we will have to search for a long time to find direct references to Nazi and eco-fascist thinking in the current climate and environmental debate. Today’s “mainstream” climate activists and concerned climate researchers probably consider themselves mostly to the left in the political landscape, or they see themselves as independent of the traditional right/left axis. Their criticism is aimed at the global community and the governments, because too little is being done to “save” the climate and the environment. However, there are similarities, as in the criticism against internationalization and the capitalist economy, against economic growth that drives the development and creates increased emissions and pressure on nature. Also, mainstream climate activism tends to direct its criticism more generally towards what is perceived as modern western society’s overconsumption and consumption patterns.

The Deep Ecological Roots of the Current Climate Debate Much of the mainstream thinking underlying the criticism from the left is taken from deep ecological thinking.1 Here, the answer to the climate problem is reduced consumption and negative economic growth (so-called “degrowth”).2 One also argues in favour of a return to a simpler lifestyle, a move back to the countryside, reduced mobility, a drastic reduction in air travel and car use, an end to the development of new motorways, and above all, an end to coal, oil and gas extraction as soon as possible. We frequently find references to the father of deep ecology, Arne Næss, but as a rule one does not go into those elements of his argumentation which reject immigration or which argue for a dramatic reduction of the population on the globe.3 The most “orthodox” deep ecologists also reject the idea of a green transformation of economic growth. Green growth will also require a use of resources that exceeds what nature, and the planet, can tolerate, they say. There is therefore © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Naustdalslid, The Climate Threat. Crisis for Democracy?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34471-8_4

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only one way: back to a society that can exist within what the critics believe that the planet can tolerate. We also see that deep ecological answers to the climate problem have gained more wind in the sails after the UN Nature Panel published its report, in which economic growth is also made responsible for the loss of ecological diversity. We return to this discussion in Chap. 9. Much of this argument is without reference to—and without consideration of— anti-democratic responses to the problem. The argumentation aims to convince people of the need to change their lifestyle, travel less and/or travel by public transport, reduce consumption and influence political processes in the direction of a more climate-friendly policy within democracy. “To find a way out of the climate crisis, we have to start with ourselves. We must learn to live to live, not to conquer”, writes Eirik Røkkum, for example, in an essay in the online magazine Harvest. The climate crisis, but also our own quality of life, requires “moderation and a simpler life”.4 The call is for political mobilization. But at the same time, we see a lack of belief that it is possible, through voluntary support, to get most people to change their lifestyle and consumption patterns. A research project at Western Norway Research Institute thus concludes that it is unrealistic to get most people to choose climate-friendly behaviour voluntarily. There is a need for more prohibition and coercion.5 The same study is also sceptical of politicians who do not have the courage to introduce more coercive measures to control people’s consumption, such as restrictions on air travel and meat consumption. Scepticism—yes, even contempt—for politicians and the political system is a consistent theme. Few express this more clearly than the activist Greta Thunberg. Another representative of deep political scepticism is the Canadian writer and climate activist Naomi Klein. For her, the means in the climate fight is extra-parliamentary activism in the form of actions and protests.6 Even radical and socialist politicians do not take responsibility, she claims, and uses as an example the Greek socialist, and eventually the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras in the Syriza party, who accepted, and advocated, oil extraction to save the Greek economy.7 In this case, we are probably facing an example of what the political scientist Roger Pielke jr. has called “the iron law of climate policy”: “When policies aimed at economic growth come into conflict with policies aimed at greenhouse gas emissions, it is economic growth that will win every single time”.8 Here, an “iron law” should not be interpreted to mean that there is no room for climate measures that may incur costs and slow economic growth. But if it is a question of the choice between economic decline and climate policy measures, it is difficult to see that “climate policy’s iron law” does not turn out to be valid. When Germany, during the energy crisis the winter of 2022/23, reopens coal power plants to save the economy, we should be reminded of this “iron law”. Therefore, as we will return to later in this book, it is a challenge to formulate a climate policy that can meet times of economic crisis with measures that also create economic growth. It is the “iron law of climate policy”, and the failure of politicians to meet the climate problem with “green growth”, which is behind much of the mistrust of democracy that we see growing. Economic growth becomes the great enemy. Only an authoritarian government can free itself from the electorate and drive through a policy that forces economic degrowth.

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Anti-democratic Activism A clear-cut example of anti-democratic climate activism is found in the organization Extinction Rebellion (XR). As the name indicates, the organization aims to rebel against a development that will (it claims) extinguish large parts of life on earth. The “Declaration of Rebellion” which has been issued with slightly differing wording in several languages opens as follows (the UK version): This is our darkest hour. Humanity finds itself embroiled in an event unprecedented in its history. One which, unless immediately addressed, will catapult us further into the destruction of all we hold dear: this nation, its peoples, our ecosystems and the future of generations to come.9

XR started in the UK in 2018 and presents itself as an apolitical non-violent activist organization. It confronts governments around the world with three demands: (i) Governments must tell the truth by declaring a climate and ecological emergency, (ii) governments must halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025, and (iii) governments must create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice.10 The organization claims to be above politics—to be non-political—and base its demands on facts and the “truth” about the climate and the environmental crisis which they claim can be inferred from the reports of the IPCC. Rebellion is said to be necessary because “… our Government and the corrupted, inept institutions (…) threaten our future”. Governments in all countries are put up as the great enemy that has willfully shattered “meaningful democracy and cast aside the common interest in favour of short-term gain and private profits”. It is therefore claimed to be the right and a duty of the citizens to restore a form of “democracy” that can secure the solutions needed to avert the catastrophe and save the planet for future generations. One of the co-founders of XR, Roger Hallam, in his book Common sense for the 21st Century, describes XR’s “scientific facts” in quite dramatic terms and takes James Lovelock’s war metaphor some steps further. Today’s governments are “genocidal” he bluntly claims, and compares the climate and environmental threats today with World War Two, and accuses governments around the world to let this happen with open eyes: … 6–7 billion people will have died within the next generation or two. Even if this figure is wrong by 90%, that means 600 million people face starvation and death in the next 40 years. This is 12 times worse than the death toll (civilians and soldiers) of World War Two and many times the death toll of every genocide known to history. It is 12 times worse than the horror of Nazism and Fascism in the 20th century.11

The Norwegian philosopher Arne Johan Vetlesen has followed up the Nazi parallel. In a book published in Norwegian, he compares the role of XR activists who carry out illegal protest actions with the bravery of German youth who risked their lives to warn against Hitler in the 1930s.12 The Declaration of Rebellion from the Norwegian branch of Extinction Rebellion declares “rebellion against the government and the co-responsible and paralyzed

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institutions that threaten our common future”. The governing powers are blamed for knowingly destroying nature in favour of short-term gain and private profit. Therefore, it is “not only our right, but our duty to rebel”, it says. The most dramatic paragraph in the declaration is nevertheless the following: “We hereby declare the social contract to have been broken, invalidated by the authorities’ lack of necessary action. We encourage every principled and peaceful citizen to do non-violent rebellion with us”.13 One may think that it could be such “anti-state currents”, where the state is considered illegitimate, that the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) may have had in mind when they in 2019 warned against a potential terrorist threat within the environmental movement. Likewise, XR together with more “mainstream” organizations such as Greenpeace and Sea Shepard was included as organizations of concern in counterterrorism briefing material produced by UK police in 2019.14 XR’s world view has clear similarities with the type of conspiracy theories that we otherwise find on the eco-fascist right, and where today’s state institutions are seen as the threat to “our common future”, and where government in company with the forces of capital knowingly aims to destroy nature. In connection with the Norwegian school strike for the climate, inspired by Greta Thunberg in the autumn of 2018, several leading academics and well-known Norwegian cultural figures announced their support for the strike by simultaneously publishing, and joining, XR’s Declaration of Rebellion. Here, we find not only artists, writers and musicians, but also leading scientists in the climate and environmental fields. Prominent climate scientists and professors in Norwegian universities go public and declare the social contract broken and call for rebellion against society’s legitimate democratic institutions, with a claim that our political institutions are a threat to our common future. Here, the researchers are stepping out of their role as researchers and knowledge producers about climate and the environment, to join, and legitimize, political extremism and an open attack on democracy. Some of the signatories have subsequently tried to distance themselves from the content of the petition. “The petition was claimed to be written in an “outdoor voice” and contained some formulations that were interpreted as non-democratic, not to say anti-democratic”.15 “Of course, none of us who signed the petition are antidemocratic”. That is probably right, but it is not the point. The point is that it is impossible to disregard the fact that the “manifesto”, on which Extinction Rebellion is based, is fundamentally anti-democratic and that the depiction of the climate situation, on which the movement is based, is without root in serious climate science. When some of the country’s leading climate and environmental scientists nevertheless join the manifesto of this extremist movement and claim that the social contract has been broken, they also contribute to political polarization, the undermining of democracy and, ultimately, a democratically rooted climate policy. XR does not accept the label “anti-democratic”. On the contrary, they claim to represent an extension and widening of democracy. The key to this widening of democracy is the Citizens Assemblies on Climate and Ecological Justice. These assemblies are necessary, and it is explained by the British branch of the organization, “as a counterweight to a parliamentary system that prioritizes short-term electoral gain over the long-term of current and future generations”.16

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How this alternative democracy can be established and what it would look like are not very clear. The assemblies are supposed to execute some sort of direct and deliberate democracy. Members would be selected randomly from the whole population. The British guide describes a quite complicated internal structure of the Assembly, with a Coordinating Group, an Advisory Board, an Expert Panel, a Facilitation Team and an Oversight Panel. An important principle seems to be to prevent politicians’ access to leading roles within the system “Safeguards must be in place to ensure that powerful stakeholders, such as the government, are not able to influence the selection process by appointing a team of coordinators to act in their interests”.17 If anything, the described structure, and description of how it is supposed to work, most of all remind us of George Orwell’s Animal Farm: “We are all equal, but some of us shall be more equal than others”. It is difficult to see how this system in any way can be described as democratic. The Assembly is not supposed to represent the people, since the members are not elected by the people, but recruited randomly and hence “is the people”. Then, this Assembly shall arrive at the “correct decisions” through internal processes where decisions are guided by experts and overlooked by guardians. Who should qualify as guardians, experts, facilitators and so on is left more or less in the blue. Parliament and the government are still supposed to be in place but will be guided and led by the Assembly. “The National Citizens’ Assembly will become the new governing body of the UK and will deal with the climate crisis”, writes Roger Hallam.18 As we discussed in the previous chapter, the climate problem is a “wicked” problem that cannot be solved as a single issue. Extinction Rebellion’s demand is to let the climate problem trump all other problems in society. That cannot be done in a democratic system. Extinction Rebellion is therefore in practice demanding that a professionally led Assembly or “citizen’s council” which is not accountable to anyone but itself will instruct today’s elected politicians. XR claims to be non-violent. But the more the climate crisis is portrayed as an existential threat to mankind, the danger of activists resorting to undemocratic means, violence and even terror to “save the planet” also increases.19 So even if the organization presents itself as non-violent, it spreads a message without any scientific base (like six to seven billion people will die during this century) that will easily stimulate more extremist forces in society. In Chap. 2, I have shown how the climate threat brings to life Nazi and eco-fascist groups with an obvious potential for violence. We now see that climate activists on the left more often vent claims that there is a need for militant measures to force change. In his book, How to blow up a pipeline, the Swedish activist and professor in human ecology, Andreas Malm, advocates actions and sabotage aimed directly at the material structures of the carbon industry, such as oil platforms and refineries. He criticizes XR for directing its actions against “ordinary people” and not directly against the carbon industry.20 On November 1, 2021, the paper Klassekampen had an extensive interview with Malm, in which he asks when the climate movement will start to “destroy the things that lead the world towards collapse”. He points out that Norway is particularly well suited for what he calls “intelligent sabotage” against the oil industry. This is only one of an increasing number of examples where

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extreme climate activists point to the possibility that terrorist attacks on society’s infrastructure may be necessary.21 In a recent chapter (2021) in “The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Politics”, Joseph Brown points out that as the climate battle intensifies, and the results of the climate policy do not show, the danger also increases that the more militant parts of the climate movement will resort to violent means.22 For the time being, however, the violent voices in the climate battle get relatively little response by most people. In the ongoing climate debate, the demand is more often to “listen to the science”. Thus, we are at a very central point in the antidemocratic argumentation in the climate area. It is claimed that to save the world, the management of society must be taken over by experts who rely on the knowledge of the “climate catastrophe” and who, based on this knowledge, can steer society away from the global catastrophe and avert the downfall of civilization. Here, key scientists and activists carry on the anti-democratic legacy, which dominated parts of the environmental movement from the 1970s towards the turn of the millennium.

The Vision of the Expert-Led Meritocracy A central contribution to this literature is the book The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, written by David Shearman, who is a professor of medicine, together with lawyer and philosopher Joseph Wayne Smith.23 The opening chapter of the book tells the readers that they will be confronted with a problem of such dimensions that it will make personal freedom appear insignificant. This is the climate problem. They present what they characterize as a non-Marxist variant of authoritarian rule, which has not yet been tried in practice. The Marxist approach has, according to the authors, been tried and proved useless. They also admit that all existing authoritarian regimes have proven to be worse than liberal democracies in taking care of the environment. But they also claim that democracy has failed to provide people with an ecologically sustainable system. To outline an alternative, they go back to the “original”, to Plato and his classic rejection of democracy. The people lack knowledge and insight, are governed by short-term and selfish needs and cannot be left to govern themselves. The management of society should therefore be taken over by an enlightened elite. Shearman and Smith thus make themselves advocates of what they call “a Platonic form of authoritarian rule, based on rule by scientific experts”.24 In the opening pointed argument of the first chapter of the book, they quote Aristotle: “A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments”. The authors then depict a future for the world where global warming is leading us straight towards an apocalyptic chaos that democracy, firstly, is responsible for and, secondly, is unable to get us out of. There is only one possible solution to avoid the otherwise irreversible disaster, to abolish politics and leave the management to a selected elite of experts. The book is less clear on how these experts are to be selected

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and by whom. We still get some hints: The education system is portrayed as important. Today’s universities develop narrow-track experts. The authors argue for a new type of university that will educate a new type of experts, who think “holistically”. “These thinkers will be the true public intellectuals with knowledge well-grounded in ecology”, as they write.25 This specially trained elite will be responsible for the management of society: Government in the future will be based upon […] a supreme office of the biosphere. This office will include especially trained philosophers/ecologists. Theses guardians will either rules themselves or advise an authoritarian government of policies based upon their ecological training and philosophical sensitivities. Theses guardians will be especially trained for this task.26

Apart from the content, the model presented by both Shearman and Smith and Extinction Rebellion is most similar to the type of regime we have an example of in Iran, where it is the (religiously) enlightened and knowledgeable clergy who rule over and control the elected politicians. It is of course tempting to ask, as did Marx in the third thesis about Feuerbach, who will educate the educators.27 Who will train the experts and how will they be selected? Shearman and Smith are not quite clear on this, but one can read from the argument in the book that the transition to authoritarian rule will take place via a kind of inscrutable evolutionary process, where society develops what is mankind´s natural form of government, namely an authoritarian rule by an elite. Like the classical ecologists, they rely on Darwin.28 They transfer Darwin’s theory of evolution to society and claim that, according to their sociobiological nature, humans are created to live in hierarchical societies, where the great majority is subordinate and ruled by a strong and dominant elite. We are doomed to be ruled by elites, the two claim. So, let us make sure we have “the right elites”.29 Here, they represent a continuity from the anti-democratic side of the environmental movement back to the 1970s, represented by thinkers such as Robert Heilbroner and Garrett Hardin. We also see the clear kinship back to the “equilibrium theorists” at the end of the twentieth century, such as William Ophuls, among others, who also pointed back to Plato’s ideal of a government consisting of an enlightened and hand-picked elite.30 Without necessarily calling for an authoritarian board of experts as the ideal form of government, several writers and commentators have claimed that climate change will undermine democracy and promote authoritarian forms of government. Peter Burnell points out that particularly weak and vulnerable democracies in the third world may prove to be more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than more stable semi-authoritarian regimes.31 In a comprehensive article, he discusses whether democracy is better than a more authoritarian regime in dealing with climate change, without being able to draw a clear conclusion. The problem, he claims, is that neither democracy nor authoritarian regimes have been particularly successful in dealing with climate change. He also discusses how climate change can affect governance. Here he sees a danger, especially for weak democracies, that climate change can weaken democracy and strengthen anti-democratic forces.

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This is a key point for Mark Beeson, who sees climate change as part of a wider ecological stress, which will undermine democracy and democratic development primarily in the third world. The article draws its material primarily from developments in East Asia, with the rapid economic growth that the countries here have experienced, and questions whether “democracy can be sustained in the region—or anywhere else for that matter—given the unprecedented and unforgiving nature of the challenges we collectively face”.32 He also agrees with Shearman and Smith’s claim that humans will have to trade freedom for survival: In such circumstances, forms of ‘good’ authoritarianism, in which environmentally unsustainable forms of behaviour are simply forbidden, may become not only justifiable, but essential for the survival of humanity in anything approaching a civilized form.33

The fact that global warming will lead to ecological and social breakdown, which in turn will force some form of authoritarian rule, is thoroughly discussed by Frank Fischer, in the book Climate Crisis and the Democratic Prospect. Here, he is strongly sceptical about whether democracy, as we know it, will survive the climate crisis.34 In contrast to Shearman and Smith, Frank Fischer is not a principled opponent of democracy. On the contrary, his concern is that society’s efforts to meet and deal with climate change will lead to a situation with engineers and technological experts overriding politics and politicians. Fischer points out that since the mid-1970s, environmental policy has increasingly been dominated by technological and expert-led assessments. Environmental policy has become an arena for technological and expertbased impact assessments, cost/benefit analyses and risk analyses.35 To the extent that there is discussion, it will be a discussion between experts, and it will be a situation where different positions are dependent on linking to, and arguing based on, technological and natural scientific expertise. In general, modern environmental management tends to focus narrowly on the environment and the ecosystem and forget the links to the socio-economic system.36 Fisher’s concern, he writes, is not that we should disregard benefit/cost analyses as such. The problem has to do with how such data is used and understood in decision-making processes: “Part of the problem is that the approach is often presented as the essence of rational decisionmaking, neglecting the equally important social, political and moral considerations that are also in play”, he writes.37 Fischer imagines that the climate crisis will be so dramatic that it will overshadow and override all other problems. He claims that it will force more expert governance and reinforce the development towards expert rule and technocracy, that we have seen grow since the 1970s. At the national level, democracy and politics will have to give way to authoritarian power politics—a kind of “eco-dictatorship”—to save the world from the climate crisis. The hope for democracy is that it can survive at the local level in the form of some sort of grassroot democracy and local participatory governance in eco-villages and self-help communities, which at best, if the world survives the climate crisis, can rebuild democracy from below. In an essay in the magazine Klima, published by the Norwegian climate research institute CICERO, professor in ethics, Odin Lysaker, argues for “expanding” the climate debate.38 In line with deep ecological thinking, he argues that the scope of

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the climate debate must include the entire ecosystem. He refers to political scientist John Dryzek’s thoughts on a “green democracy”39 The green democracy model is based on nature rather than man, Lysaker argues. A democracy that is not based on people but on nature should be seen as a contradiction in terms. Democracy, one would otherwise argue, is by definition “rule by the people” (from the Greek demos = people and kratia = rule). We still get a pointer in the direction of exactly what Frank Fisher sees as the threat to democracy. In a situation where the climate problem overshadows everything else, a “democracy” on nature’s premises “must be based on an understanding of nature that is adapted to the scope of the climate crisis—and on expert knowledge that underlies it”.40 In other words, it is expert knowledge (about nature), not politics understood as people’s government, that should govern society. How this transition will take place as a “democratic process” is difficult to see. Here, we are, nevertheless, at the very basic premise of the authoritarian response to the climate problem, as I have discussed this so far: The people, the voters, do not have the insight and knowledge necessary to save the world from climate catastrophe. People do not feel the climate problem directly from day to day. It is only visible to us via the knowledge and expertise of climate science. “Solving” the problem requires knowledge and scientific insight, which ordinary citizens do not have. In a climate debate on TV a few years ago, I noticed the following reflection from one of the debaters (from memory): “The explanation for our failure to solve the climate problem is that there are too few representatives with natural science expertise in the Parliament”. Therefore, a transition to expert rule that can take care of the world based on knowledge and climate expertise is required. So, let us enter that debate. Is there a good reason to assume that a board of experts will be in a better position to govern society than a democratic government, even with the flaws and shortcomings that democracy may have?

Climate Change as a Threat to Free Debate and Critical Research The consistent theme in the section above has been the idea that a science-based board of experts should, or will, take over the management of society to save the world from a climate disaster. Much of the debate boils down to the claim that politicians are unable to take responsibility or “listen to science”, as Greta Thunberg has constantly repeated. The politicians are often portrayed as part of the problem, at worst, as Extinction Rebellion sees it, as part of a conspiracy to destroy nature. This close connection between climate science and the notion that we are facing an almost war-like situation in the face of the climate crisis is problematic. It is often said that the first thing lost in a war is the truth. In the “climate war”, there must be no doubt about the great Truth—that we are facing a crisis that threatens the existence of the entire humanity. “It is immoral to doubt”, said Gro Harlem Brundtland, the leader of The World Commission on Environment and Development (“The Brundtland

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Commission”) in an interview with the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet in 2007.41 From the UN’s podium in New York, she is quoted as saying that “[it] is immoral to dispute the scientific knowledge about this now”.42 But doubt—questioning and challenging scientific knowledge in critical debate—is precisely the fundamental ethos of research and science. As I hope is clear enough, I accept as a fact that the climate problem is real. My role is not to enter the scientific discussion about the extent to which climate changes actually occur, whether they are, if so, human-induced, and whether CO2 can actually lead to global warming. As a social scientist, I accept the broad agreement among climate scientists, as reflected in the IPCC, that global warming is happening and that our human activity is the main driving force behind it. But I also see that a debate is going on, where the sceptics of “mainstream” climate science are not only extreme right-wing populists or self-taught amateurs, but also highly reflective scientists with a high level of climate-relevant expertise. Considering this, I am critical to mainstream media not allowing a more open debate, also about climate research. An open and critical debate is the best way to secure high trust and confidence in science. Closed doors, on the other hand, can lead to more scepticism. An example taken from the Norwegian media debate may be illuminating. A few years ago, two well-known professors and climate sceptics submitted an article about the relationship between CO2 and the climate to the paper Aftenposten. It was rejected on the grounds that Aftenposten did not want to “confuse its readers”.43 At the end of February 2020, the programme “NRK Debate” on Norwegian television had planned a debate between two participants from the climate sceptical organization Klimarealistene (“The Climate Realists”) and two climate researchers from two leading climate research centres, the Bjerknes Centre in Bergen and CICERO, Centre for Climate Research, in Oslo. The debate was cancelled at the last minute, partly because the participant from CICERO had changed his mind and no longer wanted to participate. The reason for withdrawing from the debate was that since February 2017, CICERO had as a policy that their researchers “do not participate in debates with lay people who deny climate science”. Debates “where unscientific views must be countered” would therefore be left to others.44 The rationale can be perceived as both arrogant and condescending, especially since the two “lay people” were highly qualified researchers in climate-relevant fields. It also ends up in a slightly strange light when CICERO’s communications’ director later called for a more open debate about climate and climate policy. “It is important to discuss climate policy. It is precisely through discussion that politics and change gain legitimacy”, he wrote, before adding: “As a research institute, we do our part to ensure that the debate about means of action is constructive, nuanced and accessible”.45 The approach chosen by the principal of the University of Stavanger, Klaus Mohn, illustrates an alternative strategy. He received massive criticism when, in autumn 2021, he had accepted to speak at the launch of the Climate Realist’s new “science journal”. Critical employees came forward and said they were embarrassed by their workplace. Rector Mohn showed up just as well. What the critics had not thought about was what he wanted to say in his speech. Here, he dealt thoroughly with both

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the “Climate Realists”, the scientific view they stand for and the lack of academic foundation for the journal they presented. The criticism subsided. We got a clean example of how those who deny human-induced climate change can be met with argument in the public space, instead of stage denial. There is no doubt that there is a large and broad consensus within climate science and in society in general about the central questions in the climate debate. It may still be appropriate to recall one of philosophy’s foremost defenders of democracy and theoreticians of science, who reminds us of the connection between democracy and an open scientific debate: An open society (that is, a society based on the idea of not merely tolerating dissenting opinions but respecting them) and a democracy (that is, a form of government devoted to the protection of an open society) cannot flourish if science becomes the exclusive possession of a closed group of specialists.46

It is questionable, both scientifically and from a democratic perspective, to suppress an open and critical debate about climate science. Climate science is not a monolithic building. It is, in every way, an interdisciplinary and complex activity that includes disciplines such as meteorology, physics, geology, chemistry, geography, statistics, economics and computer science. Climate science, for example, can hardly claim to have the sole right to discuss how good and accurate the climate models are, or what the societal effects of climate change will be.47 Nothing is perfect, not even climate science. It can therefore be tempting to quote the poet: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”.48 Many of the problems and challenges facing society, such as the climate challenge or the threat to biological diversity, would in practice be invisible to us if science had not made us aware of them. We are therefore increasingly dependent on researchbased knowledge to meet and deal with the problems of modern society.49 This makes it even more important that all research is done in open processes and in processes that allow for critical testing and discussion. The very fundamental thing about all scientific activity is precisely that it is open to critical questioning. What can be claimed to be immoral in a scientific context—and which is questionable in research ethics in any case—is not to doubt, but to be blindly certain. The tendencies we see to reject a critical climate scientific discussion are even more problematic, as climate science itself, for example in the reports from the IPCC, constantly shows that the conclusions are characterized by uncertainty. Politicians do not like uncertainty. At a time when more and more social problems only become comprehensible—or visible—through science and research, politicians tend to call for more certainty. But if the world becomes more uncertain, there is a danger that the struggle for scientific consensus and suppression of an open and critical scientific discourse also lead to a more closed and less informed political debate. From its very first report, the IPCC has also been based on the principle of scientific consensus.50 In his foreword to the first IPCC report in 1990, the cochair Sir John Houghton wrote that peer review had helped to ensure a high degree of consensus about the results.51 One may, however, observe an interesting phenomenon in IPCC’s reporting. The voluminous IPCC reports actually also discuss diverging

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scientific views on various issues. But yet …“policymaker’s summaries and synthesis reports do not provide insights into where in the science there is dissent”.52 When the climate problem is understood as threatening enough, it can easily lead to claims that arguments and discussions which problematize the climate threat should be suppressed or seen as illegitimate. US Senator Kathy Caster, when heading the “Committee for the Climate Crisis” in the US Congress, signed a letter to YouTube in February 2020 in which she asked that all videos containing “climate denial and climate disinformation” can be stopped. The British professor of political theory at the University of Exeter, Catriona McKinnon, has advocated that organized climate denial should be banned by law and made a criminal offence.53 The underlying reasoning is that the higher the degree of consensus, the greater the political impact. In a situation where the world is threatened by future catastrophes because of global warming and climate change, signalling of uncertainties and scientific doubt will weaken the political struggle to halt global warming. This view has been challenged, among others by the British geographer and climate scientist Mike Hulme, who writes that … “maybe the IPCC’s authority—in the eyes of critics and public, if not also in the eyes of politicians—would (…) be enhanced if it acted on its rules for minority reporting in the Summary for Policymakers (which it never has)”.54 The “consensus approach” to science is seen as important since it is supposed to lead to political consensus: “The uncertainties that science of the natural processes (climate) claims to have eliminated, simply (are) transferred to the domain of societal processes. Consensus on facts, it is argued, should motivate a consensus on politics”.55 Politics becomes a question of implementing scientific knowledge. The result is policies that to an ever greater extent resemble a technical exercise to implement indisputable decisions. The flip side of the “scientificisation” of politics can easily be a politicization of science, and the big loser will be democracy and popular government.56 In the modern, knowledge-dependent society, free, independent, and critical research, and an open research debate, is an important democratic institution. The tendencies we see today, to close the climate policy debate to critical counterarguments, are therefore one of the threats to democracy that climate change can bring. John Barry’s argument from the eco-debate at the end of the twentieth century can, with good reason, be claimed to be valid also for the climate debate in the 2020s: In contrast to the eco-authoritarian argument based expert knowledge and certainty, general uncertainty and disagreement about the causes, extent and possible remedies for socialenvironmental problems underwrite the necessity for democratic, open ended decision making procedures.57

It is precisely because climate knowledge is uncertain, especially about the future effects of climate change, that democracy is far better suited to face the climate problem than an authoritarian or totalitarian knowledge-based regime would be. This makes it essential to protect an important characteristic of democracy—the open and critical debate, also about research and science. Let us therefore take a closer look at the criticism of anti-democratic responses to the climate problem.

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Criticism of the Anti-democratic Response to the Climate Problem The scientific discourse about the climate problem and the societal discourse about how the problem can and should be handled takes place within two different conceptual frameworks, as Dale Jamieson has pointed out: The output from general circulation models (GCM) and statistics profiles of anticipated behavior are not the conceptual currency of policy-making. Policy-makers tend to think about people and how they respond to environmental changes and policy interventions; scientists tend to think about physical and biological systems, and how they respond to changes caused by people.58

The point can be illustrated as follows: Even if we were to accept the claim that authoritarian expert governance is the way out of the climate crisis, this hardly brings us any further. For what is relevant expert knowledge? Shearman and Smith seem to have discovered that this is a problem. As we saw above, they rejected today’s narrow and specialized scientific expertise. Instead, they will train a new type of expert with a holistic view of society and the climate. How should it be decided what this expertise should look like? Who is competent to design the curriculum and the scientific programme that will develop it? The very fundamental problem with the knowledge-based climate meritocracy is, in short, that it is not possible to identify the relevant knowledge in any indisputable way. Climate science tells us that we are faced with an extensive, compound and complex problem. However, climate science does not have the answer to how politicians and planners should face the problem, what measures should be put in place or how one should prioritize between different policy tools. The climate problem is not only a physical problem that affects society and nature. How society handles the climate problem has to do with power and distribution, cultural norms and values, expectations about the future and how we perceive the relationship between society and nature.59 The choice between developing wind power, investing in energy conservation, nuclear power, or reduced consumption and reversing economic growth are all political problems. The answer to such problems depends as much on ethical and value-based assessments as on scientific facts.60 In an article which discusses the tension between the climate problem as a natural science and a social science problem, Reiner Grundmann and Simone Rödder list twelve different answers to the climate problem, many of them mutually exclusive and in conflict with each other.61 There is general scientific agreement that continued emissions of CO2 will lead to global warming with major consequences for nature and society. However, if the right answer to this is to limit the global temperature increase to 2.0 or 1.5°, is more a political than a scientific conclusion. The same applies to the question of how society should balance between investing resources in climate measures to slow down global warming, rather than investing in climate adaptation to meet a changing and more unpredictable climate. Marcello Di Paola and Dale Jamieson are undoubtedly right that if there ever was a problem that required expert knowledge, it is climate change.62 But precisely because

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it is such a complex problem, it also requires complex knowledge and many forms of expertise. Questions about strategies and tools to keep emissions down quickly turn into a question of costs and cost-effectiveness. In such matters, it is far more difficult to draw a scientific conclusion. The two perhaps best-known climate economists in the world, Nicholas Stern, and the Nobel Prize winner in economics, William Nordhaus,63 fundamentally disagree about the costs associated with keeping down global warming. Among other things, it has to do with which discount rate is to be used as a basis for calculating the costs.64 Whether one or the other discount rate is “right” is not a purely scientific question either, it is also an ethical and political question.65 Who is then best suited to weigh different expertise views in different areas against each other and make the societal priorities that must be made anyway? Climate researchers who are experts in constructing climate models and developing scenarios for possible future climate development are hardly more qualified to manage climate policy than sociologists, political scientists or economists with expertise in societal effects and social reactions to various types of climate measures. Both expert groups are relevant in the climate debate, but none of them is better than responsible politicians within a functioning democratic system, when it comes to making the societal priorities that must be made. This does not mean that scientific knowledge about climate as well as climate effects, social and economic effects, costs and valuations are irrelevant. Precisely, because climate change is such a complex problem, all knowledge is relevant. Politicians and other decision-makers can also, and often quite rightly, be criticized for not taking scientific knowledge seriously. In a democracy, they can be openly criticized for this. In the authoritarian climate meritocracy, and in other authoritarian and dictatorial regimes, the rulers will not be held accountable. It is a fundamental misunderstanding that research and science always solve problems. In an open society, we should be able to expect from research and science that the knowledge that is produced might also make decisions more difficult.66 Politicians like to ask for research that narrows down their choices. They tend to be less interested in research that expands choice options and makes decision-making processes more open. Research understood in this way will in practice make political decision-making processes less expert-led and place greater responsibility on the politicians.67 This is the opposite of what we see today, also in democratic societies. Now researchers, and primarily climate scientists, are being invited into the role as political expertise, and we see an increasing tendency for climate scientists to thrive in the role. We also see that the IPCC is in the process of changing its role from being a neutral and independent institution to develop alternative courses of action on the basis of authorized and peer-reviewed science, to becoming “a body prescribing actions that are essentially political in nature, such as limiting warming up to no more than two degrees Celsius, as if such actions follow directly and unambiguously from the Science”.68 Political considerations must be based on both ethical value judgments and instrumental knowledge, writes political science’s perhaps foremost democracy theorist and defender of democracy, Robert A. Dahl. Separately, value judgements or instrumental knowledge is not sufficient. A technocratic elite is no more qualified than any layman

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to make basic moral judgments.69 There is also no science that with any reasonable right can claim to combine the ethical and broad scientific expertise, which would make it suitable to become an intelligent decision-maker in today’s modern, complex society. “Plato’s royal science simply does not exist”, writes Dahl.70 On the contrary, today’s science is becoming more and more specialized, and in a society governed by technical experts, one group of experts will quickly call the other group’s expert assessments and decisions into question.71 A fundamental problem with expert rule—which Dahl called “government by guardians”—has to do with to whom they are responsible. In a democracy, the rulers are accountable to the voters. As we have seen, this is exactly what the critics of democracy see as a problem, because the voters are seen as either stupid, selfish, or indifferent—or because the voters simply do not understand their own best interests. It is still not a rhetorical question to ask what the alternative is. Is an expert board— a meritocracy—freed from the democratic process, better? Are we better served by rulers who are only responsible to themselves? If they shall be able to stay in power, they will have to acquire mechanisms that “protect” them from the people, and oppressive despotic rule will easily be the result. In his criticism of the “guardian principle” as legitimizing the board of experts, Barry Holden cites the claim that “all power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.72 A recurring argument in this debate is that the climate crisis is so dramatic that it can be compared to a state of war. The climate crisis will wipe out the people, so then there will no longer be any people who can exercise democracy and popular government.73 In other words, we must sacrifice democracy to save mankind. Only then can there be a chance, as Frank Fischer seems to think, that democracy can survive in small local pockets in authoritarian society and grow back once the crisis has been overcome.74 It’s just that James Lovelock´s and others’ war metaphors are quite irrelevant, applied to the climate problem. Both the First and Second World Wars, and all other wars throughout history, have had a beginning, and above all, they have had an end. The climate problem will have no end that we can see. It has come to stay. There will not be a climate war “liberation day”, when we can turn on the TV (if such a thing still exists) and receive the happy news that the climate war is over. We will never be told that we can now normalize social governance and return to normal democratic arrangements. The climate problem will not go away unless the world and civilization collapses for reasons other than those we can see today. We humans have acquired a knowledge of the connection between human activity and climate, which we cannot get rid of. We have eaten of the fruits from the “tree of knowledge” and gained insight, not only into what creates global warming and climate change, but also into how we can influence the climate. Hence, we are thrown out of Paradise, and there is no way back.75 Even if, in 2050, the global temperature increase is still below 2.0 or 1.5°, the climate problem has not disappeared. Society will still have to manage emissions and other human activities influencing the climate. Furthermore, we will never be able to provide guarantees that no global actors will be tempted to use climate science to change the climate. An authoritarian climate regime will hardly be less tempted than a democratic government to use its of power to temper with the climate.76 There is no reason to believe that an authoritarian eco-regime that

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has acquired power over society will voluntarily give up this power and reintroduce democracy. One advantage of democracy over authoritarian regimes is that democracies are more flexible and have a far greater ability than authoritarian regimes to learn and to correct their own policies.77 It is entirely possible to criticize governments in most countries, or the world’s politicians for a lack of climate action. But those who want to replace this with some form of authoritarian climate meritocracy seem to overlook that the reason they can freely criticize the government’s climate policy and declare “climate rebellion” is precisely that they live in a democratic society. The Chinese model, which some of the critics praise, would have as its first task to put an end to all criticisms of the state’s climate efforts.

Do Authoritarian Regimes Do Better? Leaving behind the form of authoritarian climate meritocracy for which we have so far no historical example, there is not much to indicate that authoritarian regimes can show better results when it comes to climate and the environment. Those deep ecologists who argue that the answer to the climate crisis is the reversal of economic growth will have little to gain from totalitarian regimes. Such regimes base their legitimacy on economic growth, on pure terror or a combination. Economic growth, as Professor Stein Ringen points out in his analysis of the Chinese regime, is not necessarily a goal in itself. The regime is concerned with economic growth because they know, or think they know, that without economic growth and distribution of the benefits that result from growth, their power will be threatened. The overarching goal of an authoritarian government is to secure its own power.78 A study by Marina Povitkina from 2018 confirms other research which shows that democracy can consistently show better results in terms of efforts against climate change than can authoritarian regimes. She finds considerable variation also between democratic countries, and much variation that her quantitative study cannot account for. Among the factors that seem to influence the outcome, is the degree of corruption. Then one must still be able to add that this is an expression of the quality of a democracy and that a “wellfunctioning democracy” performs better than poorly functioning democracy.79 In an extensive empirical study from 2013, Per G. Fredrikson and Eric Neumayer show that various countries’ historical “democratic capital” plays a decisive role in their climate policy. Based on historical data for 87 countries on the degree of democracy versus autocracy back to 1800, and a series of indicators for climate policy measures from the twenty-first century, they find that countries with long democratic traditions show significantly more active climate commitment than countries with a weaker democratic tradition.80 In a more qualitative study, where Marianne Kneuer compares the climate policy efforts of a number of different countries with different forms of government, from pure autocracy to established democracies, she found no indication that authoritarian regimes generally performed better than democracies in climate policy.81 She found, however, that effective governance was decisive for the

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climate effort, both for democracy and more authoritarian regimes. But in the long run, she claims, it will not be enough for the regime only to be effective: It holds true for all regime types that no approach to combat climate change will be very productive if it prioritises only output performance and acts as if the state can solve the problems without the active political involvement of the citizens. The state, of course, remains a key actor, and long-term planning perspectives are still needed. But dismissal of the input dimension limits both the effectiveness of policy and the building of society’s own capacity to act independently of the state and to hold governments accountable.82

This point also coincides well with Fredriksson and Neumayer’s argument that the “democratic capital” of a country is important for climate policy in that it can correct authoritarian tendencies in state power. Three Norwegian researchers have studied how different democratic qualities affect the climate change performance in 127 countries from 1992 to 2014.83 The study separated democracy into five components: electoral, liberal, deliberative, egalitarian and participatory democratic qualities. A point of departure for the study was the widespread assumption that democracy could make it more difficult, not easier, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The study found no support for this assumption. Generally, it “found that there are no trade-offs between strengthening democratic institutions and mitigating climate change, Consequently, the global challenge of climate change cannot be used as an excuse to weaken democratic institutions”.84 The little research that exists on the connection between the form of government and the ability and capacity to deal with the climate problem either suggests that democracies do better than authoritarian regimes, or that the form of government is not a decisive factor. At any rate, there is no scientific support for the thesis that authoritarian forms of government perform better in dealing with climate change. These studies also point to the fact that there are large variations within the various forms of regime. This also applies to democracies, as we just concluded. Moreover, there is an interesting Canadian study which looks not at the differences between democratic and non-democratic regimes but asks whether the quality of democracy has anything to say about how democratic countries face the climate problem. The study measures “democratic quality” along three dimensions: democratic control (for example, stability and independence), equality (for example, participation and transparency) and freedom (creativity and the organization of society).85 The climate effort of the individual country is measured by how the country scores on the international “Climate Change Performance Index” (CCPI). The survey includes an extensive quantitative study of “established democracies”. In general, they find that their hypothesis is confirmed: Among established democracies, there is a clear statistical connection between democratic quality and climate action.86 China, which is considered by some as a role model when it comes to climate policy investment,87 is quite rightly the world leader in terms of the development of solar energy, but it is also the country in the world which, without comparison, is also the world leader in the development of new coal power. The Norwegian online newspaper Nettavisen reported in November 2019 that “while the rest of the world is cutting coal power, China is working hard to build 121 new coal power plants”.88 In

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March 2019, the Swedish online newspaper about China, In Beijing, also reported that the China Electricity Council, which represents China’s power industry, has asked for permission to build between 300 and 500 new coal-fired power plants by 2030.89 China is also the country in the world which has contributed most with expertise and capital to the development of coal power in developing countries, primarily in Africa. In total, China has invested in coal power in 34 countries, including 11 in Africa.90 In the autumn of 2021, Chinese authorities announced that the country will stop financing coal power in other countries. However, what China has so far done in practice is therefore rather poorly in line with the image the country is trying to create, both externally and internally, of a country that prioritizes the environment, climate and sustainable development. We can also look at how countries with different degrees of democracy or autocracy more generally deal with environmental problems. Here, we find research that has looked critically at the wave of anti-democratic responses to the world’s environmental problems, towards the end of the twentieth century. In an article by Nils Petter Gleditsch and Bjørn Otto Sverdrup, they discuss the experiences from the old Soviet Union, from other Eastern European countries and from communist China. The debate supports an argument that the absence of democracy is linked to harmful environmental behaviour.91 In the same article, the two researchers also report on a quantitative study of the connection between economic development, democracy and care for the environment. They find, as would be expected, that economic development brings with it environmental problems. But at the same time, democratic countries, more than countries with a totalitarian system of government, are better able to mobilize counterforces that can face the environmental problems that economic development and growth bring with them.92 In a more argumentative essay from 1995, Robert Payne goes through five arguments that democratic countries are better able to take care of the environment than countries with a more authoritarian and totalitarian regime. Most of these points should be equally relevant in today’s climate context93 : 1. Democracy ensures individual rights for the individual citizen. Everyone has the right to obtain information and to argue against governments that do not take care of the environment. This should undoubtedly also be an important point in the climate debate. This does not mean that information always flows freely, not even in a democracy. Strong lobby groups can dominate the public arena. In democratic societies, environmental organizations and climate activists are nevertheless free to promote their point of view and to exert pressure on the governing authorities. 2. Democratic regimes must necessarily be more open to popular influence. The governing authorities cannot ignore popular pressure. This argument is also used by the critics of democracy.94 Popular resistance hinders “necessary” climate measures, it is claimed. But if environmental interests have sufficient support among the citizens, free and independent elections will lead to them being represented in the national Assembly and give them a political voice in the public room. In an authoritarian regime, such channels will be more closed.

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3. Democracy has a greater ability to learn and to correct its own course than is the case with authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Leaders in totalitarian states also turn out to be less innovative and less flexible than leaders in democratic states. This has to do with the fact that in free and open countries, information and new ideas flow more freely than in more closed regimes. 4. Democratic countries have a long tradition of supporting and participating in international cooperation to solve problems jointly. In line with this, we also see that it is primarily democratic countries that support international cooperation to face the climate problem. It was primarily Western democratic countries that built up the system of international organizations after the Second World War. With reservations for the USA and certain others, we have also seen that it was democratic countries that took the lead in the development of the Kyoto Agreement and the international cooperation against global warming. This applies even if I have objections to how this treaty has attacked the climate problem. Characteristically, we also saw that the more authoritarian-oriented President Trump, like his colleague Bolsonaro in Brazil, would withdraw their countries from international cooperation, also in the climate area. 5. All democratic countries have market-based economic systems. Fair enough, capitalism is often held up as the main explanation for environmental destruction. As Robert Payne writes, it would still be wrong to claim that capitalism is the cause of environmental destruction. Nor is it the cause of the climate problem. As we have seen in the discussion in this chapter, there is little evidence that nonmarket-led regimes take better care of the environment or take greater responsibility for reducing climate emissions. On the contrary, Payne writes: “[M]ounting evidence indicates that some businesses in open economies are finding strong incentives to protect the environment”.95 In other words, the challenge is not to find an illusory alternative to an open society and a market-driven economy, but to determine how political authorities can regulate and influence the incentive structure in the market. Then, one can, in following up Robert Payne’s five points, ask whether the defence of democracy only depends on its effectiveness compared to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. In his book Against Democracy, Jason Brennan claims that “Democracy is a tool, nothing more”.96 He writes: (D)emocracy’s value is purely instrumental; the only reason to favor democracy over any other political systems is that it is more effective in producing just results, according to procedure-independent standards of Justice. Democracy is nothing more than a hammer. If we can find a better hammer, we should use it.97

According to Brennan, democracy works poorly in a climate context. Like others who reject democracy, he does not have an empirical basis for claiming that there is a better system. The argument is indirect. By showing that democracy makes the management of society dependent on “incompetent and ignorant” citizens, it must therefore be bad for the management of society. He calls the alternative an epistocracy. That means “rule of the knowledgeable. More precisely a political regime

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(where) power is formally distributed according to competence, skill and the good faith to act on this skill”.98 Again, it is tempting to point to the obvious: Neither Brennan nor others who reject democracy have any good answers to how those who are competent enough to govern should be selected, what kind of competence they should have and how someone should assess whether one system is better than the other. Brennan has a simple solution to this: “If epistocracy turns out to have worse consequences than democracy […] then by all means, let us view it as expressing disrespect”.99 But who these “we” should be, and how “we” should get democracy back if the alternative turns out not to work “well enough”, remains unanswered. Like Brennan, most who reject democracy see it as an instrumental tool. They present no empirical documentation that democracy works worse than alternative systems. Typically, they all refer to alternative systems which have so far not been developed but are supposed to be created in one way or another. I would like to argue that even if it turns out that an authoritarian—or downright dictatorial—government should prove to force through a more “effective” climate policy, there would still be good reasons to stick to democracy. Personal freedom, an open society that allows free and critical debate, free research and respect for human rights are values that must be held up against “efficiency” to deal with an uncertain climate problem. “Resecuring global climate should not be delivered at any cost, not least at the cost of hollowing-out or dismantling the democratic virtues of pluralism, agonism and accountability”, write the British climate and social scientist Mike Hulme.100 The purpose of democracy is not just to be an effective vehicle for problem solving. The purpose of democracy is, as Stein Ringen formulates it, freedom for the citizens.101 And as Gleditsch and Sverdrup underline: If the environmental problem was to have life-threatening consequences, there is a greater chance that a democracy would care for its citizens than would be the case under more authoritarian rule.102

Is an Authoritarian Climate Coup Likely? In the introduction to this book, I referred to the Swedish philosopher Torbjörn Tennsjö, who sees only one possibility to save humanity: a globally enlightened despotic government. He writes: The establishment of a global board may take place through a coup, a kind of existential leap, where the sovereign nation states are forced to cease to exist. A global government in the form of global despotism is taking over. Democracy will have to come later, in the form of a long-term reform project, much like democracy was established within existing non-democratic nation states.103

Tennsjö’s scenario is extremely unlikely, both globally and nationally. The fact that a group of “climate revolutionary” extremists would carry out a global coup, a coup d’état in Sweden, Germany or in another democratic country, is not only unlikely to happen, but also in practice unthinkable. It must therefore be allowed to

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wonder how an established philosopher and professor like Torbjörn Tennsjö may be able, in all seriousness, to present thoughts such as those expressed in the quote above. Nor is it because I believe in such a “climate coup d’état” that I am concerned about the anti-democratic currents that we see in the current climate debate. Although a “climate coup” is unthinkable, the anti-democratic rhetoric in large parts of the climate debate contributes to undermining the legitimacy of democracy. It will lead to many more anti-democratic activists losing faith in the fact that democracy can handle the climate problem. The result will not be a more rational climate policy, but rather a rising number of symbolic political markings and unrealistic answers to the climate challenge. Those who believe that I exaggerate should read the latest book by William Ophuls, in which he describes today’s society as a Titanic on a collision course with the laws of thermodynamics. He believes that we are forced to replace today’s society with “a postindustrial future that […] resembles the preindustrial past in many important respects”.104 My point is that one may well believe this, but it is impossible to implement with democratic means—and we do not want to sacrifice democracy.105 The way I see it, we are better served by a rational, democratic debate about a realistic climate policy. An open and critical discussion about democracy’s ability to handle the climate problem is, on the other hand, obviously in its place. There are also many things to put one’s finger on in the way today’s democracy has handled the climate problem. I will return to some of this debate later but let me mention one example here: Politicians formulate targets and stick with rhetoric as if the 1.5-degree target is realistic. If the researchers’ model-based analyses, which the same politicians also rely on, are somewhat correct, the 1.5-degree target is unrealistic in practice. It would require a global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of more than 7.5% every year until 2030. That is not possible without a total collapse of the world economy, and other damages that it would bring. There are climate researchers who admit that the researchers should perhaps be clearer in communicating the unrealistic nature of the 1.5-degree target.106 Nevertheless, the general picture is that both researchers and politicians enter the public debate and argue as if it is possible to achieve this goal. The underlying reasoning is that formulating high, albeit unrealistic, targets sharpen efforts and mobilize climate commitment. The related question is whether it might not just as well lead to a loss of faith in the seriousness of politicians and researchers.107 It also seems that they consciously create an illusory picture of the actual situation. For those who really take the scientists’ and politicians’ message for granted, the (entirely realistic) recognition that the goal is unattainable may lead to contempt for democracy and strengthen support for the argument that to save the world, we must give up democracy. My criticism aims at those who argue for a climate strategy that can only be implemented by renouncing democracy. It concerns some researchers, authors of dystopian climate books, sensation-seeking media and extreme activists. Today, we see a rapidly growing literature that questions democracy. Together with other forces in today’s global society, these forces are counterproductive for a rational and democratically anchored climate debate.

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What is more likely than a kind of climate revolution, nationally or globally, is that the forces in today’s global world that mobilize opposition to global climate measures will lead to what Erica Frants has called an “authoritarianization” of society.108 Here, we are talking about democratically elected leaders who use their position of power to undermine and weaken democratic institutions. She points to Venezuela as an example, but the point may be equally relevant elsewhere. In Europe, we can mention Poland and Hungary. From 2017 to 2021, the USA had a president who clearly led the country in such a direction and who even stimulated forces that called for a coup d’état after he lost the presidential election in 2020. These are leaders who, with their authoritarian rhetoric, aim directly at the world’s efforts to meet the climate challenge.109

Notes 1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

“…(d)eep ecologists, whatever their internal differences, share the belief that they are ’the leading edge’ of the environmental movement” (Guha, 2013, p. 411). Kallis (2018). Fair enough, we find examples of reduced immigration as an argument for slowing down economic growth. Among other things, it is claimed that the climate cure programme in 2020 failed by not including reduced economic growth and slowing immigration as a relevant climate measure (Hoff-Elimari, 2020b). (Røkkum, 2015). (Thoresen, 2019). (Klein, 2014). Ibid. p. 181. Pielke (2010, p. 46). (“Declaration of Rebellion”, n.d.). See the organization’s international website: https://rebellion.earth/the-truth/demands/. Hallam (2019, p. 13). Vetlesen (2022, p. 122). The declaration of rebellion can be read on the organisation’s Norwegian website; https://ext inctionrebellion.no/no.html. Silke and Morrison (2022, p. 890). Hessen (2020, loc 242). The-Extinction-Rebellion-Guide-to-Citizens-Assemblies-Version-1.1-25-June-2019.pdf (n.d.). See end note 16 Hallam (2019, p. 22). Bartlett (n.d.). Malm (2021). Macklin (2022) and da Silva (2019). Brown (2021). Shearman and Smith (2007). Ibid. p. 2. Ibid. pp. 133f. Ibid. p. 134. “The material doctrine of the change of circumstances forgets that circumstances must be changed by people and that the educator himself must be brought up. It must therefore divide society into two parts, one of which is elevated above society” Marx (1970, s. 54).

Notes 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

87 See the discussion of the links between the German ecological movement at the beginning of the twentieth century and the ideology that formed the basis of German Nazism in Chap. 3. Shearman and Smith (2007, p. 90). Ophuls and Boyan (1992). Burnell (2012, p. 833). Beeson (2010, p. 289). Ibid. Fischer (2017). Fischer (2017, p. 46). Barrow (2006, p. 81). Fischer (2017, p. 47). Lysaker (n.d.). See Dryzek (2000). Lysaker (n.d.) My emphasis. Dagbladet, 10/05/2007. Tunstad (2007). The information is taken from an article on the Norwegian website Forskning no: Tunstad (2017). The information and the quote in the message from Cicero are taken from notices in Nettavisen (Solli, 2020). Ibid. Karl Popper, “Science, Problems, Aims, Responsibilities” In The Myth of the Framework. Cited here after (Darwall, 2013). Hastrup and Skrydstrup (2012, Kapittel 2). Leonard Cohen’s poem Anthem. Gibbons et al. (1994) and Novotny et al. (2001). Hoppe and Rödder (2019) and Hulme (n.d.). Hulme, op.cit. van der Sluijs et al. (2010, p. 411). McKinnon (2019). Hulme (n.d.). Stehr (2013). Grundmann and Rödder (2019). Barry (1999, p. 203). Jamieson (2014, p. 80). Hoffman (2015), Hulme (2009), and Leichenko and O’Brien (2019, 18). Hulme (2009). Grundmann and Rödder (2019, p. 3883). Paola and Jamieson (2018, p. 413). More formally right: Sweden’s Riksbank’s prize in economic science in memory of Alfred Nobel. Nordhaus (2013) and Stern (2009). Machin (2013, p. 19). Cohen and Weiss (1977). For a broader and more general discussions of the relationship between research, knowledge, policy and planning, see e.g. Cohen and Weiss (1977) and Pielke (2007). Stehr (2016, p. 8). Dahl (1989, p. 69). Ibid. Ibid. Holden (2002, p. 50). Øverenget (2010). Fischer (2017). See Chap. 9.

88 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109.

4 The Current Climate Debate and the Threat to Democracy This is a problem that I will return to in more detail in Chap. 6. Stehr (2016, p. 10). Ringen (2016, p. 5). Povitkina (2018). Fredriksson and Neumayer (2013). Kneuer (2012). Ibid. pp. 883f. Selseng et al. (2022). Ibid. p. 333. Hanusch (2019) for the discussion of democratic quality, see especially Chap. 3. Ibid. pp. 246f. Randers (2012), Randers heads new research center in China 2019) (Solheim, 2015). https://www.nettavisen.no/okonomi/kinas-nye-super-kraftverk-spyr-ut-seks-ganger-norgestotale-klimaspield/3423881787.html. https://inbeijing.se/bulletin/2019/03/29/kina-kan-bygga-upp-till-500-nya-kolkraftverkinnan-ar-2030/. https://www.afrika.no/artikkel/2020/02/21/kinas-kullgruvedrift-i-afrika-f%C3%A5r-kli makonsequenker. Gleditsch and Sverdrup (2002). Ibid. Payne (1995). See, for example, Hartvig Sætra’s demand for future governing ecologists that they must have “wax in their ears” (Sætra, 1990, p. 232). Ibid. p. 48. Brennan (2016, p. xiv). Ibid. p. 11. Ibid. p. 14. bid. p. 139. Hulme (2017, p. 142). Ringen (2007, p. 5). NP Gleditsch and Sverdrup (2002, p. 48). Tennsjö (2018). Ophuls (2011, p. xi). See also Beckerman (1976, p. 247). https://www.abcnyheter.no/nyheter/verden/2020/02/19/195650251/forskere-er-enige-1-5gradersmalet-er-i-praksis-umulig-a-na. Asayama et al. (2019). Kendall-Taylor and Frantz (2020). See also Fiorino (2018, p. 107ff.).

References Asayama, S., Bellamy, R., Geden, O., Pearce, W., & Hulme, M. (2019). Why setting a climate deadline is dangerous. Nature Climate Change, 9(8), 570–572. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558019-0543-4 Barrow, C. J. (2006). Environmental management for sustainable development (second). Routledge. Barry, J. (1999). Rethinking green politics: Nature, virtue, and progress. SAGE. Beckerman, W. (1976). In defence of economic growth. Cape. Beeson, M. (2010). (PDF) The coming of environmental authoritarianism. Environmental Politics, 19(2). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248943866_The_coming_of_environme ntal_authoritarianism

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Brennan, J. (2016). Against democracy. Princeton University Press. Brown, J. M. (2021, July 14). Civil disobedience, sabotage, and violence in US environmental activism. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Politics. https://doi.org/10. 1093/oxfordhb/9780197515037.013.34 Burnell, P. (2012). Democracy, democratization and climate change: Complex relationships. Democratization, 19(5), 813–842. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2012.709684 Cohen, D. K., & Weiss, J. A. (1977). Social Science and Social Policy. In: I. C. H. Weiss (Ed.), Using social research in public policy making. Lexington Books. Dahl, R. A. (1989). Democracy and its critics. Yale University Press. Darwall, R. (2013). The age of global warming. Quarter Books. Declaration of Rebellion. (n.d.). Extinction rebellion UK. Retrieved 7, January 2023, from https:// extinctionrebellion.uk/declaration/ Dryzek, J. S. (2000). Deliberative democracy and beyond: Liberals, critics, contestations. Oxford University Press. Fiorino, D. J. (2018). Can democracy handle climate change? Polity Press. Fischer, F. (2017). Climate crisis and the democratic prospect: Participatory governance in sustainable communities. Oxford University Press. Fredriksson, P. G., & Neumayer, E. (2013). Democracy and climate change policies: Is history important? SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2203726 Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P., & Trow, M. (1994). The new production of knowledge. The dynamnics of science and research in contemporary societies. Sage Publications. Gleditsch, N. P., & Sverdrup, B. O. (2002). Democracy and the Environment. I Human Security and the Environment (ss. 45–70). Cheltenham. Grundmann, R., & Rödder, S. (2019). Sociological perspectives on earth system modeling. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 11(12), 3878–3892. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019MS 001687 Guha, R. (2013). Radical American environmentalismand wilderness preservation. Third World Critique. In I. L. Robin, S. Sörlin, & P. Warde (Ed.), The future of nature. Yale University Press. Hallam, R. (2019). Common sense for the 21st century. Wern Dolau/Goldden Grove. Hanusch, F. (2019). Democracy and climate change. Routldge. Hastrup, K., & Skrydstrup, M. (Ed.). (2012). The social life of climate change models: Anticipating nature. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203093870 Hessen, D. O. (2020). Verden på vippepunktet. Hvor ille kan det bli? Res Publica. Hoff-Elimari, E. (2020b). Den glemte klimakuren. Harvest Magazine. https://www.harvestmagaz ine.no/pan/mest-realistisk-og-storst-klimaeffekt-men-nevnes-ikke-i-klimakur Hoffman, A. J. (2015). How culture shapes the climate change debate. Stanford Briefs, an imprint of Stanford University Press. Holden, B. (2002). Democracy and global warming. Continuum. Hoppe, I., & Rödder, S. (2019). Speaking with one voice for climate science—Climate researchers’ opinion on the consensus policy of the IPCC. Journal of Science Communication, 18(03), A04. https://doi.org/10.22323/2.18030204 Hulme, M. (2009). Why we disagree about climate change. Cambridge University Press. Hulme, M. (2017). Weathered: Cultures of climate. SAGE Publications Ltd. Hulme, M. (n.d.). Lessons from the IPCC: Do scientific assessments need to be consensual to be authoritative? Retrieved 5, December 2022, from https://www.academia.edu/3003822/ Lessons_from_the_IPCC_do_scientific_assessments_need_to_be_consensual_to_be_author itative Jamieson, D. (2014). Reason in a dark time: Why the struggle against climate change failed—and what it means for our future. Oxford University Press. Kallis, G. (2018). Degrowth. Agenda Publishing. Kendall-Taylor, A., & Frantz, E. (2020, February 20). How Democracies Fall Apart. Foreign Affairs. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-12-05/how-democracies-fall-apart

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Klein, N. (2014). This changes everything: Capitalism versus the climate (First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition). Simon & Schuster. Kneuer, M. (2012). Who is greener? Climate action and political regimes: Trade-offs for national and international actors. Democratization, 19(5), 865–888. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347. 2012.709686 Leichenko, R. M., & O’Brien, K. L. (2019). Climate and society: Transforming the future. Polity. Lysaker, O. (n.d.). Utvidelse av klimadebattens kampsone—Cicero. Henta 10. februar 2020, frå https://www.cicero.oslo.no/no/posts/klima/utvidelse-av-klimadebattens-kampsone Machin, A. (2013). Negotiating climate change: Radical democracy and the illusion of consensus. Zed Books. Macklin, G. (2022). The Extreme Right, Climate Change and Terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence. https://www.tandfonline.com/, https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2022.2069928 Malm, A. (2021). How to blow up a pipeline: Learning to fight in a world on fire (First edition paperback). Verso. Marx, K. (1970). Verker i utvalg 2 (Bd. 2). Pax forlag. McKinnon, C. (2019, August 7). Climate crimes must be brought to justice. The UNESCO Courier. https://en.unesco.org/courier/2019-3/climate-crimes-must-be-brought-justice Nordhaus, W. D. (2013). The climate casino: Risk, uncertainty, and economics for a warming world. Yale University Press. Novotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, Mi. (2001). Re-thinking science. Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty. Ophuls, W. (2011). Plato’s revenge: Politics in the age of ecology. MIT Press. Ophuls, W., & Boyan, A. S. (1992). Ecology and the politics of scarcity revisited: The unraveling of the American dream. Freeman. Øverenget, E. (2010, August 6). Vil ofre demokrati for klima. Dagsavisen. Paola, M. D., & Jamieson, D. (2018). Climate change and the challenges to democracy. University of Miami Law Review, 72, 57. Payne, R. A. (1995). Freedom and the environment. Journal of Democracy, 6(3), 41–55. https:// doi.org/10.1353/jod.1995.0053 Pielke, R. A. (2007). The honest broker: Making sense of science in policy and politics. Cambridge University Press. Pielke, R. A. (2010). The climate fix what scientists and politicians won’t tell you about global warming. Basic Books. http://public.eblib.com/EBLPublic/PublicView.do?ptiID=584892 Povitkina, M. (2018). The limits of democracy in tackling climate change. Environmental Politics, 27(3), 411–432. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2018.1444723 Randers, J. (2012). 2052: A global forecast for the next forty years. Chelsea Green Pub. Randers leder nytt forskningssenter i Kina. (2019, desember 2). Handelshøyskolen BI. https://www. bi.no/om-bi/nyheter/2019/11/randers-leder-nytt-forskningssenter-i-kina/ Ringen, S. (2007). What democracy is for: On freedom and moral government. Princeton University Press. Ringen, S. (2016). The perfect dictatorship: China in the 21st century. Hong Kong University Press. Røkkum, E. (2015). Den lange veien hjem. Harvest Magazine. https://www.harvestmagazine.no/art ikkel/den-lange-veien-hjem Sætra, H. (1990). Jamvektssamfunnet er ikkje noko urtete-selskap. Samlaget. Selseng, T., Linnerud, K., & Holden, E. (2022). Unpacking democracy: The effects of different democratic qualities on climate change performance over time. Environmental Science and Policy, 128, 326–335. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2021.12.009 Shearman, D. J. C., & Smith, J. W. (2007). The climate change challenge and the failure of democracy. Praeger Publishers. Silke, A., & Morrison, J. (2022). Gathering storm: An introduction to the special issue on climate change and terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence, 34(5), 883–893. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 09546553.2022.2069444

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Silva, J. R. da. (2019). The Eco-Terrorist Wave. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression. https://www.tandfonline.com/, https://doi.org/10.1080/19434472.2019.1680725 Solheim, E. (2015, juli 13). Kina er ikke lenger totalitært. Aftenposten. https://www.aftenposten. no/article/ap-G2rx.html Solli, M. (2020, March 9). Cicero etterlyste debatt i Nettavisen: Nektet selv å møte Klimarealistene hos Fredrik Solvang. Nettavisen. http://nettavisen.no/artikkel/3423934143 Stehr, N. (2013). An inconvenient democracy: Knowledge and climate change. Society, 50(1), 55–60. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-012-9610-4 Stehr, N. (2016, March 14). Exceptional circumstances: Does climate change trump democracy? Issues in Science and Technology. https://issues.org/exceptional-circumstances-does-climatechange-trump-democracy/ Stern, N. (2009). A blueprint for a Safer planet. The Bodley Head. Tennsjö, T. (2018, november 28). Så kan klimatkrisen leda fram till en global despoti. DN.SE. https://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/sa-kan-klimatkrisen-leda-fram-till-en-global-despoti/ The-Extinction-Rebellion-Guide-to-Citizens-Assemblies-Version-1.1–25-June-2019.pdf. (n.d.). Retrieved 8, January 2023, from https://extinctionrebellion.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ The-Extinction-Rebellion-Guide-to-Citizens-Assemblies-Version-1.1-25-June-2019.pdf Thoresen, K. S. (2019, March 24). Forskarar meiner det er på tide med tvang i klimakampen. NRK. https://www.nrk.no/sognogfjordane/forskarar-meiner-det-er-pa-tide-med-tvang-i-klimak ampen-1.14486291 Tunstad, E. (2007, July 30). Kommentar: Umoralsk å tvile? https://forskning.no/etikk-miljovernkommentar/kommentar-umoralsk-a-tvile/1184432 Tunstad, E. (2017, March 15). Kommentar: Hvor ble det av verdens undergang? forskning.no. https:/ /forskning.no/klima-kommentar/kommentar-hvor-ble-det-av-verdens-undergang/1163776 van der Sluijs, J. P., van Est, R., & Riphagen, M. (2010). Beyond consensus: Reflections from a democratic perspective on the interaction between climate politics and science. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 2(5–6), 409–415. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2010.10.003 Vetlesen, A. J. (2022). Etikk i klimakrisens tid (1. utgave, 1. opplag). Res Publica.

Chapter 5

Popular Climate Revolts and the Undermining of Democracy

In the first part of December 2018, UN’s 24th climate conference (COP 24) took place in Katowice, Poland. This was the first meeting where the participating countries from the climate summit in Paris in 2015 were to develop a “roadmap” for the implementation of the Paris Agreement. The meeting was looked forward to with a lot of expectations. Countries that considered themselves leading in the fight against climate change were eager to show commitment and political will to follow up on the Agreement ahead of the meeting. This applied not least to the host country for the Paris meeting, France. Before the meeting, President Emmanuel Macron announced a significant increase in taxes on fuel, based on the need to reduce CO2 emissions. The decision resulted in one of the most dramatic public uprisings in France in modern times. The uprising has been named “The yellow vests” as the protesters, dressed in yellow reflective vests, filled the streets, and blocked all traffic where they gathered. An article in Le Monde Diplomatique compared the Yellow Vests to earlier uprisings, from the revolution in 1848 to the student uprising in 1968.1 At most, at least 300,000 people were out in the streets of Paris, blocking roundabouts and street intersections. 1.5 million signed a petition against the tax increase,2 and in a poll in December 2019, 71% of the French answered that they supported the campaigners.3 The Yellow Vests were not just a rebellion against increased taxes on diesel and petrol. The movement had started earlier and was basically a popular revolt against economic and social injustice. The protest movement perceived Macron’s economic policy as a betrayal compared to the election promise he made when he was elected president in 2017, and as a policy to widen the economic gaps in the country. The tax increase on fuel was, in the literal sense, the single issue that “fired up” and mobilized the large masses. For President Macron, the uprising, as it occurred in parallel with the Katowice meeting, became a political nightmare. What was originally intended as a French demonstration of willingness to climate action and follow-up of the Paris Agreement, instead became a demonstration of political powerlessness when it came to precisely implementing a policy to realize the agreement. The Yellow Vests are perhaps the most spectacular example of a rebellion directly or indirectly linked to climate policy, but it is not the only one. Global climate policy is © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Naustdalslid, The Climate Threat. Crisis for Democracy?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34471-8_5

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governed by the tradition from Kyoto to Paris. The definition of the problem is clear and unambiguous: Reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases, primarily CO2. One of the most important sources of emissions is the transport sector. A key tool for reducing emissions is therefore to reduce the contribution from road traffic. An important mechanism for making this happen is to increase fuel taxes, in other words to make it more expensive to drive petrol and diesel cars. This should stimulate the purchase of smaller and more energy-efficient cars, it should stimulate the transition to electric cars, and it should make people drive less and prefer to travel by public transport and to walk and cycle more over short distances. Increasing fuel taxes and other measures aimed at reducing people’s use of cars are popular measures with those groups of climate activists and researchers who primarily see economic growth and modern society’s consumption as the major climate policy problem. This helps reduce emissions at the same time as it is part of the strategy for reduced consumption. It points in the direction of a “low-energy society”, which is seen as an overarching goal. What is easily lost in this debate is that such a remedy is socially and economically lopsided. It is a form of flat taxation that means much more for those with low incomes than for those with high wages and large capital gains. Today’s society is organized in such a way that almost everyone is dependent on a car to get to and from their daily tasks. The car is needed to get to work, drive children to nursery school or school, shop and take advantage of various leisure activities. As much as such taxes can help to reduce emissions, they also widen the economic gaps in society.

The Car-Based Society Modern society is a car-based society. Without the car, many social functions would collapse. The transformation of society that has taken place after World War Two is in many respects the storey about the development of the car-based society. This applies to practically all countries. Here, I shall illustrate the development by a brief look at how the development of Norway during the post-war period up till today is closely linked to how the car has formed the modern Norwegian society. Even though part of this storey may be unique for Norway, I think much of it is more generally relevant. The prosperous welfare society that Norway has developed since the Second World War has been formed in parallel with the transformation of Norway into a carbased society. The result is a country where most social structures and functions are in one way or another dependent on car use. People who are old enough remember the release of the car sales in 1960. Before that time, one needed a special licence, and a special reason, to be allowed to buy a car. The only shortcut was to buy a brand from Eastern Europe. Hence, few cars were to be seen in both rural and urban areas. The regulatory society in the 1940s and 1950s had to prioritize scarce foreign exchange reserves to what was most necessary to build up the country after the war. “Luxury goods” (such as sugar, coffee, chocolate—and cars) were rationed until little by little

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a prosperity was built up that gradually made it possible to remove rationing and restrictions. One of the last restrictions to be lifted was the restriction on car sale. It was removed on October 1st, 1960. In 1960, the entire Norwegian passenger car fleet consisted of well over 225,000 cars. In 2018, public statistics showed that the number of passenger cars was almost 2.8 million.4 This means that there is one car for every second resident, old and young. In 1960, by comparison, there were 16 people for each car. Gradually, as Norwegians became better off, becoming a car-owner was one of the things that was at the top of the priority list for an increasing number of people. A car did not only indicate status, and an expression that one had succeeded in life. It gradually became necessary for fulfilling the various roles that modern people must handle in work, family life and as participants in organizations and in leisure activities. The car has made people more mobile. But here, we are also witnessing mutual connection between cause and effect. As the car became common property, society also adapted to the fact that most people became more mobile. As a result, people became dependent on cars, to manage their daily lives. Society’s infrastructure has been developed to serve a car-owning population. For most people in Norway and in other countries, the car is a necessity in order to function in working life, in family life and to take part in leisure activities. Those who are primarily affected by financial restrictions and fees to reduce car use and are therefore relatively low-paid and middle-income groups in working age and in a life situation where they have families with school-aged children. For people with high incomes, for young people and students, and others who do not to the same extent depend on efficient transport to make their everyday life work, such fees mean less. Therefore, we also see that the rebellion of the French Yellow Vests against increased fuel taxes was a rebellion against restrictions on car use because it added to the growing social and economic gaps in French society. We see a clear result of how a policy which was originally justified as climate policy, got a social rebellion as an unintended consequence. I have described the climate problem as a “wicked” problem.5 This is reflected in the fact that virtually all climate policies meet with resistance from one or more groups who feel that the measure is unfair to them. If the entire society is based on the use of carbon-based energy, any measures to reduce people’s use of carbonbased energy will meet with resistance. When this is combined with the fact that the measures also turn out to be socially unjust, it leads, as in the case of the Yellow Vests, to social unrest. This applies in general. The Yellow Vests are therefore not the only example of such social uprisings against measures that are basically intended as climate measures. In the following paragraphs, I will take a closer look at some such protests and rebellious actions, and again I shall use the Norwegian political debate as an example. But the situation in Norway is hardly unique, and we see similar unrests in many countries in the rich world, where measures to combat climate change are perceived as unjust by large groups of so-called “ordinary people”. As conflicts over specific climate policy measures intensify, we also see that climate policy is becoming increasingly more polarized. On the one hand, we find a “rebellion” with loud demands for

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a stricter and more “intrusive” climate policy, and on the other hand, several different rebellious acts among groups who feel exposed and unfairly affected by the same climate policy measures.

Climate Revolts to “Save the Climate” Various actions to “save the climate” were discussed in the previous chapter. They are expressed in movements such as Extinction Rebellion, the children and youth uprising, and actions such as “The Climate Roar”, where climate activists demonstrate against the government’s (deficient) climate policy. The organization “The Climate Roar” presents itself as a non-partisan and independent association that has made itself known by organizing what they have called “The Climate Roar”, “the biggest celebration in Norwegian history for the most important issue of our time, August 30th 2019”.6 There are also more low-key activist groups, such as “The Grandparents Climate Action”, which presents itself as an action group that “wants to inspire, convince and pressure the authorities into a policy that reduces climate emissions to a level that is compatible with a lasting safe life on the planet”.7 What these and other activist groups and organizations have in common is that they represent popular “rebellions” against what they perceive as the “betrayal” of the authorities in the fight against global warming and climate change. These popular actions—or “rebellions”—are, on the one hand, aimed at the governing authorities, the government and the Parliament, with demands for stronger efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. However, requirements are usually not very specific. One rarely sees argument for adopting specific political tools, such as increasing taxes, stronger investment in wind turbines or nuclear power to replace carbon-based energy, or concrete demands that the authorities must place restrictions on people’s car use. This is easy to understand. If the demands are specified to application of specific measures, it will quickly divide members and drive away potential sympathizers. This is how the grandparents’ “demand” to the governing authorities is quite typical: to “press the authorities into a policy that reduces climate emissions to a level that is compatible with a lasting safe life on the plane”. The most concrete demand, which nevertheless repeats itself in most of these actions, is the demand for a rapid closure of the Norwegian oil and gas industry. On the other hand, the various “rebellions” are directed towards the public discourse. The arguments and manifestations aim to mobilize people and make them put pressure on the authorities, and on the other hand to change their own “climate behaviour”, such as driving less, cycling more, or eating less meat. The main opponent is the “climate deniers” who do not believe in, or who question, climate science’s conclusion that man-made climate change is occurring due to our emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. It will easily become a highly polarized debate, where it becomes important from the climate activists’ side to portray the most dystopian future scenarios, to get people to “wake up” and understand the seriousness of the situation. Critical climate scientists have warned that presenting the most extreme

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scenarios for global warming as scientific facts and can work against its own purpose and make people despondent and defeatist.8 Influencing public opinion is at the same time a strategy for influencing government and politicians in an open, democratic system. This is how you can get politicians to open their eyes to the seriousness of the climate problem. Or one can, as Jonathan Boston has formulated it, counteract “the presentist bias” in democratic politics.9 Here, there is a fine balance between conveying an important message and doing it in a way that can work against its own purpose. If one ignores Extinction Rebellion and the tendency we see for more violent actions, most popular movements and actions place themselves safely within the framework of democratic politics and democratically-based activism. There is, nevertheless, a danger that also democratic movements may add to a polarizing debate, which in turn can undermine democracy. Especially if the focus stays on symbolic marking rather than on the specific demands that governments may be able to relate to. An interesting feature of this form of climate activism is that through its actions, it confirms mainstream climate policy. It attacks government in general terms for its failure to reduce emissions. Hence, attention is kept on emissions, not on the need to develop zero-emission energy. On the contrary, many of the activists even protest against projects for renewable energy, because such projects may come into conflict with nature conservation and biological diversity. While this side of popular climate protest is directed against an allegedly inefficient climate policy and appeals to people and governments to intensify measures to reduce emission, other climate revolts are directed against the effects of such measures. These are protests against government measures to reduce emissions. Often this is characterized as populist protests. They mobilize so-called “ordinary people” who believe that the state places unfair burdens on them in the name of climate policy, and that it is those with the lowest resources who must bear the costs of climate policy. Here, we find not only climate sceptics, but also climate activists who might believe that one or the other remedy is wrong, or unfair. With one interesting exception, these protests are case- and sector-oriented in that they target specific policy areas.

The Road Toll Revolt A typical example of the above-mentioned form of resistance is the so-called “Road Toll Revolt”. To reduce car traffic and fund infrastructure developments to facilitate more public transport, road toll rings were established around a number bigger and medium sized cities after 2010. This caused widespread protests. An action group, People’s action no to more road tolls, reacted and organized protests rallies. The group’s initial stronghold was around the city of Stavanger. After the tolls were passed as part of the traffic plan for the Stavanger area, the action group was registered as a political party at the local elections in Stavanger. It stood for election in 2015 and got three representatives elected to Stavanger city council. In the spring of 2018, the group was registered as a national party. It stood for election in 11 larger cities

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and municipalities at the local elections in autumn 2019. In Alver municipality— a suburb of Bergen in Western Norway—the party received 22.1% of the vote, in Bergen 16.7%, in Stavanger 9.1% and in Oslo 5.8%.10 In Bergen, the party became the third largest party. In Oslo, it became the sixth largest party. Common to the cities where the party ran is that there were plans or decisions about new or extended toll rings. The road toll revolt is not a revolt aimed directly at climate policy. It is a popular protest against a tool in transport policy which is partly based on climate policy arguments. Toll financing of new road projects with bridges and tunnels has traditionally been based on the need for better communications. This is still “building the country” in a tradition that goes back to the 1960s and 1970s. Such road toll projects have aimed to develop Norway and stimulate growth based on the car as the most important means of transport. Island communities become connected to the road network and are no longer dependent of ferry connections, welcome new road and bridge projects, even if they are partly financed by tolls. The criticism against such projects is usually that they should be fully financed from the ordinary public budget. Such projects are in no way justified by climate arguments. If there should be protests, it is rather climate activists who protest because more and better roads lead to more car traffic and are therefore seen as having a negative climate effect. When it comes to the toll ring projects, that have gradually been planned around larger cities, the situation is different. The basis for the Toll Rebellion can be traced back to the Climate Agreement between most political parties in the Storting (Parliament) in Norway in 2008 and 2012. These parties agreed on a goal that all growth in passenger transport in metropolitan areas should be take place via public transport, cycling and walking.11 When metropolitan areas are growing in population, this is of course a challenge. With an increase in population, geographical expansion of the urban area and population growth in the neighbouring municipalities often follow. To realize the objectives of the Climate Agreement, comprehensive financing schemes were set up for an expanded public transport service. In the capital, Oslo, this included new subways and bus routes and an expansion of the infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists. The financing was, on paper, apparently brilliant: Extensive toll financing through increased rates and development of far more collection points (toll stations) should serve two purposes. On the one hand, it was supposed to reduce car traffic by making car use more expensive. On the other hand, should car traffic— i.e. the motorists—pay for the shift from car-based to public transport. While tolls were previously accepted by motorists as a necessary evil because motorists benefited by tolls that financed road construction, climate policy now imposed an extra tax on motorists to finance a climate policy measure that would restrict travel by car. Here lies the most important key to understanding the Road Toll Rebellion. Environmentalist parties to the left, on the other hand, have been enthusiastic. Seen from the perspective of toll supporters, the toll “contributes to the air being better than it has been for many years, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to less car traffic. And the toll ring ensures money we need to expand the subway, the tram and cycle roads”.12 “I love the toll ring!” a leader of the Green Party enthusiastically exclaimed after the municipal election in Oslo, in 2019.

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Other politicians gradually became more concerned about the costs the tolls imposed on “ordinary people”. The Green Party politician was criticized for acting arrogantly, condescendingly and without understanding of how the sharp increase in tolls affected many ordinary people who depended on the car in their daily activities.13 Gradually, as support for the Road Toll Party increased in the opinion polls, concerned politicians came forward and protested against their own government. A representative for the “environmental party” Venstre (liberal) gradually became concerned when he saw that a trip to the cabin could cost a family 680 kroner (about 62 EUR) in tolls. He especially worried about families with children. “I am talking about ordinary people with ordinary jobs, who just try to make ends meet. A family with two medium incomes and three children, transport their children to various leisure activities. If they get an extra NOK 20,000 to pay a year, in tolls, the summer holidays might have to be cancelled”.14 A leading Labour Party politician pointed to one important aspect of this form of financing climate and environmental measures: This is a “flat tax” that is as large in kroner and øre for a single mother who earns 300,000 a year as for a director who earns 1.3 million, and who in addition may have had his Tesla car subsidized with several hundred thousand kroner. “We have a government that gives big tax cuts for those with large fortunes. At the same time, they give you a toll increase and collect tolls. It has become more expensive to commute and the state is setting a record in toll demands”, he stated.15 Here, one may add that for wealthy people, more toll rings and increased toll rates will not necessarily be a disadvantage, quite the opposite. Firstly, a few thousand kroner in extra tolls does not mean a particularly large cut in the 1.3 million kroner in annual income for the director commuting to Oslo from a suburb community. There will be better space on the road for the drivers who remain, and who can afford to pay the extra toll. They can also ease their possible climate political conscience, knowing that they are contributing to the development of public transport for those who can no longer afford to drive a car. Some of the basis for the aggression and the anger that the toll project has evoked is obviously linked to the fact that ordinary people feel they have been run over, and that they are the bear the cost of climate measures. Moreover, the protests have had effects that should have no place in a democracy. Here, outgrowths on democracy appear which, although they may not be representative of the majority of protesters, help to undermine the conditions for a democratic debate and a democratic process. Thus, media could report how a city council politician in a medium sized city felt forced to withdraw from politics after being severely harassed online. Among other things, she was called a “tax whore”, “politician pussy” and “brainwashed Hitler youth”.16 A report on the Norwegian Broadcasting’s website could tell about the atmosphere in another city became so tense that the police had to stand guard at a political meeting for a period. A politician who had supported the road toll told that she and her family had been subjected to vandalism and violence because of her position in the road toll case.17 The road toll revolt has been compared to the Yellow Vests in France. It is only partially correct. The two revolts have in common that they got protesters fill the

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streets to block traffic in demonstrations against an environmental policy measure that affected people’s car use. They also have in common that they spring from the fact that today’s modern society is a car-based society, and policies that increase costs and hinder mobility affect the most vulnerable groups in the middle and the working class. The Yellow Vests are nevertheless a more general rebellion against the French government’s social and economic policies. The toll revolt is not a rebellion against increased fuel taxes, as in France, but a more directly targeted action against the toll rings in the metropolitan regions. What they nevertheless have in common is that they are protests against climate policy measures, which are experienced as socially and economically unfair and contribute to widening the economic gaps in society. Like the Yellow Vests, the Toll Rebellion has died. This does not mean, however, that the party has lost all local support in the biggest cities. People will get used to high tolls, just as they have accepted high taxes on petrol and diesel. We should not underestimate people’s ability to perceive the positive effects of less traffic, cleaner air and a better developed public transport network in the largest cities. The toll revolt is an expression of a deeply felt, popular anger against a climate policy that is seen as socially and economically lopsided, and hence helps to undermine some of the trust in, and support for, climate policy.

The Ferry Revolt Another protest action which, admittedly, has received less attention, but which, nevertheless, belongs here is the so-called Ferry Revolt along the coast of Norway. While the Road Toll Revolt has been a metropolitan protests movement, the Ferry Revolt is a periphery protest. The basic mechanisms are, nevertheless, the same. Here, too, the protest is against a climate policy that leads to extra costs for motorists, and which are perceived as profoundly unfair because the increased costs hit hardest against low-income groups. The ferry uprising also has a centre-periphery dimension, in that it hits particularly hard against commuters who depend on ferry services to get to and from work in the more peripheral areas of the country. This affects commuters to cities with toll rings particularly hard. The background for the ferry revolt is three mechanisms which together led to up to a 70% increase in ticket prices, almost overnight.18 Two of these mechanisms are linked to climate policy. Firstly, it applies to the county’s finances. Many of the ferry companies are run by the county councils, and with failing economy, the county councils have chosen to remedy the economy by increasing the ticket price on the ferries. Secondly, there is the electrification of the ferries. This imposes large investment costs on the ferry companies and the county councils, which are responsible for the infrastructure (docking facilities and charging stations, for example), which must be covered through the ticket price. Thirdly, an electronic and automatic ticket system has also been introduced. This means that one pays the same ticket price regardless of the number of passengers in the cars. This should reduce the number of

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cars in traffic, as more people would choose to travel together in one car. Previously, you paid for the car and for each passenger. When the passenger tickets are removed, the entire cost is charged to the car to compensate for the loss of the passenger tickets. The ferry protests must also be understood in the light of history—the development of Norway based on the car as the most important means of communication. The scattered settlement of Norway has been made possible by the fact that the car has become everyone’s property. While the car has made people in the districts more mobile, much of the local services in the local communities have disappeared, such as the local shop, the local police office, post office and other public services. Along Norway’s long coast, people have become more dependent on the ferries, to continue living in the larger and smaller local communities. A climate policy making ferry tickets more expensive will be perceived as yet another threat to a periphery that is already felt overlooked and disregarded by central politicians. The rebellion may seem to have worked. In February 2021, the opposition party in the Norwegian Storting agreed on a decision which has provided for significant government subsidy of the ticket price on the ferries.

The Wind Power Revolt The centre/periphery dimension is also present in the third example of a Norwegian rebellion against climate measures. Here, we are talking about a rebellion which is not only indirect, but which is on a direct collision course with the climate activist movement. In the Wind Power Rebellion, nature conservation and climate, collide. The paradox is that we often find the same people as activists in both protest movements. The arguments for the development of wind power are obvious. Wind power is renewable energy. If the world is to achieve a transition from carbon-based to emission-free energy, the development of land-based wind power is currently one of the best alternatives in the short term. With the technological development, which has also been spurred on by deliberate subsidies, wind power has today become economically competitive with other energy sources. Just a few years ago, the development of wind power was also applauded by almost the entire environmental movement. Wind is renewable, clean and emission-free energy. In just a few years, interest in development has exploded. Technological progress has made it possible to build cheaper and larger wind turbines, so that the development of wind power becomes commercially interesting as a financial investment. This has attracted large international companies to the Norwegian wind power market. The state stimulated and encouraged development by placing few restrictions on the developers and has contributed to the development through so-called green certificates, which means that the developers are paid better for the power they produce than what they could otherwise get in a free market. The subsidy is charged to consumers through a higher electricity price.19 On the other hand, those who get little in return for the development, but who feel that they are left with the disadvantages, are the municipalities and the local communities where the development of large wind farms with turbines up to 200 m

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high, are allowed to dominate more or less untouched natural areas. In contrast to the development of hydropower, where the municipalities have the right to income and in many cases get ownership rights to a part of the power that is produced.20 As development has accelerated, large parts of the environmental movement have also mobilized to fight against the development of wind power. The counterarguments can be summarized under three points. Firstly, that the wind farms destroy nature and threaten biological diversity by, among other problems, killing birds and insects and disturbing wildlife and through major interventions in nature in the form of, for example, road construction. This criticism has become stronger after the UN Nature Panel (IPBES) published its status report on the ecological state of the earth in autumn of 2019.21 Secondly, the subsidized income of the developers often goes as profit to foreign capital, while the local communities are left with very little. Thirdly, it is claimed that the development is unnecessary and does not lead to reduced CO2 emissions. Norway has enough hydropower if we do not export it through power cables, and due to the EU’s quota system, of which Norway is a part, Norwegian wind power will keep the quota price down and thus also make coal power cheaper. This last point is the most controversial. Those who defend wind power would claim that it will in any case be impossible to phase out coal power in Europe if the energy cannot be replaced with fossil-free energy sources. The conflict over Norwegian energy policy has exploded after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the partial closing of import of Russian gas to Europe have led to skyrocketing energy prices. Since Norway is connected to the European energy market through electricity cables, Norway has in practice imported the high European energy prices. One the one hand, this has led to pressure for building of more wind power. On the other hand, protesters and activists call for closure of, or restricted export of electricity through, the cables to Europe, claiming that without the open links to the European energy market, Norway has sufficient access to renewable energy in the form of hydropower. Hence, there is no need to “destroy nature” to build more wind power for the European market. The wind power case divides the climate and environmental movement. While nature conservation organizations join forces with local resistance movements, more technologically oriented environmental organizations, are warm supporters of wind power. The Norwegian Green Party (MDG) is in favour of wind power but is internally divided. In other parties, both among those who like to present themselves as environmentalists and others, there are differing views. The open internal battle over wind power in the environmental movement is perhaps the clearest example of how the climate problem is a “wicked” problem. Here, concern for the preservation of nature collides with concern for the climate. There is probably a good portion of “climate deniers” among the wind power rebels, but no doubt also many who consider themselves as climate activists. The resistance against wind power in Norway has clear parallels in other European countries. In Germany, the “Energiwende” with the phasing out of nuclear power and transition to renewable energy, primarily wind, has caused widespread public protests where wind parks have been established. Like in Norway, public opinion is generally

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in favour of renewable energy. In a German survey published in 2019, more than 80 percent of the respondents support wind power as part of the energy transition.22 But the rapid spread of wind parks and development of ever taller and bigger installations has sparked protest movements across the country by people who refuse to embrace the green power installations in their neighbourhood.23 A similar development may be observed in Sweden, another country that has up till recently aimed at phasing out nuclear power.24 The wind power resistance and the ferry revolt are both partly peripheral reactions to climate measures. But at the same time, resistance against wind power has a much wider scope, from municipal politicians who see themselves as being run over by the state and feel that they are the ones who have to bear the costs of climate policy, to “climate deniers” who see the chance to fish in troubled waters, and urban environmentalists who try to balance climate activism with activism to protect nature. Like the toll revolt, the wind power revolt has also attracted forces and forms of action that should have no place in a democracy. Even though the activist organization Motvind (“Headwind”) clearly campaigns and argues within the framework of democracy, this has not prevented some anti-wind power activists from resorting to violent and clearly undemocratic means. We saw one example when the Oil and Energy Minister, in connection with the launch of the plans for floating wind farms outside Western Norway, was physically prevented from moving and had sexist insults thrown at her. Later, she was told to end her life and to be careful about where she shows up.25 Such reactions, with poorly concealed death threats, are not representative, but they illustrate some of the extreme polarization that we see emerging around, not just wind power, but several climate-related measures that in various ways come into conflict with grassroot interests in society.

The Popular Uprising Against “The Climate Hysteria” On January 31st 2020, the Norwegian Environment Agency, together with several government agencies, presented the report Klimakur 2030 (Climae Cure 2030) on how Norway will be able to halve climate emissions until 2030.26 The report outlines drastic measures if the goal of a 50% reduction is to be realized, such as more or less complete transition to electric operation of the car fleet until 2030 and a large-scale restructuring of the Norwegian diet (and thus agriculture) with a drastically reduced consumption of red meat and increased consumption of plant foods, something that will reduce agricultural land and employment in agriculture. On February 9th, 2020, the deadline for registering the individual countries’ targets to realize the goals in the Paris Agreement, expired. As one of the first countries, Norway reported its target. As recently as January 7th, Norway announced a target of a 50–55% reduction by 2030, compared to the emission level in 1990. The announcement was very well received by the environmental movement and climate researchers, while some sceptics recalled that in the previous round, Norway had submitted a

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promise for a 30% reduction by 2020—without it seeming to matter. When the new targets were registered, emissions were still above the level in 1990. The same day that the government submitted its climate targets to the UN, the Facebook group Peoples revolt against climate hysteria (Folkeopprøret mot klimahysteriet) was launched. Within a couple of weeks, the group gathered close to 150,000 members.27 The group and the action were thoroughly condemned by climate activists and the “mainstream” press. A counteraction was also quickly started, The people’s uprising against the people’s uprising against the climate hysteria, which also gathered tens of thousands of members within a short time.28 The right wing, Progress Party’s Oslo branch, joined the people’s uprising against the climate hysteria and combined this with a resolution to make the party a “patriotic lighthouse” in Norway. A member of parliament for the Progress Party supported the resolution by linking it to the resistance against Norway’s involvement in international cooperation and immigration: “We must fight for Norwegian self-determination and national freedom of action. We should promote a policy that brings a total halt to immigration from non-Western countries […]”.29 This can lead one to believe that there is an automatic connection between rebellion against climate measures and right-wing nationalism. Then, it is interesting to note that many right-wing nationalist parties in Europe have moved in the direction of linking defence of the environment and climate to the fight against immigration and “racial mixing”.30 Here, parts of the nationalist right-wing populist movement in Norway seem to go in the opposite direction, linking denial of climate threats with a call for nationalist isolation. However, arguments put forward by the people’s uprising against climate hysteria which has a wider appeal than the right-wing populist climate denial. It is linked to a scepticism towards the official climate policy that many people have, including many who accept that the world is facing a major and serious climate problem. Much of this scepticism is because climate policy is seen to be unfair and that it imposes large costs on society at the same time as it does not seem to reduce emissions. A post on a Facebook page after Climate and Environment Minister had condemned the group in a way that the commentator perceived as arrogant and condescending, formulated it as follows: I believe this is not primarily about climate denial. It is about people’s rage and feeling of powerlessness. Rotevatn’s (the climate minister) climate cure is one of the most radical things that has come from the government in several generations. A policy like this will have enormous consequences for most of us. And the most startling thing is that this climate cure has been launched without impact analyzes. It is forced on the population as a fait accompli. That’s what ignites the wrath. […] People understand that the consequences of this will be a sharp reduction in welfare and a radically changed everyday life. Everyone will be affected; everyone will be poorer.31

A reader’s post in the newspaper Avisa Nordland on 17th February 2020 formulated the same view as follows: The climate activists have for a long time had too great influence on politics in this country. This has given us the “moon landing”, various “green” taxes on electricity, meaningless road tolls, the destruction of nature and biological diversity due to the construction of wind

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turbines, increased prices for fuel, increased prices for transport both by land and by water, idiotic orders for introduction of electric means of transport both on land, water and in the air, enormous sums thrown over to the UN, etc. Industry must be destroyed, oil extraction must be put to death, meat-eating must be associated with shame, and the welfare state must be destroyed. All this to “save the climate”.32

What we see from these reactions are not primarily climate scepticism, although it may well be that the commentators do not believe much in man-made climate change. What we see are primarily reactions to climate policy. The “hysteria” that these rebels react against is what they see as a “hysterical” response to the climate challenge. They protest against climate targets that are so dramatic that they will either require extensive use of coercion, or they end up like previous targets, as proof that the governing authorities are not sticking to their targets, and as new confirmations that democracy cannot solve the climate challenge. This is probably the reason why the rebellion resonates well beyond the circle of “climate deniers”. Ordinary people who readily accept that we have a climate problem, but who wonder whether it is really about the world’s impending doom, will feel threatened if the battery of climate measures such as Climate Cure 2030 lists, were actually to be implemented.

Unrealistic Climate Targets and Undermining of Democracy “Norway has a long tradition of adopting ambitious climate targets, and an equally long tradition of not fulfilling the promises”, wrote Aftenposten ’s commentator Ole Mathismoen as a first reaction after the announcement of Climate Cure 2030. “The target that emissions in 2020 should be 30% lower than they were in 1990 are not being met—instead they have increased by 1.1%”, he pointed out. Fair enough, later figures have shown that emissions decreased to around the 1990 level.33 Despite the fact that the climate problem in the last 20 years has been regarded the most important problem facing society, and even though Norway has formulated some of the world’s most ambitious climate targets at all political cross-roads, the result has become zero. Norwegian climate emissions are still around the level of 1990. In a global context, we see the same. Not only are the emissions at the same level, but they also increase year by year. During the 30 years from 1990 to 2022, global emissions had risen from approximately 23 billion tonnes to more than 37 billion tonnes. During the climate meeting in Madrid in autumn 2019, the countries were to agree on what they failed to do during the climate meeting in Katowice in 2018; a roadmap and a “rule book” for implementing the climate agreement from Paris in 2015. What Norway was most concerned about at the meeting and was to get a declaration in place that obliged the countries to register even higher ambitions for climate cuts by the registration deadline in February 2020. As a newspaper report said, when the meeting was about to start: For Climate and Environment Minister Ola Elvestuen (V), there is one topic that is most important: A clear statement must be made that all the countries will make new promises about major climate cuts, such that really count. [...] That is the most important thing at this

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summit, so that all countries set big ambitions next year, says Elvestuen, on the plane down to Madrid.34

After the meeting, the minister was very satisfied. The meeting had succeeded in agreeing on a statement that appealed to the registration of more ambitious targets. As we have seen, the government followed this up, as one of the first countries in the world, by announcing the target of at least a 50% cut by 2030. This would imply that within 10 years, Norway will reduce emissions from over 50 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent to approximately 25 million tonnes. Time will tell whether this is a goal that the Norwegian government will achieve. But a fair assessment suggests that it is highly unrealistic. Nevertheless, climate scientists applaud, while the environmental movement praises the government for showing the way in the climate fight. We see that what the announcement of the target initially resulted in was a political argument about what the realization will lead to in practice. Agriculture of course mobilized towards a target which will involve significant reductions in agricultural area and employment. Opponents of wind power mobilize against building of more wind turbines. On the other hand, the deep ecology-oriented part of the environmental movement points out that Climate Cure 2030, foresees that Norway will continue to have economic growth and relatively high immigration and thus an increase in the population. A comment to Climate Cure 2030 in the online journal Pan argues in favour of a strategy that a reduction in economic growth and reduced population growth could take almost half of the emissions reduction that Climate Cure 2030 proposes.35 However, such a strategy is also politically impossible. No government will knowingly plan for reduced economic growth. True, the government’s climate objective might be “saved” by a new crisis in the global economy. In the first stages of working on this book, we were amid the spread of the coronavirus. At the beginning of March 2020, Norwegian Broadcasting could report that the Chinese emissions during a couple of weeks of “virus shutdown” had decreased by about twice as much as the combined Norwegian emissions for a whole year. In the same period, the world’s stock markets fell in line with the fall in 2008. The period after the financial crisis is the only small break in the continuous growth in emissions of greenhouse gases in this century. As the writing of this book progressed, the corona crisis also progressed. After a rapid stock market fall, the world’s stock exchanges have mostly pointed upwards again. At the turn of the year 2020/2021, several indices were at record high levels. Not long after China shut down the society and reported reduced emissions, the country recovered surprisingly quickly. The economy recovered, and so did the emissions.36 On the other hand, the pandemic led to dramatic economic setbacks in many countries, such as a drop in GDP of almost 10% in the USA in the second quarter of 2020. In a country like Peru, the drop was over 30%.37 In autumn 2020, the World Bank reported that so far, the economic downturn due to corona was about to send between 88 and 115 million people into extreme poverty. During 2021, the estimate was that this number could increase to around 150 million.38 In other words, economic decline brings emissions down, but at the same time, it affects the world’s poor dramatically.

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Climate activists in the rich world do not always think about this. Although the world halted growth in emissions in 2020 due to the corona crisis, there is little to suggest that the crisis, with what we now can see, will have a lasting effect on the emission of greenhouse gases. By the end of 2022, emissions had risen and were at a new record high level. The future, both for climate change and for the pandemic, is uncertain. The lesson we should draw is therefore that unforeseen incidents may appear, and that development can be dramatically affected by factors other than global warming and climate change. Warning against “climate determinism”—explaining everything that happens in society and in the world in the light of one factor, namely climate change—is thus clearly appropriate.39 If we disregard a possible global economic collapse, it is not a bold claim that the UN goal of nearly halving climate emissions in 2030 is unrealistic. At the COP meeting in Egypt in November 2022, only a few countries had registered commitments for cuts that were close to meeting this target. Taken together the promised cuts would hardly be enough to reduce emissions by one percent. My claim, which I cannot document or prove, is that politicians understand that the objectives which are formulated for climate policy, nationally and globally, are unlikely to be realized. “If you walk into a room full of scientists and ask who thinks global warming can be limited to 1.5°, no one will raise their hand”, CICERO researcher Glenn Peters told a news channel in February 2020.40 Climate policy is therefore in many ways based on a pseudo-discussion, where the participants argue against better knowledge. Hence, they fail to develop strategies for how society could more realistically attack the climate problem. Instead, much of the climate discussion becomes a form of “shadow boxing” where people have been most concerned with competing to set the most ambitious targets possible, and less concerned with how they can meet them. Could it be that the politicians have actually listened to Greta Thunberg and to science and set out to do the apparently impossible—do what is “necessary”— without thinking too much about whether what is “necessary” is politically feasible?41 The climate discussion essentially revolves around what “must be done” to keep climate emissions at a level that climate science believes is necessary; to keep the global temperature rise below 2.0 or 1.5°. The Paris summit called for all countries to submit targets for climate cuts that would be sufficient to ensure this. The discussion is driven by climate science’s model-based impact analyzes of what climatic effects global warming will have in the future, most recently with the so-called 1.5° report 42 and the latest main report, published in 2021 and 2022.43 What we do not get, are impact analyzes of alternative strategies to realize the goal. Climate science’s scenario trumps all other considerations in practice, as the debate is constructed. In Norway’s case, for example, it would be useful to look at the social consequences of realizing a 50% cut in climate emissions in 10 years. We do not get any professional or scientifically-based debate about this. To a greater or lesser extent, this is left to the dark corners of social media, where groups which feel affected by the polices rebel against various means to realize the objectives. One of the few researchers who has delved into this problem is the Nobel Prize winner in economics for 2018, William Nordhaus.44 His most important contribution

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to climate science is that he has tried to model the connection between economic growth and global warming, and thus, how the costs of climate action today will affect the balance between global warming and economic growth. As with all other modelling of the future, there is of course also uncertainty attached to Nordhaus’s results. In contrast to the “usual” climate models, he nevertheless tries to model the connection and balance between climate effects and societal effects of global warming. There is a trade-off, he claims, between the costs of climate measures today and economic growth which will also affect future generations, in the form of increased welfare and a much greater ability and capacity to handle changes in the climate. According to Nordhaus’ model calculations, the “balance point” is approximately 3.5° global warming.45 Formulating lofty goals has become a competition in symbol production and an expression of who takes the “climate crisis” most seriously. Thus, the goal-setting debate suppresses the more important debate about what can be done, and how it will be practically realistic to achieve it. There is a discussion and conflicts about goals, rather than a discussion about measures and what works. One argument for formulating high targets, and perhaps targets that cannot be fully realized, is that this often underlines the seriousness of the situation and in this way drives both politicians and ordinary people to greater climate efforts. In this sense, it is like declaring “climate crisis”. It might just as well work the other way around, at least if people see that the goals are far too high to be achieved. Then, the result can be that one gives up, and that “ordinary people” leave the climate discussion and efforts to the idealists.

The Problem with the Person-Focused Climate Policy As was discussed in Chap. 2, the climate problem is handled as an emission problem. The answer is therefore simple: It is about reducing emissions. This has turned out to be extremely difficult. Every single person on the entire globe is in some way individually responsible for his or her tiny emissions. True, the fight against climate emissions is not only aimed at individuals, but of course also at companies and other collective actors, primarily at the carbon-based energy industry. However, much still ends up as a demand for behavioural change aimed at each and every one of us—or it requires us to change the way we live. It is also about changes that the great majority will experience as a loss of welfare. We all must sacrifice something to “save the climate”, we are told. The mechanism for reducing the use of oil and coal is that we each ask for less and use less of the goods and services that are based on carbon-based energy, and in this way force alternatives and reduce emissions. We should fly less, preferably not travel by plane at all, drive less, change our diet and eat less red meat. We should generally reduce our consumption. We are all, every single person on the planet, greater or lesser sources of emissions, as carbon is so closely linked to our entire way of life. Consequently, the climate policy will influence all of us in one way or another. Often measures are designed in ways that larger or smaller groups

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experience as unfair. The result is easily, as we have seen in this chapter, various “revolts” against what is perceived as unreasonable interference in people’s lives. The difference, compared to other emission problems, is striking. The measures against, for example, acid rain or the release of CFC gases are also aimed at the emission sources. However, here, the emission sources are the factories and companies, more than individuals. The problem could be solved by cleaning measures or with technological innovations on the production side. We as consumers noticed little or nothing, apart from some changing routines when replacing used refrigerators and freezers, and perhaps reports in the media that the problem would soon be solved. We did not have to stop buying refrigerators, only to make sure we hand in the old ones. The more new refrigerators the market asked for, the easier it was for manufacturers to finance conversion to alternative technology, which prevents ozone-destroying emissions. The climate problem is quite different. As Greta Thunberg proclaimed in her speech in the European Parliament: “Everyone and everything needs to change”. We all have a moral responsibility to save the planet from destruction. It becomes shameful to fly, to eat meat and to drive a car. Although “ordinary people” accept that we have a climate problem, many react to being looked down upon by a well-born and climate-moralizing elite, who tell people that they must stop with one or the other of the good things which prosperity and the welfare society has given us access to. This “elite” likes to stay at the top of society and see themselves “forced” both to use cars and to travel by plane because they have important tasks that need to be done. Many of them have a work situation that does not make them dependent on a car and/or they have an economy that allows them to replace their Mercedes with a Tesla. People react to young urban people, (for the time being) without children and families, telling hard-working families with children that they can take the family with them on trains and buses if they even have the conscience to go to the cabin in the mountains during Easter. The cabin is also a threat to biological diversity, by the way. The number of idealists who stop flying, who travel with the whole family to the cabin in the mountains by train and bus, who stop eating hamburgers and get rid of the car is relatively limited. But they have, to a large extent, come to dominate the climate policy debate. This group easily stands out as a form of moral clergy who can condescendingly tell others how they should live their lives. Vegans and vegetarians have had a heyday, where they can maintain their own lifestyle, and their own eating habits, as the saviour of the planet and tell sheep farmers and other meat producers with a moral finger in the air that they must switch to growing vegetables. When multi-millionaire and founder of the EAT-campaign, Gunhild Stordalen, flies around the world and explains to people that they should reduce their intake of red meat to 13 g per day, it is unlikely to make most people more climate aware.46 It probably has the opposite effect; makes people feel looked down upon by an aloof elite who lives in a completely different world than the one most people feel they belong to. For some, that will be enough to make them turn against restrictive climate measures and condemn them as “climate hysteria”.

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The Polarized Climate Debate and the Undermining of Democracy While the more sector-oriented protest groups and actions are aimed at climaterelated measures in individual areas (such as wind power or road tolls), the people’s action against climate hysteria and similar campaigns are aimed at the entire spectrum of climate policy measures. It is by no doubt driven by climate sceptics and rightwing populist forces, but at the same time, such campaigns have formulated their messages in such a way that it hits a nerve that can be found in much wider circles. It has to do with a reaction, not only against the content of the climate policy, but against a climate rhetoric that is perceived as elitist and condescending towards “ordinary people”, while it is so-called “ordinary people” who are comparatively hardest hit by climate measures. There is also another important difference between the protests we have looked at in this chapter and the people’s uprising against climate hysteria. The other groups are also active on social media, but they primarily mobilize people for concrete action, or to get people out into the streets in demonstrations. The public uprising against the climate hysteria is a “revolt” on social media, like the “counter-revolt”, the people’s uprising against the people’s uprising against the climate hysteria. Thus, the two extremes in the climate debate have each acquired their own “echo chamber” where they can cultivate their own rhetoric without being contradicted, and where they can conjure up horror images of the opponents. In this way, such groups and actions help to polarize what is perhaps the most important social debate of our time. It quickly becomes the case that the polarized extremes of the debate set the premises and the agenda for the climate discourse, where they remain on their own, and safely protected in their own trenches, forming a picture of the other party. From the trenches on both sides, they then appear in the public space with ammunition to the comment columns in the open press and to other forums on social media. Democracy is based on open debate and public arenas for the free exchange of opinions, but today, we find few forums where people with different views on the climate issue can meet and sharpen their perceptions and opinions in such a way that they must listen to each other’s opinions. On the contrary, we constantly see— and this probably primarily applies to the side of the climate debate that sees the climate problem as the world’s biggest threat—the claim that it is wrong to let the opponent—i.e. climate sceptics and doubters—into the public space. All of society’s forces must be mobilized to gather against the disaster that will otherwise come, is the rationale. Thus, the opposing voices in this debate are also forced “underground” and deeper into their own “echo chambers”. Parts of the climate debate are therefore in the process of taking on a form that undermines democracy, in precisely the area of matter that most people today believe is the most important global challenge that our society must deal with. There is reason to ask whether the presentation of the climate battle as something most akin to a state of war, the call to declare a climate crisis at all levels, from individual municipalities to entire countries and associations of countries, is also a

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way of suppressing the democratic debate.47 In such a dramatic crisis situation— not to say a state of war—one cannot bother with “irrelevant” derailment of the struggle by allowing doubts about the crisis itself or about the means of combating it. Problematizing climate policy therefore also easily becomes illegitimate. In a situation where the world is facing a possible total disaster, there is no room for doubt. Then, as the climate activists shout, there is a need for action “before it is too late”. The development towards a more polarized climate debate, as I have described it, undermines confidence that democracy can handle the climate problem. Here, both sides in the conflict are adding to the polarization. The various climate revolts against all or parts of the climate policy bring together people who feel ignored by politicians who are blamed for only listening to the climate activists and unilaterally ignoring all other considerations. First, the high temperature in the discussion has to do with an experience of being unfairly treated and having one’s interests sacrificed on the altar of climate policy, while “others” get away more easily. Also, the “pseudo–character” of the climate debate, setting climate targets so that most people understand they are unrealistic, and without consideration of social and economic consequences, helps to undermine trust in politicians. In the worst case, it can make people doubt whether it is necessary to take climate policy seriously at all. On the other hand, the popular revolt against climate policy is fuelled by the perception that democracy cannot solve the climate problem. The popular uprisings are taken as confirmation that “the people” do not understand or accept the seriousness of the climate threat, that they are selfish and only think of their own narrow interests. The stronger the conviction becomes that the climate threat is about a total and global ecological collapse, the stronger the conviction that the popular and populist revolts against climate policy show why democracy must give way to some form of coercive power, which can force through “necessary measures» to save the planet”. “People must believe in democracy if it is to work”, writes the political scientist David Runciman in the book The Confidence Trap.48 An important threat to both democracy and climate policy is that people stop believing in both. The politicians may also have a lesson to learn. Politicians who are more concerned with formulating lofty goals that are unlikely to be realized, than with taking seriously the consequences and effects of the goals they formulate, are in danger of undermining trust in themselves and in the democracy that they should be at the forefront to defend.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Rimbert (2019). E24, 21/12/2019. Op. cit., 5/12/2019. https://www.ssb.no/transport-og-reiseliv/faktaside/bil-og-transport. See Chap. 1. https://klimabrolet.no/. https://www.besteforeldreaksjonen.no/.

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8. 9. 10. 11.

Hausfather and Peters (2020). Boston (2017, p. 318). The information is taken from Wikipedia. https://www.regjeringen.no/no/tema/klima-og-miljo/klima/insiktsartikler-klima/klimaforl iket/id2076645/. Lan Marie Nguyen Berg at MDG’s annual meeting on 25 May 2019. Referenced here after Dagbladet: https://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/jeg-elsker-bomringen/71116279. See, for example, Dagbladet: https://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/jeg-elsker-virkelig-bomrin gen/71594721. https://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/giske---usosialt-raja---flar-folk/71055563. See endnote 14. https://www.nrk.no/vestland/drapstrusler_-trafikksabotasje-og-haerverk_-slik-er-den-skitnesiden-av-bompengeopproret-1.14567366. See endnote 16. https://www.vg.no/nyheter/meninger/i/xPzxBV/naa-kommer-ferjeopproeret. Green certificates, also called electricity certificates, are a scheme to subsidize the developers of renewable energy by adding a form of additional tax to the electricity price over and above what the producer would otherwise receive. In this way, investors will be enticed to finance the development of wind power. The scheme also applies to hydropower and has stimulated the development of small-scale power in smaller rivers and waterways. Norway has a common market for green certificates with Sweden. As far as I know, there have been no systematic studies of the advantages and disadvantages for the municipalities when developing wind power, but a study carried out in Germany by, among others, researchers from the Norwegian School of Economics, shows little positive economic effect for the municipalities/local communities where wind power has been expanded (Nilsen and May 2019). Díaz et al. (2019). https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/large-majority-germans-support-wind-power-rol lout-survey. See e.g. Arifi and Winkel (2021). See e.g. Anshelm and Simon (2016) and von Arnold (n.d.). https://www.nrk.no/rogaland/vindkraftmotstandere-gikk-til-verbalt-angrep-mot-olje--og-ene rgiminister-tina-bru-1.15052315. Emissions not subject to quotas are emissions that are not part of the EU’s quota system, of which Norway is a part. Within the quota system, emissions can be “compensated” by buying emission quotas. Emissions outside the quota-obliged sector must actually decrease. This applies to transport, agriculture, heating, waste and parts of emissions from industry and petroleum operations. The report can be downloaded from (Environment Directorate 2020). If you don’t want to get involved with the nearly 1200-page long report, you can go a long way with the summary: Miljødirektoratet m. fl. (2020). https://www.facebook.com/groups/2541150089475567/. https://www.facebook.com/groups/613221319248881/. According to report in Dagbladet: https://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/sivs-fylkeslag-vil-gjorenorge-til-patriotisk-fyrtarn/72195752?fbclid=IwAR1rSFbAZN_WShQdpvBDf3-OUhYdA 2jVmAA3lqnDkDeZMZMtt8tXuD292UU&utm_source=Energi+og+Klima+og+Klimas tiftelsens+emaillist&utm_campaign=88eddefe8d-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_FREDAG& utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_95967e5ed6-88eddefe8d-569496057 See Chap. 2. The quote is taken from a private Facebook account. https://www.an.no/debatt/folkeopproret-mot-klimahysteriet/o/5-4-1164811. Cf. preliminary figures from Statistics Norway summer 2020. https://www.ssb.no/klimagassn. VG nett 9.12.2019: https://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/i/K3KwBG/klimaminister-neste-aarblir-helt-avgjoerende?fbclid=IwAR0IkfXqwZb5anyuZDYU8ssJTx3PnvFaHHjZi0nLdLs 9a9t5U6vE-PvG90w.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

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35. Hoff-Elimari (2020c) 36. At the end of October 2020, The New York Times reported that economic growth in China was back at 6 percent, about the same level as it was before the pandemic (Bradsher, 2020). 37. Our World in Data (2020). 38. World Bank (n.d.). 39. Hulme (2011), Sluyter (2003), and Stehr and von Storch (1999). 40. https://www.abcnyheter.no/nyheter/verden/2020/02/19/195650251/forskere-er-enige-1-5-gra dersmalet-er-i-praksis-umulig-a-na. 41. “I ask you to please wake up and make the changes required possible. …. To do your best is no longer good enough. We must all do the seemingly impossible.” Greta Thunberg in a speech to the European Parliament, 16 April 2019. The speech is printed in Thunberg (2019). 42. IPCC (2018a). 43. IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf (n.d.). 44. More formally correct: Sweden’s Riksbank’s prize in economic science in memory of Alfred Nobel. 45. Nordhaus (2013). 46. For Stordalen’s EAT diet, see https://www.nrk.no/norge/eksperter-bekymret-over-stordalenskostholdsrad-1.14386282. 47. Hulme (2019). 48. Runciman (2013, p. 324).

References Anshelm, J., & Simon, H. (2016). Power production and environmental opinions—Environmentally motivated resistance to wind power in Sweden. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 57, 1545–1555. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2015.12.211 Arifi, B., & Winkel, G. (2021). Wind energy counter-conducts in Germany: Understanding a new wave of socio-environmental grassroots protest. Environmental Politics, 30(5), 811–832. https:/ /doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2020.1792730 Boston, J. (2017). Governing for the future: Designing democratic institutions for a better tomorrow (First edition). Emerald. Bradsher, K. (2020, October 26). With Covid-19 under control, China’s Economy Surges Ahead. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/18/business/china-economy-covid.html Díaz, S., Settele, J., Brondízio, E., Ngo, H. T., Guèze, M., Agard, J., Arneth, A., Balvanera, P., Brauman, K., Watson, R. T., Baste, I. A., Larigauderie, A., Leadley, P., Pascual, U., Baptiste, B., Demissew, S., Dziba, L., Erpul, G., Fazel, A., & Vilá, B. (2019). Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the intergovernmental science-policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services (p. 45). Hausfather, Z., & Peters, G. P. (2020). Emissions—The ´business as usual story is misleading. Nature, 577. Hoff-Elimari, E. (2020c). Den glemte klimakuren. Harvest Magazine. https://www.harvestmagaz ine.no/pan/mest-realistisk-og-storst-klimaeffekt-men-nevnes-ikke-i-klimakur Hulme, M. (2011). Reducing the future to climate: A story of climate determinism and reductionism. Osiris, 26(1), 245–266. https://doi.org/10.1086/661274 Hulme, M. (2019). Climate emergency politics is dangerous. Issues in Science and Technology, Fall, 23–25. IPCC. (2018a). Global warming of 1.5 °C. Summary for policymakers. http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ sr15/ IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf. (n.d.). Downloaded. 24 August 2021, from https://www.ipcc.ch/rep ort/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf

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Miljødirektoratet m. fl. (2020). Klimakur 2030: Sammendrag (p. 40). https://www.miljodirektoratet. no/globalassets/publikasjoner/m1625/m1625_sammendrag.pdf Nilsen, Ø. A., & May, N. (2019). The local economic impact of wind power deployment. FinanzArchiv, 75(1), 56. https://doi.org/10.1628/fa-2018-0021 Nordhaus, W. D. (2013). The climate casino: Risk, uncertainty, and economics for a warming world. Yale University Press. Our World in Data. (2020). Economic decline in the second quarter of 2020. https://ourworldi ndata.org/grapher/economic-decline-in-the-second-quarter-of-2020?time=earliest..latest&fbc lid=IwAR3Iai8kCOn1YensbKh-SYAWdfKy-b6o-9mE4pGf4oAs9Jr3V25zbEvroZE Rimbert, A. S. H. O. P. (2019, February 7). Klassekamp i Frankrike. Le Monde diplomatique. https:/ /www.lmd.no/2019/02/klassekamp-i-frankrike/ Runciman, D. (2013). The confidence trap: A history of democracy in crisis from World War I to the present. Princeton University Press. Sluyter, A. (2003). Neo-environmental determinism, intellectual damage control, and nature/society science. Antipode, 35(4), 813–817. Stehr, N., & von Storch, H. (1999). Stehr, Nico and Hans von Storch, An anatomy of climate determinism 1999. … Rassismus-Analysen Einer Kontinuität in Den Human …. https://www.academia.edu/1563186/Stehr_Nico_and_Hans_von_Storch_An_anatomy_of_ climate_determinism_1999 Thunberg, G. (2019). No one is too small to make a difference. Penguin Books. von Arnold, C. (n.d.). Conflicts between national climate targets and local communities jeopardize the renewable energy transition|Lund University centre for sustainability studies. Downloaded 21 mars 2023, from https://www.lucsus.lu.se/article/conflicts-between-national-climate-targetsand-local-communities-jeopardize-renewable-energy World Bank. (n.d.). COVID-19 to add as many as 150 million extreme poor by 2021. World Bank. Downloaded 7. April 2021, from https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/10/ 07/covid-19-to-add-as-many-as-150-million-extreme-poor-by-2021

Chapter 6

The “Non-political” Solution to the Climate Problem

It seems politically impossible to “solve” the climate problem. The clearer it becomes that current climate policy is not achieving its goals, the more the panic spreads among climate researchers, politicians and activists, and the more often we hear the call for “Plan B”. “Desperate times call for desperate measures”, writes researcher Soheil Shayegh in a comment on the ever more intense debate about the need to speed up research on climate fixing, or climate engineering.1 “This is an emergency”, the then Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon, is said to have claimed in 2007, “and for emergency situations, we need emergency action”.2 Especially after the climate summit in Paris in 2015 raised the ambition to reduce global warming to 1.5°, the pressure to initiate Plan B has increased.3 Plan B assumes that we can use our knowledge of the global climate system, and our highly developed technology, to regulate the global temperature and thus prevent further global warming. Using the same techniques, one cannot only prevent further temperature increases, one can also regulate the temperature back to an “ideal level”, to preindustrial times. Just as we have installed thermostats in our houses, the dream is to be able to install a “global thermostat” that regulates the global temperature. According to one of the leading advocates for starting experiments to create such a “thermostat”, David Keith, in the book A Case for Climate Engineering, this is not only possible, but also relatively cheap: It is possible to cool the planet by injecting reflective particles of sulfuric acid into the upper atmosphere where they would scatter a tiny fraction of incoming sunlight back to space, creating a thin sunshade for the ground underneath. To say that it is “possible” understates the case: It is cheap and technically easy.4

David Keith has also calculated that such “sun screening” can neutralize the global increase in temperature that is due to human emissions, at a cost that is between 10 and 1000 times lower than if one were to achieve the same result by cutting emissions.5 In other words, it is not surprising that there are politicians, researchers and climate activists who see this as promising. For some, it is even more tempting that the “climate fix” can be realized without international agreement and without the project needing to be stopped by popular © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Naustdalslid, The Climate Threat. Crisis for Democracy?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34471-8_6

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opposition and unwillingness to bear large costs. While today’s global climate strategy envisages extensive changes in people’s way of life, global cooperation and joint global efforts, expensive technological development and, above all, joint political solutions, climate engineering can in principle be carried out by individual actors with sufficient resources, without being dependent on national and international policies. One of the fundamental problems with today’s global climate policy is precisely that it requires collective global action. The American Nobel Prize winner in economics,6 Thomas C. Schelling, has claimed that regulating the radiation from the sun would be an “elegant” solution to this problem.7 Such a measure has the advantage, according to Schelling, that it can be carried out without all, or most, countries having to agree, and without governments needing to impose sacrifice and renunciation on their citizens. Yes, it can in principle be done without involving national actors at all. But it is precisely this fact that makes such an alternative dangerous. While climate engineering can be carried out “outside of politics”, this is also an alternative that is associated with the most uncertainty and greatest danger. This has been called “the paradox of climate engineering”: The only form for climate engineering which (at least today) is economically and technologically realistic, and which will be globally effective in regulating global temperature, and is, at the same time, the technology which will create the most uncertainty and the most conflict.8 The question what is more effective, democracy or dictatorship, to “save the planet”, would become irrelevant if someone chose such a solution. Precisely for this reason, the threat that someone can start a large-scale global project with climate engineering is one of the very real threats to democracy that global warming brings. In this chapter I will take a closer look at what climate fixing/climate engineering is and how and why this is a strategy that cannot only be a greater threat to the planet than global warming but is also a threat to a democratic climate policy, to democracy and the entire global order more generally.

What Is Climate Fixing? In a sense, it can be argued that today’s climate problem is a result of humans having shaped the climate through our emissions of greenhouse gases and land use changes over a long period of time. We have already started an irreversible experiment with the globe.9 Humans have almost always influenced the climate. We have cleared forests and changed waterways. We have released large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, thereby affecting the atmosphere’s ability to regulate how much sunlight reaches the earth’s surface, even long before the industrial revolution.10 As we saw in Chap. 2, it is not only man-made CO2 emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas that affect the global temperature. It is also such as changes in land use. Hence, it has been claimed that man-made emissions of CO2 may have started as early as 8000 years ago, when humans began to burn forests to make way for agriculture. Emissions of large amounts of CO2 from forest burning and methane from rice cultivation, which

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go back approximately 5000 years, may have led to the atmosphere being affected by human activity for several thousand years.11 After Columbus “discovered” America and the Europeans invaded the American continent, it is estimated that the genocide of the natives and the spread of diseases killed at least 50 million people. The result was a breakdown in agriculture and an overgrowth of large parts of the continent. This, in turn, led to a significant increase in the global absorption of CO2 , and it has been claimed that the reduced emissions of CO2 that this brought with it helped to intensify the cooling during the Little Ice Age.12 Seen in the light of today’s terminology, we could easily see this as “climate engineering” and so in a certain sense it can be claimed that humans have been engaged in geoengineering for several thousand years. In fact, there are parallels between then and now. Today, there are technologies that are not always referred to as geoengineering, but which will reduce the emission of CO2 through changing land use. This may primarily be afforestation but also include taking care of and bringing back marshland and protecting wetlands. If afforestation is to have any net effect on the absorption of CO2 , trees must be planted in areas where there was no forest before. For existing forests, it may be best not to cut them down.13 The international think tank Drawdown has outlined a number of solutions and measures linked to the world’s land use, which have the potential to tie up CO2 and other greenhouse gases.14 In other words, there are certainly “climate fixing strategies” that go into a large arsenal of climate measures we need, to reduce emissions and tie up more CO2 on the earth’s surface.15 Nevertheless, it is not this type of “repair strategy” that we usually think of when we talk about climate fixing or geoengineering. Nor is it this type of strategy that threatens democracy. The kind of geoengineering that we are talking about here, technological interventions to change the atmosphere so that less sunlight reaches the earth’s surface and so make it possible to regulate the global temperature by manipulating the chemical and physical composition of the atmosphere. This is completely possible, as David Keith advocates in the quote above. It is also technologically and economically realistic. Some even believe that the way we have set ourselves up, this is both a right and a duty.16

A Global Heat Shield One, if not the foremost, centre for research on “sun screening” is found at Harvard University, Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Programme, led by David Keith. He is one of the world’s leading researchers who works for the development and testing of technologies to manipulate the atmosphere, so that the radiation from the sun is reduced and the temperature on the earth can thus be regulated. He has also written one of the international standard works in defence of “solar engineering”.17 The programme aims to be at the forefront of research into “solar engineering’s science and technology” and aims at “an active stance on research with a

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unique mandate to develop new path-breaking technologies that might improve solar geoengineering’s effectiveness and reduce its risks”.18 The centre’s website presents three forms of intervention in the atmosphere which are suitable for regulating the temperature of the earth: Firstly, the artificial production of bright clouds which reflect the sunrays. The technique mentioned most often is to spread water vapour into the lower parts of the atmosphere from ships. Secondly, the atmosphere can be manipulated in order to release more long-wave radiation, and in this way counteracts some of the warming effect that increased CO2 concentration has. This can be done by reducing or thinning the high-lying cirrus clouds, which together with CO2 slow down the return radiation to space. Thirdly, it is the most relevant and likely alternative, and the one I will mainly concentrate on further: spreading large quantities of small particles of sulphur or calcium carbonate (aerosols) in the upper layers of the atmosphere. This layer of particles will reflect some of the sunlight back into space before it reaches the earth’s surface. This is the simplest technology that makes it possible to construct a form of “global thermostat”.19 Ideally, it will make it possible to regulate the global temperature by controlling the amount of sulphur particles in the atmosphere. It is primarily this technology that is now being promoted. In Great Britain, we find another leading centre for “solar geoengineering”: Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE). According to the centre’s website, the aim of the research programme is to investigate how much, and what kind of particles, we can inject into the atmosphere to manage the climate system “in a safe way”, how this can be achieved and what kind of consequences it will have.20 One of the projects involves constructing a balloon that can pull a 25 km long hose up into the atmosphere to pump up the material that will build the “sunscreen”.

Historical Review The ambition for technological control of the climate can be traced back to the technological optimism in the wake of the Second World War.21 This also applies to the insight that it is possible to influence the climate by spreading sulphur in the stratosphere.22 The Hungarian-American mathematician, John von Neumann, a man who, among other things, contributed to the development of the atomic bomb and the modern computer, published back in 1955 a startlingly far-sighted article with the challenging title: “Can we survive technology”?23 Before anyone else had given the problem much attention, von Neumann wrote that the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from the burning of coal and oil could already have changed the atmosphere enough to have warmed the globe by one degree Fahrenheit. He also pointed out that if this continues, the climate could change, the ice on Greenland and Antarctica could melt and the globe could end up in a “world-wide tropical to semi-tropical climate”.24 He still had no idea that this should make society reduce CO2 emissions. He pointed to what many climate researchers have used as a “model

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for climate fixing” later, that volcanic eruptions have taught us that by spreading large amounts of sulphur in the stratosphere, it shades the sun so that the global temperature drops. Von Neumann pointed to the eruption of the Karakatao volcano in 1883. Had the dust from the eruption remained permanently in the atmosphere, the result would have been a permanent cooling of the globe by six degrees Fahrenheit (approximately two-degrees Celsius), he believed. Now, the rests of the eruption remained in the atmosphere for only three years, and the cooling effect was therefore only temporary. However, von Neumann built on this and outlined how the lessons learned from volcanic eruptions could be used to influence and control the climate. He was also aware of the albedo effect, and how one could influence the climate by regulating light and dark surfaces. As early as 1955, he believed that the technology would be fully available and the economy affordable, both to influence the albedo effect and to regulate the radiation from the sun through aerosols. He imagined that this would become relevant in the future: “Probably, intervention in the atmospheric and climatic matters will come in a few decades and will unfold on a scale difficult to imagine at present”, he wrote. The problem, he added, would be to foresee the effects and to assess what would be desirable: What would be harmful and what beneficial – and to which regions of the earth – is not immediately obvious. But there is little doubt that one could carry out analyzes needed to predict results, intervene on a desired scale, and ultimately achieve rather fantastic effects.25

Von Neumann was far-sighted, also in seeing the challenges that the use of such technology would present. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was primarily the possibility of climate fixing that received attention, in response to global warming and the climate changes that were gradually accepted as a real threat. All the way back in 1963, President Kennedy had a secret memorandum drawn up with a directive to obtain an overview of possible large-scale technological and scientific experiments, to be able to meet any harmful climate changes. Similar measures were implemented in the Soviet Union.26 In the early 1970s, the USA spent several tens of millions of dollars annually on experiments with climate engineering and modification of the weather.27 This research also had (and perhaps primarily) military purposes and was discredited for a long time because of being used as part of the Vietnam War and during the Cold War.28 However, climate engineering did not become the important question as the climate debate gained momentum throughout the 1980s and 1990s. As we know, it was the reduction of emissions, not technological interventions to shade the sun, that became the strategy with the environmental summit in Rio in 1992, and the Kyoto Agreement five years later.29 It was only in 2006, when more and more voices were raised and pointed out that the strategy of reducing emissions proved not to work, that the idea of Plan B—reducing the radiation from the sun—was given new life. The person who triggered this discussion was the Dutch Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Paul Crutzen, with the article Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulphur Injections. A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma.30 Interestingly, Crutzen’s article is based on an observation that the reduction in air pollution in the world since the 1980s had helped to increase the radiation from the sun. In other

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words, this initially positive development contributed to global warming. The best thing would of course be, writes Crutzen, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but the international community had not achieved this, as he pointed out. Therefore, one should compensate for the warming effect of minor pollution by distributing the sulphur (or pollution, if you like) in the atmosphere and in addition compensate for the lack of effect of climate policy: (A)lthough by far not the best solution, the usefulness of artificially enhancing earth’s albedo and thereby cooling climate by adding sunlight reflecting aerosols in the stratosphere […] might again be explored and debated as a way to defuse the Catch-22 situation, he wrote.31

Like von Neumann, Crutzen also pointed to observed effects of volcanic eruptions, in his case the eruption from Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in June 1991, which lowered the global temperature by 0.5°.32 By transporting sulphur or hydrogen sulphide up into the stratosphere with balloons, or by producing sulphur dioxide in the stratosphere with the help of artillery cannons, one could create the same type of effects as the dimming of the sun that had been observed after the Mount Pinatubo eruption, he claimed. This “shield” of course had to be maintained and kept permanent. Others have pointed out that the most effective technology would be to convert a fleet of passenger aircraft into special aircraft to spread the sulphur particles in the upper layers of the atmosphere.33 What is seen as fascinating about such a sun shielding strategy is that a scenario without sun shielding will probably result in a global temperature increase of more than two degrees and with a great risk that the warming will be even higher. The solar shading alternative, on the other hand, can keep the global temperature increase at today’s level and that with relatively little uncertainty. One will also relatively easily be able to regulate the temperature even further down, to pre-industrial times, if one wishes.

A Problematic Strategy Yes, it seems fascinating! But is it as simple as if we regulate the global temperature back to pre-industrial levels, then we will get back the pre-industrial climate? No, it is not. We know little about what the consequences of such a project will be.34 It is not as straightforward that one can only send a suitable dose of sulphur into the stratosphere, then it will nullify the effect of the man-made concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and the “natural” climate returns. The increased concentration of CO2 acts continuously over the earth’s entire surface, day and night, all year round and reduces the emission of long-wave heat radiation from the earth. The “protective” layer of sulphur aerosols reduces the radiation of short-wave heat radiation from the sun and only works during the day. The effect will depend on the seasons in different parts of the globe and will have different effects around the equator and closer to the poles.35 In other words, a pre-industrial average global temperature will not produce a pre-industrial climate. And a stabilization of the global temperature at today’s level

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(approximately one degree above pre-industrial times) does not mean that we will stabilize and preserve today’s climate. Climate change will, on the contrary, continue, and the effects of the solar screen on the climate in various parts of the world will be unknown and probably even more unpredictable than they are today.36 As the cooling effect will be greatest closer to the equator and less close to the poles, some calculations indicate that a global cooling to pre-industrial levels will reduce the temperature by approximately half a degree below pre-industrial levels at the equator but will still lead to a warming of one to two degrees closer to the poles.37 Attempts to cool the globe using such a solar screen may, it has been warned, lead to serious and unpredictable disturbances of the monsoon in the Indian Ocean.38 As is well known, the monsoon is decisive for large parts of food production in India and South-East Asia. And there are other possibly serious changes: Shielding of solar radiation will affect the rainfall pattern and regional and local climate across the globe, with unclear consequences. Model studies have shown, for example, that the effects will be different for India and for China, the two regional powers that are already in strategic competition for access to fresh water from the glaciers in the Himalayas.39 An article in the newspaper The Guardian, from December 2020, claims that 35,000 people are currently working with weather manipulation in China, and that the aim is to control the rain in an area of 5.5 million km2 .40 Another danger that has been shown is that cooling the earth with the help of sulphur particles in the stratosphere will reduce the chances of closing the "ozone hole". Sulphurous particles will break down the ozone layer. The higher in the stratosphere one places the “sulphur screen”, the more effective it will be, and the less sulphur will be needed. But the higher in the stratosphere the sulphur is placed, the greater the depleting effect it simultaneously has on the ozone layer. There is therefore a trade-off between sun protection and protection of the ozone layer. In an article in the journal Science from 2008, a group of researchers claimed that if enough sulphur were to be added to the atmosphere to neutralize a doubling of the CO2 concentration, this would delay the sealing of the ozone hole over Antarctica by 30–70 years.41 The sulphur that is sprayed into the atmosphere will eventually also fall down again. Together with other pollution, it could therefore contribute to more acid rain. Here, it is nevertheless more important that if the spreading of sulphur comes instead of measures to reduce emissions, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will only continue to increase. The acidification of the world’s oceans will also continue, with the consequences it has. Depending on the concentration of sulphur-based aerosols, the amount of sunlight reaching the ground will be reduced. The globe will soon become darker. We may not notice this, but the plants and the entire ecosystem will. It will be beneficial for some types of plants that thrive with less light, but unfavourable for others. Studies have indicated that more diffuse radiation due to increased aerosol concentration will increase the entire biological productivity.42 Knowledge about this is still poorly developed, and it is likely that we will have major changes in vegetation types in different places. Radiation from the sun will also affect the conditions for solar-based energy production and make today’s solar panels less efficient. It will therefore become increasingly difficult to use solar energy to replace fossil energy.

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Then, it is perhaps not such a great consolation that we can possibly look forward to more colourful sunsets. It has been claimed that the spectacular sunsets over Eastern Norway after the eruption of the Krakatau volcano in 1883 inspired Edvard Munch to paint the dramatic and famous painting The Scream.43

The Search for Knowledge More and more researchers are now claiming that time is running out, that the world’s politicians have failed to control global warming, and that we must therefore invest massive resources in research on climate engineering. However, we should not ignore the fact that this may also have to do with competition for research funds. Research in this field has in any case accelerated, especially after 2006 when Paul Crutzen published his famous article.44 «What we do over the next 10 years will determine the future for humanity for the next 10,000 years”, claims the former scientific adviser to the British government, David King. He is in the process of building up a “Centre for Climate Repair” at Cambridge University in England.45 Interest in geoengineering as a response to global warming is particularly high in the USA. There is also a business community and capital interests that foresee the possibilities for business. At the same time as the US withdrew from the Paris Agreement, the journal Science reported that the US Congress granted four million dollars to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to “study methods to cool the globe if the US and other countries fail to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases».46 In October 2022, the White House announced a major five years research programme to “study ways of modifying the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth in order to temporarily temper the effects of global warming”.47 The day the US government realizes that global warming is a serious threat, also to the US economy and American business, it is entirely conceivable that an isolationist USA will take matters into its own hands and start a large-scale geo engineering programme. This is more conceivable as it will also offer great investment opportunities for private American capital. The American state, if it joins forces with sufficiently heavy investors, would not need to ask anyone to initiate such a programme on its own. Also, other countries, such as China, Russia or India, will be able to initiate such a process without regard to the rest of the world community. This is not to say that it would happen without major international protests. But they can do it. Today, nobody can guess what conflicts such an initiative would lead to. As we have seen, the result of such interventions in the climate system will result in extensive climate changes in all parts of the globe, even if science were able to regulate the global mean temperature back to the “starting point”. In that case, we have no verifiable knowledge of how this will affect the climate. Here again, we are dependent on the climate scientists’ models and model experiments, with all the uncertainty and all the surprising results that this entails. Almost all the

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research that has been carried out in this field is model studies. The most wellknown campaigner for climate engineering, David Keith, has used as an argument that it will be based on the same uncertain knowledge as we build climate policy on more generally. Consequently, this is as certain or uncertain as all climate policy.48 This is hardly a tenable argument when we talk about fundamentally intervening in natural processes in yet another way. We do not need numerical forecasts for global temperature increase to know that emission cuts, large or small, are sensible. Taking it upon oneself to regulate the global temperature based on this uncertain knowledge base is something entirely different. Today’s discussion about the climate seems to be blindly focused on regulating the global temperature increase within the two-degrees target, or preferably down towards 1.5°, as if this would be an insurance against all “harmful climate change”. It is not.49 A global temperature target is a rather problematic target to manage.50 This applies to traditional climate policy—in the same way as it applies to shielding against radiation from the sun.51 Even within the 2.0 or 1.5° target, there is room for large and dramatic climate changes locally and regionally—and that is what matters for humans and nature.52 These are effects that researchers today have difficulties making meaningful predictions about.53 The problem is that dimming the radiation from the sun will make it even more complicated to predict, and to face, the changes that we can be fairly certain will come (and which are probably already underway). In addition, it may lead to another change: The day you experience a weather-related disaster or find yourself exposed to a climate that you are unsatisfied with, there will be someone to criticize and hold accountable. Then you have the “dose–response problem”. That is how one should regulate the thermostat in practice. How much sulphur must be spread into the atmosphere at what time to regulate the average temperature, and at what level? The researchers do not agree here. Crutzen’s classic article estimates that approximately five million tonnes of sulphur must be added to the atmosphere annually to balance the human emissions of greenhouse gases.54 Other studies have suggested that the need is far less—under two million tonnes.55 The point is that such calculations depend on the climate researchers’ model calculations. These calculations vary from one degree and a 5°–6° temperature increase in the year 2100. This gap may not be so dangerous if we only accept that the globe is getting warmer but will be different if the climate scientists’ scenarios are to serve as a reference and “baseline” for how much and how the atmosphere should be manipulated, to ensure a stable temperature into the future. In other words: spreading sulphur in the atmosphere does not remove the underlying uncertainty about how much and how fast global warming will progress, but the uncertainty becomes even more of a problem. Thomas Schelling’s “elegant” solution to the climate problem may therefore not be entirely elegant after all. What supporters of geoengineering refer to as “the paradox of geoengineering”, namely that the simple and “elegant” solution can be the one that mobilizes the greatest resistance, is thus real enough. The basis for the resistance is based on very real problems and scientifically-based counterarguments. The claim that this form of geoengineering represents a kind of “quick fix” to the climate problem is not tenable. On the contrary: If such an experiment is realized on

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a full scale, the most important will be that humans have added another dimension to the great uncertainty surrounding how quickly the global temperature will rise, and how this will result in local and regional changes in weather and climate. Here, there are two linked points that are important to consider. Despite all assurances that the spreading of sulphur in the atmosphere must only take place after extensive research and thorough testing has been carried out, no amount of research and testing through “pilot projects” will make such a global programme justifiable. It is in principle impossible to obtain scientifically documented knowledge about how sulphurization of the atmosphere will work on a full scale, without carrying it out on a full scale. Model studies and local and partial trials cannot give us answers to our questions, as model studies can only be verified when one can later see if they agree with the facts. It is not possible to obtain empirically tested knowledge about how sulphurization will work without starting the programme on a full scale and letting it work for some time, thereby exposing the entire globe to an experiment to which no one knows the answer. In principle, there is no “return ticket”. As I pointed out, most of this research takes place as model experiments. The arsenal that currently exists of climate models is being used to provide answers to what effects we can expect from various scenarios, for the spread of sulphur in the atmosphere. Thus, such a strategy faces the same problems as today’s climate policy. The virtual climate that the models produce does not represent empirically-based truths, but is a hypothetical scenario, where different models with different assumptions give different answers to how large the global warming will be, and even greater uncertainty about what this global warming will lead to for local climates and local weather. The basic point is that we do not have and will not be able to obtain, scientifically verified knowledge that succeeds to “set” the global thermostat to a given temperature, much less control the regional and local climates across the globe. Even more serious is that an extensive programme for sulphurizing the atmosphere will increase the risk of a truly major disaster, should the programme suddenly end sometime in the future. In other words, the implementation of such a global experiment represents a kind of «point of no return». Once you have started, you must continue.56 It has been argued that sun protection in the atmosphere is a bit like experimenting with heroin: Once you start, it will be very difficult to stop.57 The American geophysicist and editor of the IPCC’s third report, Raymond Pierrehumbert, has called the plans to place a reflective shield of sulphur out in space complete madness (“barking mad”). He believes that this experiment, if it is first started, will have to be maintained for thousands of years.58 In the climate debate, we are told that global warming is now escalating faster than the fluctuations between warmer and colder periods that the globe has undergone in the past. This is nevertheless a development that takes place in a ten-years and a hundred-years perspective. Then, society and nature still have some time to adapt to a different and more variable climate and to develop alternative forms of energy. If we place a “protective shield” of sulphur out in space, at the same time as we continue to increase the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, we can probably keep the global average temperature down, but it will depend on the “global heat shield” being continuously maintained and renewed for ever and ever. If this should fail for one reason or another, the accumulated global

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warming will suddenly occur within a very short time. This would really trigger a climate crisis, which neither nature nor society would be able to handle. Then, we would be able to talk about a fatal—and for civilization perhaps final—tipping point.59 The advocates of this form of geoengineering try to allay fears. David Keith argues that if such a geoengineering programme is built up gradually, at the same time as the work to reduce climate emissions continues, we can avert global warming in the short term, and then gradually, the programme can be built down just as gradually again.60 This argument is typical of much of today’s climate debate. If we can only research our way to sufficient insight into how the climate system works and how temperature and climate will be affected by human intervention, then society will control the global temperature and the climate. If society has sufficient knowledge, it is taken for granted that this knowledge is used “reasonably” and aimed at solving the problem the world is facing. In other words: Society’s ability to use and manage technology is taken for granted. The whole thing is a technological problem. The experiences with global climate policy over 30 years show that such a way of thinking just does not work. After all, it is society’s lack of ability to translate climate knowledge into political action that led to the climate problem we have today.61 This naive faith in society’s ability to solve the climate problem, and to manage an extensive geoengineering project, probably has to do with the fact that the climate debate has essentially been conducted as a natural science debate. The social sciences have been assigned the role of “social engineers” to get politicians and society to behave as climate science has prescribed.62 At best, this is insufficient. At worst, it has created frustrations and led to the argument that democracy has failed. This is also one of the reasons (if not the most important) why we should be concerned about the deployment of a radiation shield in the atmosphere: In order to deploy such a shield, as Thomas Schelling has pointed out, it is not necessary to put in place an extensive global agreement.63 It is enough for one or a few countries to get sufficient funding in place, then the whole experiment can get started. Even a consortium of private contractors will be able to realize the project on a larger or smaller scale as a private programme.64 One of the most ardent supporters of more research into geoengineering is Bill Gates.65 He may probably be able to finance and organize his own atmospheric sulphurization programme, possibly in collaboration with one or a few countries. The only thing required is a sufficiently large fleet of specially built or converted aircrafts. If one, or a few, powerful enough actors stand behind it, it is not certain that global protests would be sufficient to stop such a project. In other words, the fundamental problem with attempts to “fix the climate” is not technological or economic, but political and ethical. Let us therefore take a closer look at the politics and ethics of geoengineering. The danger that such an experiment, with the entire globe as a “laboratory”, could come to life is one of the most serious threats to democracy that climate change can bring.

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The Democratic Problem Climate engineering is primarily a governance and political problem.66 However, the research that has received attention is technological research, model experiments, and simulations to arrive at the most effective methods for deploying the global “solar screen” and attempts to calculate the climate effects of different scenarios for different parts of the globe. There has been far less interest in how the use and operation of such technology can be managed in the future. The underlying reasoning seems to be that governing the “climate thermostat” is regarded as mainly a knowledge problem. If we know enough about the technology and the opportunities, problems and risk factors it brings with it, society will be able to control it. If we think about it more closely, this is less obvious. An important background for the fact that an increasing number of researchers and climate activists now believe that it will be necessary to use this technology, is precisely that society has not been able to agree on effective measures to prevent global warming. It may therefore be pertinent to ask if there is reason to believe that world leaders will be more successful in managing this “sun shading” technology? It may be relevant to recall an insight from one of the first global studies of the societal conditions for dealing with global warming, namely Global choice and climate change from the Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNNL) in the USA, back in the 1990s: The technocratic worldview sees nature as presenting decision-makers with hard constraints, whereas social arrangements are somehow soft and malleable through public information, regulation, price adjustments or the exercise of a somewhat elusive force referred to as political will.67

However, the management problem has not been completely overlooked. An attempt to answer this type of question can be found in the so-called “Oxford principles”, which were drawn up by a research group in the aftermath of the report on geoengineering that the British Royal Society had prepared in 2009.68 Here, we find some guidelines for how geoengineering could be launched on a global scale: • As people cannot avoid being affected, geoengineering must be regulated as a global public good. • The community (“the public”) must participate in the management of research on geoengineering. • Full insight into research projects on geoengineering must be ensured, and open publication of all research results must be guaranteed. • An independent evaluation of all research results must be carried out. • Management arrangements must be agreed in advance of deployment. These are general principles that are meant to apply to all forms of geoengineering. More specific principles, aimed more directly at the manipulation of the atmosphere, have been formulated by the American researchers Ted Parson and David Keith. Their goal is to put in place a framework that can speed up the targeted research, with the aim of putting in place a programme for sulphurization as quickly as possible.69

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Others claim that it is in principle impossible to justify the implementation of such a programme through research.70 At the same time, it is probably even less realistic to imagine that the world community will come to an agreement on such a programme based on the Oxford principles, or other regulations that presuppose a global agreement. Precisely for this reason, the threat that the programme may be implemented over the heads of the global institutions to handle international climate policy, is what we should be most afraid of. There are fundamental political and ethical differences between having caused global warming and knowingly starting a geoengineering programme to manage the global temperature. The global warming, that we are now witnessing the effects of, is not the result of a deliberate policy.71 No politician, no country or organization has created global warming as a deliberate policy. On the contrary, global warming has been described as the biggest market failure the world has seen.72 It is a side effect of the growth of industrial society and thus a side effect of the entire global economy of which we are all a part. Thus, there is no country or individual actor that can be held responsible for global warming. Market failure arises, as Nicholas Stern writes, from the market’s coordinating mechanism, the prices, sending out the wrong signals. In the case of emissions of greenhouse gases, the point is that no one had the knowledge to say that the emissions of CO2 should have a price, until it was too late. The distinction between global warming as a side effect of the “impersonal” global system, and global cooling as a targeted global programme, has important consequences. The very fundamental difference is that as soon as someone starts a project that manipulates the properties of the atmosphere, every change in weather and climate will have a “responsible” addressee. Every time a new hurricane causes damage worth hundreds of millions, those who are affected will have an address to direct the complaints and liability for damages to. Today, in practice, it is not possible to say whether a weather-related natural disaster can be traced back directly to human influence on the climate. If someone takes responsibility for deploying a “global thermostat” to regulate global temperature, we will no longer have a “hybrid climate”. The climate—and all weather phenomena—will appear to be completely human-controlled. Or more precisely: Those who are responsible for the programme will have taken on responsibility for the climate and the weather. We would, however, still have an unpredictable climate governed by several uncontrolled and uncontrollable factors. How will the regulation of the global temperature have an impact locally? What will happen to the distribution of rainfall, sun and drought in different parts of the world? What happens to the ozone layer? How will changing radiation affect the growth conditions for different types of plants and thus change the conditions for agriculture and food production in different parts of the world? What happens to the acidification of the world’s seas and thus the fishing resources that large parts of the world’s people depend on? The list can be extended. We will have placed ourselves in what the German sociologist Ulrich Beck would call the “total global risk society”.73 Others will be able to claim that we have then placed ourselves in the position that God was ascribed to in earlier times.74 The dramatically important point here will be that all the potentially negative effects of weather and

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climate that collide with one or another interest will then have an addressee who can be blamed and held accountable. In any case, it will no longer be relevant, as it was only a few decades ago, to appeal to Our Lord for “good and fair weather”, as it was formulated in the church prayer not so long ago. At the same time as manipulation of the radiation from the sun will contribute to greater, rather than less uncertainty compared to the situation we have today, we will no longer be able to place part of the responsibility for an undesirable climate, for climate-related disasters and bad weather on a variable and unpredictable nature. Humans will have taken on the responsibility of managing this part of nature, and in practice, the distinction between society and nature as far as the climate is concerned will be more or less blurred. Then, it is no longer enough to place the blame on a human-influenced climate, for which everyone must take joint responsibility. One of the questions that then arises is who is responsible for regulating the global thermostat. The Oxford principle, which I referred to earlier, assumed that an extensive global climate engineering programme can only be launched based on solid knowledge of the consequences, and an extensive democratic process in which all countries come to an agreement on the programme. In that case, we can remain calm. There is at least as little reason to believe that an international community, which cannot reach an agreement to reduce climate emissions, should reach an agreement on a global programme to cool the planet. The danger with such a programme is, as already pointed out, that it can be initiated by a few actors.75 What will happen when the negative effects of the programme begin to show? Even the supporters of such a programme admit that the effects will be different for different parts of the globe. Some will benefit from the programme; others will experience new problems.76 What do the countries in Asia do if the monsoon turns out to fail, with the risk of failed crops, social upheaval and subsequent political crises? They would in any case have an address for the problems they are experiencing, and we can only speculate on the international crises that could follow in the wake of such a development. Many warn that current climate developments can lead to extensive global conflicts and war.77 This is a disputed hypothesis.78 My cautious claim is that the danger of international conflicts and war due to active geoengineering is at least as great as the danger of today’s global warming leading the world into new wars. It may also be worth noting that the idea that it is possible to influence the climate as a strategic weapon in international conflicts is older than today’s discussion of climate engineering as a measure against global warming. In the 1960s and 1970s, this was a central theme in the Cold War.79 James Fleming, for example, quotes the American admiral, Luis De Florez from 1961: “With control of the weather, the operations and economy of an enemy could be disrupted. [Such control] in a cold war would provide a powerful and subtle weapon to injure agricultural production, hinder commerce and slow down industry”.80 It may also be appropriate to recall the conclusion of von Neumann’s article from 1955: Present awful possibilities of nuclear warfare may give way to others even more awful. After global climate control becomes possible, perhaps all our present involvements will seem simple. We should not deceive ourselves: Once such possibilities become actual, they will be exploited.81

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It is still not necessary to consider major global conflict scenarios to imagine how an anthropogenically controlled climate will lay the foundation for new global conflicts. The climate, as we discuss it today, can be understood along two dimensions: the natural scientific and the social/cultural.82 In the first, climate is an objective condition given by nature. Fair enough, today, it is also under human influence, but it is nevertheless something objectively existing. It is this climate that climate science and meteorologists describe. In the second sense, climate is part of our culture and identity. Here, climate is something to which we attach values and preferences.83 The climate can be good or bad, depending on what preferences we have. For some, winters with snow and skiing are part of their identity. “Waking up to lots of snow is one of the most beautiful things in life”, wrote the former Norwegian cross-country skiers Gudmund Skjeldal and Vegard Ulvang at the opening of the “White winter” campaign in 2007. The day we, as humans, take responsibility for regulating the global temperature, it is the social-cultural understanding of climate, which becomes the all-dominant one. Not everyone is happy with long and cold winters. The summer climate that is “good” for farmers, is not necessarily seen as good for urban dwellers or holidaymakers. The climate, and how it is to be influenced and regulated, will become national and international politics in an even more dramatic way than is the case today. As Plan B produces unwanted consequences in various parts of the world, there will be discussions about how the thermostat should be adjusted. There will be a Plan C and a Plan D (most likely unilateral) as part of an endless and unstoppable process, where there is no return ticket back to what the world is struggling with today, namely Plan A which is, in one way or another, to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and to adapt as best we can to a different and more changeable climate.84 Today’s discussion about the need to get started with Plan B takes for granted that the goal is to regulate the temperature within two degrees—and preferably the 1.5° target, or ideally to regulate it back to pre-industrial level. Without much discussion, it is taken for granted that this is the “state of nature”. This is the “good climate”, as the debate goes today. But if climate becomes something that one believes can be regulated according to desire and need, it is not certain that everyone will agree that a pre-industrial climate will be the best. Areas of the world where the “natural” climate has produced drought and marginal conditions for survival may wish for a wetter and more temperate climate. Cold and rainy areas will easily wish for a warmer and drier climate. The possibilities for realizing such projects will, with constantly more developed climate engineering technology, become a question of power and resources rather than what is technologically possible. The result may be that global actors from their various positions, following strategic assessments and perceptions of what constitutes a “good climate”, set in motion uncoordinated climate fixing measures to influence the climate to their advantage.85 For example, scientific studies have been carried out on how the climate in the Arctic can be manipulated to rebuild the shrinking sea ice. But it is not at all certain that such a project would go down as well with those who see new opportunities in more ice-free northern areas.86 The more knowledge climate science manages to build up about the regional effects of global climate engineering measures, the greater will be the

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political pressure to influence the global thermostat and the more uncertain becomes the world. The well-known British nature journalist David Attenborough is said to have called the idea of geoengineering “fascist”. By that he meant to show that this is a programme that can only be carried out on completely anti-democratic terms.87 Then again, one can object that the control of a possible “climate thermostat” lies in a future that we cannot predict. It is not certain that our scepticism will turn out to be well founded. Perhaps the world will arrive at a global arrangement to regulate and control the global thermostat. Here, just as little as in other areas of society, can we predict with certainty how the future will turn out. But that is not the point. The point here is that we should not plan to increase the risk that future generations will end up in the type of future scenario that I have outlined. The risk of this is real! Those who most eagerly see global geoengineering as the last chance to “save the planet” have as their main argument that this can be carried out as a scientific project, without everyone having to agree. In that case, this will require a global authoritarian superpower and/or a financial “super financier” guided by climate science. Is there any reason to believe that climate science would agree on what is the right measure and correct dosage to manage the climate on a global level? In other words, the question is not whether this is the correct description of future society, the question is whether we want to subject the world to such an experiment. Should we turn the earth and mankind into a single global experimental laboratory, where we set in motion a gigantic test project with no return options and with an unknown outcome? The only thing we can be quite sure of is that such a 1:1 experiment will turn out to offer surprises and effects that no one had calculated or foreseen.88 If we take the chance, and this experiment collapses, then the damage to nature and society will most likely be far greater and more extensive than those we are facing when it comes to today’s global warming.89 Moreover, this is not only a question of the extent to which today’s scientists and politicians can control such an experiment. We must also be confident that future generations can handle the experiment we have started. In Chap. 1, I briefly discussed the precautionary principle applied to the climate problem and concluded that the use of this principle is problematic. Should we be wary of the possible consequences of climate change, or of the consequences of measures against climate change? When it comes to climate engineering, I would argue that we should primarily use the precautionary principle to warn against the dangers that such a project can entail. Those who argue most strongly for implementing a sun shading programme, claim that this must only be seen as a crisis measure that will not get in the way of the most important thing, namely reducing the emission of greenhouse gases. The programme must be started gradually and as the world gains control of the release of greenhouse gases, the programme can then gradually be scaled back, they claim.90 I am afraid this will turn out to be quite naive. It is at least as likely that the programme will have the opposite effect, and act as a sleeping pillow for politicians who cannot find solutions to the emissions problem, neither nationally nor internationally. What about those parts of the world where the programme produces a “better climate”? What kind of incentive do they have to take part in reducing the programme? Those who, on the

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other hand, find themselves in a more unfortunate situation, will just as likely resort to “counter-climate engineering”.91 Until now, global climate policy has been about getting support for joint measures to reduce climate emissions. In the future, climate policy may revolve around how the world can prevent individual actors with different interests from initiating unilateral measures to regulate the global temperature in attempts to shape the climate to their own advantage. We are not in a position to “play God” with the climate. We are (fortunately) not “the God species”, as the author Mark Lynas will have us believe.92 Geoengineering, as the most ardent advocates see it, is a form of hubris that sensible researchers and politicians should reject. A far more important task, than more technological research on the methods and effects of geoforming, would be to reach a global agreement not to stimulate such research, and rather get a largescale global effort on research and technology development in place to restructure the global energy system. This leads us on to Part III and the next two chapters, where we will look at how lessons from today’s climate policy failure can point towards alternative, but more democratically based, approaches to dealing with the climate threat.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Shayegh (2019, s. 1). Baskin (2019, s. 180). Bellamy (n.d.). Keith (2013, s. ix). Moreno-Cruz and Keith (2012, 432). Or more formally correct: Sweden’s Riksbank’s prize in economic science in memory of Alfred Nobel. Schelling (1996). See: Rayner (2010) and Zürn and Schäfer (2013). Stilgoe (2016). See for example: Lewis and Maslin (2018). See for example Ellis (2012) and Ruddiman (2008). Lewis and Maslin (2018, 180ff). See fact sheet from Bjerknesenteret: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-bd&q= skog+og+CO2&channel=crow2. See also Norton et al. (2019). Hawken (2018). For an overview of land-based strategies to store and/or remove CO2 , see Smith et al. (2019). Among these is the profiled climate activist James Hansen, who believes that the climate crisis is now so imminent and dramatic that we have no other choice but to resort to geoengineering to cool the planet (Hansen, 2013). Another active supporter of geoforming, and who has also invested heavily in research in the field, is Bill Gates. See Gates (2021). Keith (2013). See the centre’s website: https://geoengineering.environment.harvard.edu/home. For a quick overview of more or less science fiction-themed speculations about techniques for manipulating the atmosphere, see Fleming (2007, s. 48). http://www.spice.ac.uk/about-us/aims-and-background/. Baskin (2019, s. 34f.). Weart (n.d.).

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23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

Neumann (1955). Ibid. p. 512. Ibid. p. 513. Baskin (2019, s. 38). Ibid. p. 43. Fleming (2007). For a discussion of why climate fixing did not win out as a climate strategy after the Rio meeting and as part of the Kyoto Agreement, see Baskin (2019). Crutzen (2006). Ibid p. 112. Ibid. Keith (2013) and Rasch et al. (2008). Hamilton (2013b), Hulme (2014), Pielke (2010), and Rasch et al. (2008). Keith (2013, s. 47). Ricke et al. (2010). Hamilton (2013b, s. 62). National Research Council (US) (2015a, p. 56). Ricke et al. (2010). Watts (2020). Tilmes et al. (2008). Rasch et al. (2008, p. 37). Hamilton (2013b, s. 60). Crutzen (2006) from a dozen registered scientific articles on geofixing in the Web of Science database at the beginning of the 2000s, the number jumped to approximately 150 five years after Krutzen’s article (Stilgoe, 2016, p. 91). Pearce (2019). Fialka et al. (2020). Clifford (n.d.). Keith (2013, p. 7–8). Victor and Kennel 2014). Hulme (2017, p. 139). See a closer discussion of this in Chap. 1. Hulme (2014, p. 48f.). Rasch et al. (2008, 38). Crutzen (2006). Rasch et al. (2008). Hulme (2014), National Research Council (US) (2015a, 59f.) and Pielke (2010). Smolker and Almuth (2015). Pierrehumbert (2015). Trisos et al. (2018). Keith (2013, pp. 14–15). Naustdalslid (2011). Storch et al. (2011). Schelling (1996). Trisos et al. (2018). Gates (2021, p. 176ff). Rayner et al. (2013). Rayner and Malone (1998, 114). Rayner et al. (2013) and Royal Society (Great Britain) (2009). Keith et al. (2010). Hulme (2014) and Pierrehumbert (2015). Then I disregard conspiracy theories promoted by Extinction Rebellion and others who claim that the climate problem is the result of a deliberate policy to destroy nature for the benefit of capital.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

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72. Stern (2009, p. 11). 73. Beck (2002, 2005). 74. And according to the author Mark Lynas, that is where people are today. We are “The God species” (Lynas, 2011). 75. National Research Council (US) (2015a). 76. Keith (2013, p. 8). 77. Welzer (2017). 78. Gleditsch (2012), Gleditsch and Nordås (2014) and Hulme (2010a, 2010b). 79. Baskin (2019, p. 34–43). 80. Fleming (2007, p. 55). 81. Neumann (1955, p. 519). 82. Hulme (2009, pp. 5–17). 83. Adger et al. (2013) and Hulme (2015). 84. For one game-theoretic analysis of how different preferences for what is “the best climate” can lead to “geoengineering” and “counter-geoengineering”, see Heyen et al. (2019). They conclude that “… the outcome depends crucially on the degree of asymmetry in temperature preferences between countries”. 85. Heyen et al. (2019) and National Research Council (US) (2015a). 86. Baskin (2019, p. 217). 87. Referenced by Stilgoe (2016, p. 3). 88. Tenner (1996). 89. Trisos et al. (2018). 90. Keith (2013). 91. Heyen et al. (2019). 92. Lynas (2011).

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Gates, B. (2021). How to avoid a climate disaster: The solutions we have and the breakthroughs we need. Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books. Gleditsch, N. P., & Nordås, R. (2014). Conflicting messages? The IPCC on conflict and human security. Political Geography, 43, 82–90+. Gleditsch, N. P. (2012). Whither the weather? Climate change and conflict. Journal of Peace Research, 49(1), 3–9. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343311431288 Hamilton, C. (2013b). Earthmasters: The dawn of the age of climate engineering. Yale University Press. Hansen, J. (2013). James Hansen: Taking heat for decades. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 69(4), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1177/0096340213493256 Hawken, P. (Red.). (2018). Drawdown: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming. Heyen, D., Horton, J., & Moreno-Cruz, J. (2019). Strategic implications of counter-geoengineering: Clash or cooperation? Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 95, 153–177. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2019.03.005 Hulme, M. (2010a). Cosmopolitan climates hybridity, foresight and meaning. Theory Culture and Society, 27, 267–276. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409358730 Hulme, M. (Red.). (2010b). Making climate change work for us: European perspectives on adaptation and mitigation strategies. Cambridge University Press. Hulme, M. (2014). Can science fix climate change? A case against climate engineering. Polity. Hulme, M. (2015). Climate and its changes: A cultural appraisal. Geo: Geography and Environment, 2(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1002/geo2.5 Hulme, M. (2017). Weathered: Cultures of climate. SAGE Publications Ltd. Hulme, M. (2009). Why we disagree about climate change. Cambridge University Press. Keith, D. W. (2013). A case for climate engineering. The MIT Press. Keith, D. W., Parson, E., & Morgan, M. G. (2010). Research on global sun block needed now. Nature, 463(7280), 426–427. https://doi.org/10.1038/463426a Lewis, S. L., & Maslin, M. (2018). The human planet: How we created the anthropocene: a pelican book. Pelican an imprint of Penguin Books. Lynas, M. (2011). The god species: Saving the planet in the age of humans. National Geographic. Moreno-Cruz, J. B., & Keith, D. W. (2012). Climate policy under uncertainty: A case for solar geoengineering. Climatic Change, 121(3), 431–444. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-0120487-4 National Research Council. (U.S.). (Red.). (2015a). Climate intervention: Reflecting sunlight to cool Earth. The National Academy Press. Naustdalslid, J. (2011). Climate change—The challenge of translating scientific knowledge into action. International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, 18, 243–252. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2011.572303 Neumann, J. von. (1955). Can we survive technology? I John von Neumann Collected Works (reprint): Bd. VI (ss. 504–519). Norton, M., Baldi, A., Buda, V., Carli, B., Cudlin, P., Jones, M. B., Korhola, A., Michalski, R., Novo, F., Oszlányi, J., Santos, F. D., Schink, B., Shepherd, J., Vet, L., Walloe, L., & Wijkman, A. (2019). Serious mismatches continue between science and policy in forest bioenergy. GCB Bioenergy, 11(11), 1256–1263. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcbb.12643 Pearce, F. (2019). Geoengineer the planet? More scientists now say it must be an option. Yale E360. https://e360.yale.edu/features/geoengineer-the-planet-more-scientists-now-say-itmust-be-an-option Pielke, R. A. (2010). The climate fix what scientists and politicians won’t tell you about global warming. Basic Books. http://public.eblib.com/EBLPublic/PublicView.do?ptiID=584892 Pierrehumbert, R. T. (2015). Climate hacking is dangerous and barking mad. http://www.slate. com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/02/nrc_geoengineering_report_climate_hack ing_is_dangerous_and_barking_mad.2.html

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Rasch, P. J., Tilmes, S., Turco, R. P., Robock, A., Oman, L., Chen, C.-C., Stenchikov, G. L., & Garcia, R. R. (2008). An overview of geoengineering of climate using stratospheric sulphate aerosols. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/366/1882/4007 Rayner, S., & Malone, E. L. (Red.). (1998). Human choice and climate change. Battelle Press. Rayner, S. (2010). How to eat an elephant: A bottom-up approach to climate policy. Climate Policy, 10, 615–621. Rayner, S., Heyward, C., Kruger, T., Pidgeon, N., Redgwell, C., & Savulescu, J. (2013). The Oxford principles. Climatic Change, 121(3), 499–512. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-012-0675-2 Ricke, K. L., Morgan, M. G., & Allen, M. R. (2010). Regional climate response to solar-radiation management. Nature Geoscience, 3(8), 537–541. https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo915 Royal Society (Great Britain). (2009). Geoengineering the climate science, governance and uncertainty. Royal Society. http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/pub lications/2009/8693.pdf Ruddiman, W. F. (2008). Earth’s climate: Past and future (2nd ed.). Freeman. Schelling, T. C. (1996). The economic diplomacy of geoengineering. Climatic Change, 33, 303–307. Shayegh, S. (2019, desember 10). Geoengineering is no climate fix. But calling it a moral hazard could be counterproductive. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. https://thebulletin.org/2019/12/ geoengineering-is-no-climate-fix-but-calling-it-a-moral-hazard-could-be-counterproductive/ Smith, P., Adams, J., Beerling, D. J., Beringer, T., Calvin, K. V., Fuss, S., Griscom, B., Hagemann, N., Kammann, C., Kraxner, F., Minx, J. C., Popp, A., Renforth, P., Vicente Vicente, J. L., & Keesstra, S. (2019). Land-management options for greenhouse gas removal and their impacts on ecosystem services and the sustainable development goals. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 44(1), 255–286. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-101718-033129 Smolker, R., & Almuth, E. (2015). Should we experiment with climate geoengineering? Truthout. http://truth-out.org/news/item/29247-should-we-experiment-with-climate-geoengineering Stern, N. (2009). A blueprint for a safer planet. The Bodley Head. Stilgoe, J. (2016). Experiment earth: Responsible innovation in geoengineering. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, Earthscan from Routledge. Storch, H. von, von Storch, H., Bunde, A., & Stehr, N. (2011). The physical sciences and climate politics. Oxford Handbooks Online. https://www.academia.edu/1496341/The_Physical_Sciences_ and_Climate_Politics Tenner, E. (1996). Why things bite back: Technology and the revenge of unintended consequences. New York: Knopf Tilmes, S., Muller, R., & Salawitch, R. (2008). The sensitivity of polar ozone depletion to proposed geoengineering schemes. Science, 320(5880), 1201–1204. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.115 3966 Trisos, C. H., Amatulli, G., Gurevitch, J., Robock, A., Xia, L., & Zambri, B. (2018). Potentially dangerous consequences for biodiversity of solar geoengineering implementation and termination. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 2(3), 475–482. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-0170431-0 Victor, D. G., & Kennel, C. F. (2014). Climate policy: Ditch the 2 °C warming goal. Nature, 514(7520), 30–31. https://doi.org/10.1038/514030a Watts, J. (2020, December 3). China plans rapid expansion of “weather modification” efforts. The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/03/china-vows-to-boost-weathermodification-capabilities Welzer, H. (2017). Climate wars: Why people will be killed in the twenty-first century (P. Camiller, Oms.). Polity. Weart, S. R. (n.d.). Climate modification schemes. Retrieved 5, March 2020, from https://history. aip.org/climate/RainMake.htm Zürn, M., & Schäfer, S. (2013). The paradox of climate engineering. Global Policy, 4(3), 266–277.

Part III

Democratic Alternatives

Chapter 7

An Unruly Problem

For 30 years, the international community has mobilized to stop global warming. In the same period, as we have seen, emissions have continued to grow. Nevertheless, the world’s politicians have not asked themselves the question that should have been obvious: Could there be something wrong with the global climate strategy? On the contrary, they have stuck to the climate strategy that took its basic form with the Kyoto agreement in 1997: a global system with allocation of quotas for how much CO2 the individual country can be allowed to emit. In the official climate policy, the problem is perceived as reinforcing the current strategy, increasing ambitions and mobilizing for the use of stronger and more intrusive measures. Lack of results has, on the other hand, led to frustration among climate and environmental activists. It has created mistrust in democracy, derailment of a rational climate debate and the popping up of more or less utopian ideas about total regime change, eco-dictatorship or a return to pre-industrial forms of society. The failure of international climate policy is thus not only a threat to the possibilities of getting control of global warming. In the three previous chapters, I have discussed how this failure also represents a threefold threat to a democratically based climate policy, (i) by stimulating anti-democratic “solutions” to the climate problem, (ii) by the fact that reactions against many of the climate measures also contribute to undermining democracy and (iii) by increasing the danger that individual actors in panic set in motion experiments with manipulation of the climate without political governance and control. In this chapter, I will continue a debate that was started in Chap. 2 and look critically at today’s overall climate strategy. As I explained in Chap. 2, the key element in the global climate strategy is what may be called the Kyoto track. The international community has attacked the climate problem largely as an emissions problem, following the pattern of traditional pollution problems. It has been decided that it is possible to put in place—and to enforce—a global agreement that obliges the individual countries to reduce their emissions. The very fundamental question is why it has been so difficult—if not impossible—to achieve this.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Naustdalslid, The Climate Threat. Crisis for Democracy?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34471-8_7

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It would still be wrong to claim that the world’s efforts to reduce emissions have not led to any results. Development of solar energy is taking place on a grand scale. There is rapid growth in the development of wind energy, and we have probably only seen the beginning of the development of offshore wind power. Targeted work is being done on the development of hydrogen-based energy, while other emissionfree forms of energy such as wave power, geothermal energy and nuclear energy are for various reasons less prominent in the ongoing debate. In spite of the rapid increase in renewable energy, emission-free energy only made up around 17% of the world’s total energy consumption in 2021.1 The demand for, and the use of, energy is growing faster than the supply of new emission-free energy.2 In July 2021, IEA’s director, Fatih Birol, wrote that although the supply of renewable energy was expected to increase by eight percent in 2021 and more than six percent in 2022, this will only be enough to meet half of the world’s increased need for electrical energy. The rest will have to be covered by electricity from fossil energy sources, primarily coal.3 The global climate policy has failed on its own terms. Emissions do not decrease but continue to grow year by year despite all national and global objectives to the contrary. When energy consumption in 2020 was on the way down, it was not as a response to climate policies, but caused by the corona crisis that hit the world economy like a lightning strike in the winter and spring of 2020. Whether the energy mix will change when the world economy gradually recovers is highly unclear. We also see, as was described in Chap. 5, how opposition to several climate measures is growing. Hence, there is reason to seek a better understanding of the political mechanisms that make certain measures work and others not. Such a critical discussion can point towards climate measures and strategies with a chance to work better, and which, instead of threatening and undermining democracy, can stimulate a more democratic approach to climate action. An important starting point for such a critical discussion is to accept that the climate problem is a compound and complex problem, linked to competing and often conflicting interests in society. It is a typical “wicked” problem.4 Such problems may also be called “unruly” problems. Part of the problem with current climate policy and much of climate activism is that the climate problem is forced into a simple framework with simple solutions. It is not a simple problem, and there are no easy solutions.

The Crisis Strategy One of the measures that has not worked is to declare climate crisis. Presenting the climate problem as a crisis has been an important part of the strategy to convince people and politicians to take the problem seriously. It is urgent! The claim that “we only have 12 years left” (and eventually only ten and eight) is constantly repeated, as if it were a scientific truth.5 According to Extinction Rebellion, we only had four years left in 2021. The world must achieve zero emissions by 2025. The climate

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problem is often referred to as the biggest problem facing the world today, and it is portrayed as if it is the survival of civilization that is at stake.6 The situation has been described as an emergency—almost like a war—which requires extraordinary measures. The activist movement Extinction Rebellion, which gathers both activists and researchers, appeals to citizens to rebel against governments that do not want to introduce climate emergency to stop global warming.7 Young people mobilize and appeal to the authorities locally and globally to panic and do the politically impossible. Governments respond to the description of the crisis and make formal decisions to declare “climate crisis”. This applies to municipalities and cities, county councils, countries and even the entire EU. But is it reasonable to refer to the climate problem as a crisis? The idea is that describing it as a crisis should have a mobilizing effect. It should make people understand the seriousness of the situation and be more willing to accept unpopular measures. Declaring a climate crisis can, on the other hand, just as well be perceived as a substitute for concrete action. Politicians are facing a problem that they basically don not know how to deal with. Then, declaring climate crisis may be an easy way to give the impression of action. Declaring a crisis becomes symbolic politics more than real action. Then, if people do not perceive the climate problem as an immediate crisis, it can work demobilizing as well as mobilizing. It is not the IPCC that says, “we only have 12 (or now soon only seven) years left”.8 The IPCC’s latest special report on the 1.5° target mentions crisis in the foreword as something that will manifest itself in the future if the international community does not get control of greenhouse gas emissions.9 The rest of the report does not mention the word crisis, and it does not describe the current situation as a crisis. This also applies to the latest, alarming report from 2021 (AR6). If you search for “climate crisis” in the nearly 4,000-page long report, you will get a hit on page 35. Here the report points to the fact that the media have increasingly adopted crisis and disaster terminology in the discussion of the climate problem. The number of such dramatic characteristics had increased 20-fold in 2019, says the report. It goes on to say that the media has had a major impact on how the IPCC’s message is actually received and perceived in society. And by pressing “search next” in the search field, the computer hacks through the almost 4,000 pages without a single new hit on “climate crisis”. In other words, it is not the IPCC that describes the climate challenge as a crisis. It is a media-created phenomenon. The reason why it is difficult to create an understanding that we are facing a climate crisis, may have to do with the fact that most people think of “crisis” as something immediate, which happens suddenly, and as something we are facing here and now.10 During the work on this book, the world was hit by the corona crisis. In this way, we experienced, in a literal sense, what a crisis actually is, and how democracy could quickly and effectively respond to a crisis. It is difficult to imagine more dramatic changes in public governance than those triggered by the corona pandemic. When the Norwegian government from one day to the next shut down all educational institutions, closed the national borders, imposed a ban on going to the cottage during the Easter holidays and so on, it was a dramatic intervention in the lives of almost every citizen. This caused the leader of the organization Nature

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and Youth to be “almost provoked”. It’s not that she did not care about those among us who are particularly vulnerable, she said, but that she could not avoid thinking “what if we had reacted like this to the climate crisis. […] Because it is possible […] when we just want to”.11 Columnist Owen Jones in The Guardian wrote that the climate crisis represents a far greater threat to society than the corona crisis. He wondered why society had not met this crisis with at least as much strength as the corona threat.12 So, let us imagine that the state had actually reacted in the same way to the climate crisis. Imagine if suddenly, overnight, a ban on going to the cottage was put in place to reduce car use and home schooling was introduced to reduce CO2 emissions, while the government issued an order to close down large parts of the business world in order to “save the climate”. This would have been an intervention that even the most crisis-maximizing climate activists would hardly accept, and there is no need for a research project to understand that this is not only a question of “political will”. In response to the corona crisis, the vast majority accepted these dramatic interventions in the spring of 2020. Why? Among other things, because they realized that the corona crisis was dramatic, and because it was perceived as short-term measures to get society “over the hump”. Although the intervention in people’s daily lives was a big burden for most people, in the end most people accepted to “endure” the intervention because the alternative with an unleashed coronavirus was perceived to be worse. In any case, that was the narrative presented by the authorities, and in which most people put their trust. This also shows an almost unreserved trust in the medical expertise, and not least in the political authorities. Admittedly, the intervention was political, but it is one of the clearest examples of knowledge-based governance that we can think of. There is probably reason to claim that an important explanation for the measures being accepted so widely was that they were perceived as fair. They affected all, rich and poor, high and low, although different groups here too had different abilities to tolerate the consequences. The corona crisis demonstrates how it is an important condition for political interventions to function that they have a minimum of acceptance among those affected. The corona crisis also shows that if the perception of the crisis is sufficiently dramatic, the authorities can get people to accept almost anything for a limited period of time. At the same time, we have seen that in countries where trust in the governing authorities is weaker, there has also been greater resistance to interventions and coercive measures. Another fundamental difference between the “climate crisis” and the corona crisis is that the crisis measures were expected to be short-term. Initially, it was a question of measures that would work for weeks, perhaps months, but with the aim of bringing society back to normal. This is how most people perceive crises, whether they are natural disasters or major accidents: Crisis measures are supposed to help us through a transition period and get society back to “normal”. The “climate crisis” is not a temporary ordeal. Climate measures of the type called for by the most far-reaching climate activists do not aim to get society “over the crisis”. They will change society itself dramatically. The climate problem is precisely not a short-term problem that society can overcome with crisis measures.

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Therefore, the crisis metaphor is probably counterproductive for a democratic and rational climate policy. Here, too, it may be an idea to learn from the corona crisis. Gradually, as it turned out that the “corona problem” did not go away quickly, the willingness to accept continued restrictions also decreased. At the end of August 2020, tens of thousands of “corona sceptics” demonstrated in Berlin against measures in Germany. In the USA, we could see how large crowds protested against the closure of society, as it turned out that the problem did not go away quickly, and in Australia violent conflicts between the police and demonstrators against restrictive corona measures were reported. Even the authoritarian government of China, which with its more or less total control was able to lock down parts of the country for a long time, had to give in to public pressure when it turned out that the crisis persisted. On 1 October 2021, the government lifted the corona restrictions in Norway. It sparked scenes of jubilation across the country. Can we envision similar jubilant scenes on the day the climate crisis is over, and the world can return to “business as usual”? No, we cannot, because to the extent that climate change is a crisis, it is a crisis that will not go away. The world cannot “solve” the climate problem. Even if the global temperature increases in 2050 were to remain within 1.5°, we have not “solved” the climate problem. We will just as fully live with a human-influenced climate that will be a continuous challenge and a political problem for the world community, as far as it is possible to look ahead. If we look back at the various “climate revolts” that we discussed in Chap. 5, we also see quite fundamental differences. Take, for example, the road toll protests. The establishment of toll rings around the largest cities is certainly a significant intervention in people’s free right to drive but compared to the intervention in connection with the corona crisis, it is too trivial to count. So why is there a “rebellion”? An obvious explanation is that this is a completely different form of crisis and a different understanding of crisis. Climate activists rightly try to visualize the climate crisis every time we are exposed to an extreme weather event. The list of incidents and accidents that someone can claim or suggest may be connected to the climate crisis— including the corona crisis13 is almost endless. To the extent that the climate problem is perceived as a crisis, it is still not a crisis that most people see as dramatically threatening today or during the first months. Moreover, in contrast to most traditional environmental problems, it is not visible to us. We do not need theoretical knowledge to react to air pollution or littering of seas and waterways. The climate crisis, on the other hand, is a “theoretical” crisis in the sense that we are dependent on climate science to “see” that we have a problem.14 The time perspective is 2050 and 2100, not today or next week. It is not primarily we who live today who are affected. Future generations are.15 The climate problem thus lacks what Shelly Ungar has called “a whirlwind effect”16 which sweeps over the country and the world and puts the horror in us here and now. Among other things, she refers to the difference between the climate problem and the ozone problem, where the latter was seen as a more immediate threat because we could all be affected by skin cancer, rich or poor. Former President Ronald Reagan’s skin cancer was, as an example, taken as visible evidence of the threat and helped trigger the “whirlwind effect”. When most people

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in Norway in the spring of 2020, accepted the ban on travel to their cabins, went into self-imposed quarantine without too loud protests, it was because they realized that there was a connection between the sacrifices they had to endure for a limited period of time and the chances of beating back the corona pandemic. It is precisely this connection between sacrifice and the solution to the problem that many people are more sceptical about when it comes to the climate. In other words, there is a fundamental difference between the corona crisis and the climate crisis, which is reflected in the willingness to accept dramatic interventions in people’s everyday lives. For example, the “collective action problem” does not apply in the same way in the case of the corona crisis.17 The sacrifices and inconveniences that the state imposes on us in various ways, with a more or less direct connection to the climate crisis, at best benefit ourselves through a safer climate for our children and grandchildren, but the connections are long and indirect and difficult to see. The argument is usually that we must sacrifice something to save the entire globe from a catastrophe, which may only become really serious in the next hundred years. Why should the campaigners against a wind farm in a mountain region in Norway sacrifice the scenery and the joy of untouched nature when they themselves gain nothing by it, and the “profit” will at best be a marginal benefit for the entire global system in a hundred-years perspective? Many of the wind park campaigners will probably also accept that the serious flooding which the same region experienced the year before, which also took human lives, is connected to climate change. But from there to accepting the development of wind power to reduce the use of fossil energy, there is a very long way to go. There may be more devastating floods in the near future as well, but they will come or not, completely regardless of whether the residents in the development area for wind power lose the joy of walking in the mountains without unsightly and whirring wind turbines overhead.

Why Is Climate Policy So Conflicted? In a democratic society, where politicians are accountable to the citizens, it is important that the policies achieve a minimum of legitimacy. This also applies not least to climate policy. Those who argue that democracy is unsuitable for dealing with the climate problem assume that it is necessary to introduce measures that the voters will not accept. Roughly speaking, we must be able to count on the fact that a climate policy that large groups experience as unfair, will contribute to undermining the legitimacy of climate policy, and the legitimacy of government policy more generally. In a world where democracy is under pressure, a climate policy that places extra burdens on people on the lowest rungs of the social ladder, while the wealthier in society get off cheaper, can easily serve to reinforce the lack of trust in the government and the political system towards which we today see strong tendencies.18 However, it is also true that in an open society, smaller groups that feel they have been unfairly affected by measures may mobilize in a way that can create the impression that the resistance is greater than it actually is. In any case it is reasonable to believe that high

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and articulated mobilization against what some perceive as unfair and unreasonable climate measures will make it easier to cast doubt on the seriousness of the climate problem. Nevertheless, we must remember that people do not only think and act selfishly. People change their climate behaviour voluntarily and accept most of the information that society is showered with. The Nobel Prize winner in economics19 Elinor Ostrom has thus pointed to several conditions that can contribute to people actually wanting to work together to solve various social dilemmas. This applies, for example, to information and enlightenment, interpersonal trust and leadership. More generally, one may interpret Ostrom so that an open and transparent society characterized by trust and good leadership will have a greater chance of handling the type of public problem of which the climate problem is an example, than will a more closed and authoritarian society.20 It is also reasonable to believe that a society characterized by trust and a low degree of polarization will have a greater tolerance for interventionist and conflict-filled measures. Therefore, polarizing climate activism also becomes problematic. It is particularly difficult to understand that serious climate scientists can join appeals from organizations such as Extinction Rebellion, which call for rebellion and will break the social contract.21 It is not just “fanatic idealists” who change their travel behaviour or install energysaving light bulbs in their homes, even if it costs extra. The growing sale of electric cars is a result of the tax policy and other benefits, but it is also an expression of conscious climate thinking. People sort waste quite voluntarily, and mobilization to reduce food waste is met with positive responses from organizations, businesses and households. However, in the larger context of the climate problem, this may still be only scratches on the surface. The Norwegian professor and writer Ottar Brox may therefore have a good point when he writes that voters “are often enthusiastic about general principles, but easily give their vote to the competitor if they are affected slightly negatively by a specific measure”.22 It is my contention that people will be more willing to take on climate policy “sacrifices” if climate policy is more generally perceived as fair, or if measures are seen as positive, also for the individual or for large groups in society. This does not mean that it will be possible to implement a climate policy that everyone agrees on, and which does not create conflicts. Nevertheless, l think that one should look for strategies with less potential for conflict. Let us therefore take a closer look at the conditions for conflict and/or support for political measures in democratic societies.

A Bit of Theory The social sciences are sometimes made “responsible” for the fact that it is so difficult to connect knowledge about the climate system to political action. Rarely do you find this more clearly and arrogantly formulated than in an article by a writer who formulated it like this in in the Norwegian online journal Pan:

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Today, we are in the fortunate situation that we know what the planet can sustain and can calculate what kind of goals people can expect. The utopia lies with the social sciences. They must help us to offer people these reforms in a tasteful way. Don’t dismiss them as fundamentalism and utopia just because the math comes at natural science level.23

If the result is not as expected, the reactions are usually that the measures have not been strong enough or that people are not well informed.24 Lack of results is often explained by people being selfish, not thinking about future generations, or as James Lovelock put it, that people are too stupid to understand their own good.25 It should therefore be the task of the social sciences to “offer people […] the reforms in a tasteful way” so that what is necessary is accepted by people. The social sciences can contribute to this only to a small extent. What social science can contribute to, on the other hand, is better insight into the conditions under which different forms of measures can gain support while others more easily create conflict and opposition. The American political scientist Theodor Lowi is best known for a simple formulation: “Policies determine politics”.26 This is a claim that the characteristics of a policy area (i.e., policies), what type of problem we are dealing with, affect how the political game (i.e., politics) around this policy area will be. In a climate context, this means that the way the climate problem is formulated as a policy problem will shape the political game surrounding climate policy. The basic idea in Lowi’s theoretical framework is, as the Norwegian political scientist Inger Stigen has pointed out, “to shed light on how different characteristics of subject areas affect attention, participant patterns and interest mobilization around an issue”.27 Lowi distinguishes between public policy as distribution, regulation and redistribution and is concerned with how different types of interventions in society facilitate different degrees of, and different types of, coercion or public interventions.28 He illustrated this with how Roosevelt’s “New Deal programme” shaped an active and intervening American state in the 1930s, and how this in turn also affected the conditions for politics.29 We are not to embark on a comprehensive discussion of Lowi’s theoretical scheme, but it may be interesting to illustrate the difference between a distributive policy and redistributive policy. I will take Norway as an example, but the description may be equally relevant for most welfare states in the post-World War Two period. Norwegian politics in this period has been characterized by an active and intervening state, but a state that has primarily pursued distributive policies. The development has been characterized by more or less continuous economic growth, and the state’s intervening role has mostly been to distribute this growth. Most people have benefited to varying degrees from arrangements such as health services, development of the education system and social arrangements of various kinds. Such a policy is easy to legitimize. It requires little use of force and coercion. Redistributive policies, where what one group benefits at the cost of another group, will, on the other hand, facilitate far more conflict and strife. Much of society’s welfare policy is basically also a policy of redistribution, in that it is based, among other things, on progressive taxation, but this redistribution is in a way camouflaged and largely hidden by the fact that the redistribution policy simultaneously benefits everyone. It has also been beneficial that it has so far operated in a time of almost continuous economic growth. The redistributive aspect of policies has gradually diminished in recent years, among

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Table 7.1 Wilson’s classification of public policy.30

Costs of political measure Benefit from measure

Concentrated

Spread out

Concentrated

A

B

Spread out

C

D

other things through reduced property tax, the removal of inheritance tax, a stronger focus on flat taxes and user payments rather than progressive taxation. Reducing redistribution leads to increasing economic gaps in society, which may lead to more conflict in the future. We saw, for example, in Chap. 5 how “flat” environmentally oriented taxes loose legitimacy because they are socially unjust, and thus contribute to increasing economic inequality. Lowi’s basic idea has been commented on and further developed, among others by James Q. Wilson, who has created a simple classification of political tools according to how costs and benefits of different policy measures are distributed (Table 7.1). Here we see four categories of political tools—or forms of public policy—classified according to whether the costs of the measures are concentrated on (relatively) few or spread over many, and whether few or many benefit from the measures. In category A we find cases where one or a few actors are regulated in a way that a concentrated group of others benefit from. In route B we find regulations or interventions where many share the costs of measures that benefit a few. An interesting example can be found in climate policy. The scheme with green certificates makes electricity more expensive for customers throughout the country. In practice, that means all of us. The advantage—or “gain”—accrues primarily to power producers in the form of subsidies, which makes it possible to profit from the development of renewable energy. Today, this also applies to large global financial actors, who have seen investment opportunities in the development of Norwegian wind power. Electricity customers are scattered and disorganized and find it difficult to mobilize opposition to this. One may also claim that the tax scheme, which removes taxes and duties on expensive electric cars, falls in the same category. It is a limited part of the population—and the more well to do—who can buy such cars, while the “costs”, in the form of reduced tax income, are distributed to everyone due to the fact that the scheme is in practice financed from the tax base. If the state had introduced a dramatic increase in property tax for those with expensive houses and properties or a sharp increase in taxation of the very highest incomes, and in this way financed welfare schemes that benefited low-income people, we would have a clear example on regulations that fell into box C in the table. This is an example of what Lowi calls redistribution politics. Here we find many typical environmental problems, and many typical social dilemmas. Many such problems are such that what seems rational to individual actors becomes irrational to the collective. If I take on a cost or inconvenience, my sacrifice will benefit the entire collective, but I would benefit only as one in the collective group. Therefore, in isolation, it would be rational for me not to contribute. But if everyone thinks in the same way, the result is that nobody acts, and

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everyone loses. It is often argued that to avoid this dilemma, an overarching, intervening government with the ability to get everyone to contribute their part is needed.31 Nevertheless, such overall governance also requires at least a certain minimum of social solidarity and community.32 Public policy that falls into this box often arouses protests because individual and organized interests see themselves best served by not contributing. Finally, we have route D in the table, where both costs and benefits are spread over many people. This can perhaps be illustrated with the public pension system. We all (or the vast majority) contribute, and we all benefit from it (assuming we live long enough). It is in this box that we find much of the logic of the welfare society in a time of economic growth and progress, and where much of the public policy aims at distributing this growth to the entire of society.

The Theory and Climate Policy—With Wind Power as an Example A general problem with many climate measures is that they fit best into box C in the table above. They involve concentrated costs and dispersed benefits. There is a special reason for this, and it can best be illustrated by going back to the conflicts surrounding the development of wind power. In the discussion above, we placed the green certificates and the subsidized development of renewable energy in square B in the four-fold table (“concentrated benefits and dispersed costs”). It is the large group of electricity customers who pay for the development through a marginally increased electricity price, but the development itself—with the large-scale construction of 200-m-high wind turbines in the mountains and along the coast in Norwegian municipalities—also actualizes another conflict. This is placed in square C in the table—concentrated disadvantages and (very) scattered gains. In other words, we get a situation where the two asymmetric mechanisms in the table work at the same time. The licencing rules for wind power development projects have been such that the local communities receive little in return, while the profit and the subsidies go to various Norwegian and international investors. The wind power development also mobilizes many “ordinary people”, who are told that the developments lead to higher energy prices. Wind power development also has another dimension. The historical development of Norwegian hydropower was part of the industrialisation and the development of the modern welfare society, especially after the World War Two. Wind power development has a different rationale. Today’s Norway is well supplied by hydropower. Wind power development is primarily climate policy. The world needs more electric energy for the green transition. The fact that Norway—a country which today covers over 90% of its electricity consumption with renewable hydropower—subsidizes the development of wind power is not primarily based on Norway’s need for more power, but on the fact that Europe needs more renewable energy, to replace

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coal. Then the development of Norwegian wind power becomes a Norwegian contribution to a global policy enabling citizens, also in other countries, to switch their energy use to renewable energy and in that way realize a “gain”—a “good”—for the entire global community. We are back to the collective action dilemma. If Norwegian authorities pursue a policy that makes its relatively cheap hydropower more expensive, and in addition “sacrifices” part of the country’s more or less untouched nature, then Norwegians will benefit from this only as “world citizens”. The benefits from the higher price that Norwegians will have to pay for electricity will be spread, if not to the entire world, then in any case to the whole of Europe. We are dealing with an extreme example of the following simple mechanism: “The larger the group that is covered by the good, the weaker is the encouragement for the individual to actively promote the measure”.33 Moreover, this is a measure that will primarily serve future generations. Collective action problems can, as the philosopher Jon Elster writes, also involve people living at different times.34 In other words: Much of the global climate policy assumes that there is an international global solidarity, which also includes future generations. Much of the argument about the development of Norwegian wind power and the building of an energy community in Europe indicates that we are far from such global and cross-generational solidarity. On the contrary, parts of the climate policy, and the development of wind power is a particularly illustrative example, give life to clear nationalist forces in the Norwegian society. We find this Norway-protect-yourselfattitude most clearly formulated on the far right and far left, supported by the Centre Party, and with deep roots in both the Socialist Left Party and the Labour Party. In this argumentation, it is more or less overlooked that even though Norway is today well covered with electricity from hydropower, the climate change and a green shift will require significantly increased access to electrical energy, also in Norway. A report from the consulting company Oslo Economics has thus calculated that in a future emission-free Norway, the annual electricity consumption will increase by between 50 and 80 TWh from the current level of approximately 135 TWh.35 All transport on land and at sea must switch from carbon-based to renewable energy. We are given the prospect that, in any case, parts of aviation may switch to electric operation within a period of ten years. A decision has been made that the oil and gas operations on the Norwegian continental shelf shall be electrified. A further investment in carbon capture and storage will require more energy, which should be emission-free. Hydrogen has been put forward as part of the solution towards an emission-free Norway. But the production of hydrogen is very energy-intensive, and the state authority responsible for the grid (Statnett) has calculated that large-scale investment in hydrogen will require 40 TWh annually in the form of emission-free electricity.36 Although there may be a good deal to be gained from upgrading and making existing hydropower more efficient, today the development of land-based wind power is one of the alternatives that provides the fastest growth in access to electricity. In other words, there is no doubt that if the climate problem is taken seriously, more energy will be required. The development of land-based wind power is one of the tools that can contribute most rapidly to increasing Norway’s and Europe’s

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access to renewable energy. Norway also has particularly good conditions for the development of wind-based energy. This applies both on land and at sea. On the other hand, it is not difficult to understand the massive resistance. In their eagerness to attract investors and speed up development, the political authorities have made development attractive to developers. While the traditional Norwegian renewable energy source, hydropower, is subject to strict licencing conditions and ground rent requirements, the development of wind power has been subsidized in a way that sends the bill to electricity customers. In contrast to the case with hydropower, the local community, the municipalities, get little or nothing in return. The landowners are left with a profit, but in most cases, that will only be a few people in the municipalities in question and can thus rather serve to facilitate local conflicts and increase resistance, as the vast majority of the inhabitants only experience disadvantages.37 In addition, another factor comes into play: massive development of wind power is primarily important from a European perspective. Part of the rationale for developing large amounts of Norwegian wind power is that it can replace European coal power, and that it can enter a common European power market. This will apply to an even greater extent for large-scale development of offshore wind power. When the wind is calm in Scotland or on the continent, there may be gale winds on the Norwegian coast—or vice versa. With the development of wind power, the storable hydropower can also be used to a greater extent when the wind turbines are idle. All this requires the development of power cables between Norway and the continent. This is expensive, and the fear is that it will also contribute to increasing electricity prices in Norway.38 Most people agree that the climate problem is global and requires action across national borders. Nevertheless, the wind power debate, together with the debate about integration in the European power market, is bringing to life clear isolationist attitudes both on the right and on the left in Norwegian politics. In addition to all this comes the nature conservation argument. Wind power degrades and “industrializes” Norwegian nature through extensive road development and largescale installations along the coast and in the mountains. It is also indisputable that the wind turbines are harmful to bird life, even if there is a dispute as to how big the damage is.39

About Theory and Practice Virtually all the popular revolts against public regulations that we discussed in Chap. 5 are based on the same basic logic: Most people accept that the world has a climate problem, and that emissions must decrease. But when it comes to practice and concrete measures directly affecting people and the local area, the measures are met with loud protests. If we look at the specific measures outlined in the Norwegian government’s Climate Cure 2030, it is not difficult to imagine how some of them will hit both individuals and groups hard. One relevant example may be the proposal to reduce the consumption of red meat. The proposal entered directly into the Norwegian centre-periphery debate and

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was quickly linked to other developments weakening the periphery. The proposal is calculated to lead to around 5,000 fewer man-years in agriculture and a 10% reduction in agricultural land. Agriculture is a well-organized industry, and the agricultural organizations also strongly objected. They branded the proposal unrealistic and pointed out that a transition to more plant production would have very different effects in different parts of the country. The objections to the proposal echoed far into the government. The minister for agriculture emphasized that she did not want to change Norwegian agriculture in such a way that we will have less use for Norwegian farmers. “We want to focus on what agriculture can do to reduce climate emissions. Then we need every farmer and what they can do…”40 She also pointed out that Norway aims at producing 50–70% more food by 2050. In other words, we are again reminded of the climate problem as a “wicked problem”. The government’s climate message, which is based on the Climate Cure analysis, is therefore cautious in proposing concrete measures and restrictions to reduce meat consumption but appeals to consumers to think about their diet. Cooperation with the agricultural organizations should aim to promote sustainable agriculture with reduced climate emissions. If the strategy contained in the proposal is to be implemented, it also requires that large parts of the Norwegian people change their diet. Many people will do this. However, the question is whether those who, for idealistic and climate policy reasons, change their diet in a more vegetarian direction, are many enough for it to have a climate policy effect, beyond the more symbolic. Regarding the changed diet, we also encounter another mechanism, which we should not underestimate. In a debate post on the website of Norwegian Broadcasting, published on 10 January 2020, the columnist Espen Goffeng shared his resentment over a moralizing climate debate. “When we need the climate fight the most”, he writes, “it is depressing to see how it is in the process of developing into an occasionally clammy elite project that is used to flag one’s own morality”.41 A climate activist middle-class elite has developed which… ... have time to protest in the middle of the day and make street theatre with colourful costumes. See them chaining themselves to an electric (!) commuter train in London in the middle of the busiest time of the day when people are going home from work. The platform is full of people, tired after a working day who stand and stare at the stationary train, but the middle-class activists think it’s a good idea to dominate their day with their goodness. [ …] In all my years of studying tactics for popular movements, I have never seen anything more stupid and destructive.42

As an example of elitist and condescending climate action, Goffeng uses nutrition expert and leading figure in the EAT campaign, Gunhild Stordalen. She has made it her mission to moralize about people’s eating habits in the fight against global warming. We should not ignore the fact that the campaign for a vegetarian or vegan diet will face counter-reactions, precisely of the type that Goffeng describes in his sharply worded chronicle. In a self-critical interview with Swedish television (SVT), former speaker (leader) of the Green Party in Sweden, Peter Eriksson, points out that “there is a moralism that has been problematic. A movement about veganism and vegetarianism in the big cities where you see yourself as a better person if you don’t eat meat.43 People do not like to be moralized about and looked down upon. The

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reaction can easily be the opposite of what the campaigners hope for. A project to demolish parts of agriculture, combined with an action to get most people to change their eating habits, can easily end up in this trap. It is plausible to imagine that those who shape large parts of the climate policy have not reflected on how the policy should be implemented in practice. One can suspect them of having listened to Greta Thunberg ’s request: suggest what is necessary, but without thought for what is practically possible to accomplish.

Lenin and Thunberg or Brox? “What is to be done?” was the title of Lenin’s pamphlet from 1902, in which he outlined the strategy for carrying out the revolution in Russia. The question was not what could be done, but what had to be done. It is basically the same question that dominates the current climate debate: What must be done to “save the climate”? And this is the question activists like Greta Thunberg answer: “Listen to science!” The requirement for politicians is not to allow themselves to be limited by what is politically possible, but precisely to do what must be done. Activist organizations such as Extinction Rebellion follow up with a call for rebellion and claim that climate science provides the answer to what needs to be done. But then the question emerges: How to realize “what must be done?” For Lenin, too, the answer was to “listen to science”. In his case, it was “scientific Marxism” that provided the knowledge of what was historically necessary in abolishing capitalism and creating the communist society. Also in Tsarist Russia, ordinary people were not sufficiently enlightened to understand what was historically necessary—to do what had to be done. Therefore, there was a need for an enlightened elite with the knowledge and insight to understand what was historically necessary. This is how Lenin founded the Bolshevik Party. In the same way, James Lovelock could claim that most people are too stupid to see the seriousness of the climate threat,44 Shearman and Smith to call for an authoritarian expert board,45 or Tennsjö to argue for the need for a global “climate tyranny”.46 Well over 100 years after Lenin and as a response to the “Leninist” strategy in the climate fight, the Norwegian professor Ottar Brox in 2009 published the small book, The Climate crisis: What can we do?47 Brox realizes that within a democracy it is not possible to implement a climate policy that does not have a minimum of support from the people. The book rejects the authoritarian and elitist response to the climate problem and is therefore an attempt to identify win–win situations—measures that are both sensible from a climate perspective, while at the same time make life better for people. The important thing is the basic principle. Within a democracy, it will be difficult to implement a climate policy that does not have a minimum of acceptance by the voters. This is not saying that there must be political agreement on, and public support for, all aspects of a democratic climate policy. Also, within democracies, political implementation often takes place across loud protests from interest groups. It is quite

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unthinkable that we should have a climate policy where everyone supports everything. Democracy is based on decisions having legitimacy. Most people accept, and comply with, decisions and policies, even though they may disagree. It will therefore always be a political balancing act between opposition and protests against climate measures and what can be achieved. Governments should assess the extent to which it is politically sensible to push through issues that can contribute to undermining the legitimacy of an entire policy area. It is this balance that may seem to be missing in the plan for Norwegian Climate Cure, which I have used as an example. What is missing is a social analysis of how measures can be carried out in an open democracy. It is a plan about what must be done (to achieve the 1.5° target), not what can be done, and what is possible to achieve. In Chap. 5 I discussed how many climate measures would have a social impact. Much of today’s climate rhetoric assumes that people in the rich part of the world, live in a society of abundance and that our excessive consumption is part of the climate problem. Those who live on the lowest rungs of this society do not experience it this way. This rhetoric, together with a climate policy that in many areas primarily affects those in society who have the least, can easily undermine the legitimacy of climate policy. Such a climate policy becomes an element in a broader policy that widens the social and economic gaps in society, something we know creates social and political unrest. In recent decades we have witnessed a development in most western democratic countries where the social and economic gaps in society have been increasing.48 As far as I know, we lack research that can answer whether there is a connection between social and economic gaps in a society, and support for climate policy measures. It is nevertheless a reasonable hypothesis that it will be easier to gain support for climate policy measures in a society with small economic and social differences. It will probably also be easier to achieve democratic support for a climate policy that is designed in order to create a win–win situation to the greatest extent possible. I have consistently used the development of wind power as an example of how a certain type of climate policy may result in political “backlash”. Apart from the fact that I don’t think there can be much doubt that the development of wind power on land in the short term is one of the most effective measures to increase access to emission-free energy, it is not my task here to be either for or against wind power. It is not difficult to see the counterarguments. The trade-off ultimately becomes a political question. But if a government wants to go ahead with the development of wind power on land as part of the climate strategy, the framework conditions should have been different, so that the local communities and people in the affected societies would remain with something more than the disadvantages which are inflicted on them. If the local communities could get a reasonable compensation for the inconveniences that the windmills bring, some of the opposition would probably be turned into support. It is striking that the substantial subsidies aimed to stimulate the development of renewable energy are arranged in a way that only the developers benefit from them. If the development had also benefited the local community, we would have had a situation more like the traditional conflicts surrounding hydropower development. In these cases, classic nature conservation stands against the development project.

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It has also been argued that there is potential in locating wind farms together with industrial areas and other areas which must be assumed to have less natural value. It is claimed that such local wind power plants on a smaller scale connected to industrial areas are still economically profitable today. Moreover, they will be able to help produce local power that relieves the transmission grid. The classic nature conservation interests will in any case set the preservation of nature and wilderness against the need for the development of renewable energy. For them, the answer to the climate problem is not so much conversion to alternative forms of energy as it is the transformation of today’s society into a low-energy society. It becomes a question of the will and eagerness to come to terms with our own energy-consuming lifestyle. Because the emission of greenhouse gases is intertwined with almost all aspects of society, the attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will also affect almost all aspects of society. We saw, for example, earlier in this chapter how the climate strategy called for restructuring of large parts of agriculture. The climate problem suddenly interfered with the entire welfare state’s distribution of benefits and burdens. This means that many aspects of society, and many policy areas that we do not otherwise think of as climate policy, are relevant for the work to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases and thus to global warming and climate change. In this way, the broad economic policy, which in recent decades has contributed to widening the social and economic gaps in many countries, also becomes part of the backdrop for why it is so difficult to gain legitimacy for climate measures that interfere with people’s welfare. A policy that helps to reduce and level social and economic differences is also a good climate policy. The development and maintenance of a society with trust between the rulers and the ruled will also be part of the broad climate policy. A climate policy that increases polarization and the level of conflict in society, on the other hand, helps to undermine its own legitimacy.

About Future Generations One obstacle when trying to get support for climate policy is the time perspective. As I mentioned in the discussion about the difference between the corona crisis and the climate crisis, and in the discussion of the opposition to wind power, climate change will primarily be a problem, and a possible disaster, for future generations. It is those who live today, who overconsume the earth’s resources and who, it is claimed, create a future climate that will make the planet uninhabitable—perhaps already for our children and grandchildren, but in any case, for the generations that will populate the planet in the future. This is the narrative. The answer to saving the planet for future generations is—as I have shown in the discussions in this book—to limit our consumption and extraction of natural resources to what the planet can tolerate. Ideally, we should steer towards negative economic growth—“degrowth”. The problem—seen from this perspective—is that it is impossible to get support for

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such a strategy within the framework of democracy. Nor have we seen examples of authoritarian governments that have consciously planned such a climate strategy. The World Commission for the Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission) put the blame for the lack of consideration for future generations on today’s democratic governance, where future generations lack a voice of their own, and where “we act as we do because we can get away with it”.49 It has been proposed to change voting rights rules in favour of the young, so that the elderly are deprived of, or have their voting rights reduced, at the same time as the voting age is adjusted downwards.50 It has been thoroughly discussed how the current democratic system can be reformed in ways that better take care of future generations.51 One of the arguments for leaving the management of climate policy to bodies outside of politics, which do not depend on popular acceptance, is precisely the concern for future generations. For Extinction Rebellion, “rebelling” against politics and politicians is “on behalf of the security and well-being of our children, our communities and the future of the planet itself”.52 A more moderate strategy is to leave more of climate policy to legislation and the judiciary, by inserting clauses that will take care of the interests of future generations into the constitution of the individual countries.53 In Norway, this is expressed through paragraph 112 of the Constitution, which was adopted unanimously by the Parliament in 1992, and where it is stated that “(n) natural resources must be disposed of from a long-term and versatile point of view which secures this right also for future generations”. In Norway and in other countries, this type of clause has led to court cases (in Norway’s case about oil exploration in the Barents Sea), where the question is how far the judiciary can go in reviewing political decisions. Those who believe that the judiciary should overrule politics often point to the fact that democracy is unable to safeguard the interests of future generations: “The article cannot be left to the discretion of politicians because of the structural problem of democracy”, as the German philosopher and social scientist Jörg Tremmel has claimed.54 The question is nevertheless who will, better than elected politicians, be able to look after the interests of future generations. Here, too, there is a trade-off between different—and often conflicting—considerations. Is there anything to suggest that the judiciary, Extinction Rebellion’s “Citizens’ council”55 or Shearman and Smith’s “supreme office of the biosphere”56 would be better fit to make trade-offs between conflicting goals and interests both today and in the future, than the current democratic government? Moreover, it is not only a conflict between today’s generation and future generations. Today’s global society is characterized by inequality, conflicts between different interests, poor and rich—both individually and between countries. We do not know what future societies will look like, but there is good reason to believe that future societies will also be characterized by different and competing interests and social and economic differences. What does it mean in such a perspective to represent future generations? In climate policy, as Dale Jamieson points out, it can mean asking those who are relatively poor today to act in the best interests of people in the future who, compared to today’s poor, will be relatively rich.57 Those who argue for delimiting today’s democracy because of consideration for future generations

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often forget to ask whether taking care of democracy is not also taking care of the interests of future generations? Limiting democracy is limiting the freedom of future generations. This has caused the Swedish political scientist Ludvig Beckman to point out that “(t)he introduction of constitutional constraints in order to protect the unborn conflicts with the aim to secure for the future generational the resources for effective self-determination”.58 When this is a particularly burning issue today, it has primarily to do with climate science is claimed to be able to look into the future and predict climate and climate effects. At the same time, the climate debate is often based on a static view of society, on people’s ability to change society and to create and adapt to both changing social conditions and a changing climate. We tend to assume that future societies will largely function like today’s society, while at the same time a dramatically different climate will make this society more or less uninhabitable. It is a picture of the future where most things are fixed—except the climate. To the extent that society changes, it is in every way driven forward by climate change. This is a form of “climate determinism” which is drawn up by climate science, and which largely ignores the ability of society and humans to innovate, develop and continuously change society, both in response to climate change and independently of what may occur due to changes in the climate in different parts of the globe.59 A simple thought experiment may illustrate the weaknesses of such an understanding: Imagine a similar discussion about the interests of future generations 200 years ago, in the wake of Thomas Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population.60 A reasonable counterfactual hypothesis is that the thinkers of the time had imagined the society of the future—that is, our society in the twenty-first century— using the same categories that they resorted to when describing their own society at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Or consider some of the attempts to look into the future, which are only a few decades back in time. What strikes one first and foremost is that many of the changes that future studies envisioned never came, while what has changed society have been developments and innovations that these studies did not envision. Future generations cannot, for natural reasons, speak for themselves, nor is there anyone else today who can speak on behalf of future generations. What we rather see is that those who try to speak for future generations are basically projecting their own preferences and values onto future generations. This does not mean that we cannot say anything at all about how climate change is relevant for future humans. The most meaningful we can say about this today is that future generations will be interested in a climate that provides the basis for “good societies” in all parts of the globe. Those who today defend democracy and an open society will have good arguments for claiming that reducing global warming is good for future generations as well. But what the climate in the future will actually look like, what kind of social organisation, technology and social preferences will govern the lives of people 100 or 200 years from now, will be pure speculation at best. It is based on a static view of both society and the climate. The climate is changing with or without human influence. Even a global warming within 1.5 or 2.0° will lead to significant climate changes for future generations,61 but we do not know today- and neither do climate scientists—how

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extensive these climate changes will be and what kind of impact they will have on various parts of the globe. And above all, we do not know how future generations will face future climate change. If we assume that future generations would want a climate that can provide the basis for “good societies”, we are basically back to the overarching objective of today’s climate policy: Reduce global warming by reducing the emission of greenhouse gases. If today’s global climate policy succeeds to a reasonable degree, succeed in reaching this objective without simultaneously reducing the basis of life for future generations, destroying democracy or destroying the economy, we will—as far as it is in our power today—have realized a climate policy for the good of future generations. Moreover, as primarily the American economist and climate researcher William Nordhaus has pointed out, there is a balance and a trade-off between how much resources the world community has set aside to reduce global warming and the concern for future generations. In 2018, Nordhaus won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his research into the economic connections of the climate problem.62 Future generations will benefit from an acceptable climate, but they will not benefit from a climate policy that tears away the economic basis for future economic growth and development. Especially the billions of people in the world who still live in poverty and on the verge of poverty will depend on climate policy being balanced so that it does not tear away the foundations for economic progress and development. Nordhaus therefore criticizes those who believe that climate measures should be carried out more or less regardless of costs. Consideration for the climate should not trump all other considerations. In financial terms, this has to do with the choice of discount rate. By using a low discount rate as the basis for investments in climate measures today, the investments appear to be cheap in the long term. A higher discount rate will mean that “climate investments” will have to compete with other investments to a greater extent.63 People do not like to consider, writes Nordhaus, that it is not only investments in climate measures that benefit future generations. Future generations are not only interested in a liveable climate, but they are also interested in better medicines, better health institutions, research and better teaching.64 A climate policy that will save the climate by reversing economic growth (“degrowth”) is therefore not in line with the interests of future generations. Such negative economic growth will lead to reduced welfare for our children and grandchildren and lock the poorer parts of the world into future poverty and underdevelopment.

About Eating an Elephant The challenge of solving the climate problem has been compared to eating an elephant.65 As we know, elephants are quite large, and trying to eat a well-grown elephant can seem like an insurmountable problem. There is only one way to do it: You must start with the first bite and then take on the elephant bit by bit. It is not at all certain that you will manage to eat the whole elephant and thus you would have to handle the remains as best you could. But in any case, you have done your best.

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The climate problem is also a large and insurmountable problem and is constantly cited as the biggest challenge of our time. The global climate strategy, what I have called the Kyoto track, lays out a globally integrated plan to get rid of the “elephant” in one overarching and strategic move. By quantifying the problem in terms of how many tonnes of CO2 we can allow ourselves to release before the global temperature increase goes above 1.5 or, in the worst case, 2.0° Celsius, set out to distribute “pieces of the elephant” on every country in the world and leave it to the individual country to find a way to get rid of its share. This is what we in Chap. 2 called a gigantic—top-down—management by objective project. It is what Prins and Rayner in an article in the journal Nature have characterized as an attempt to find “the silver bullet”—the one well-aimed shot that puts an end to the problem. Instead of hunting the climate elephant with a rifle loaded with this one “silver bullet”, according to Prins and Rayner, the climate problem should be hunted with a shotgun, and with many small shots with a large spread aiming at different parts of the big and complex climate problem.66 In other words, they argue for a stronger commitment to a decentralized bottom-up strategy. Instead of a global monocentric climate policy that aims to “solve” the climate problem with one overarching measure, several critics of the current strategy have argued for a more polycentric model that to a greater extent attacks the different parts of the climate problem separately, from different angles and with various means.67 There are many examples of local initiatives to reduce climate emissions without reference to any need to achieve global or national targets. Many, if not most, concrete climate measures, such as the electrification of ferry traffic, the development of renewable energy or the investment in electric cars, would be just as realistic to implement without national and international targets for reduction of emissions by 2030. As we have seen, the “free rider problem” applies even under the “Kyoto regime”. Countries and individuals tend to evade regulations, especially regulations which are experiences as unfair. As the philosopher Jon Elster has pointed out, the problem with collective action is not necessarily solved even if a supreme authority is in place, since “compliance with central directives is in itself a collective action problem”.68 The Nobel Prize winner in economics, Elinor Ostrom, has claimed that people do not always act selfishly. With good leadership, relevant information, and with policies and regulations which are regarded meaningful and fair, people tend to comply.69 One problem with regulating emissions through the distribution of national targets is that one easily becomes more concerned with what can reduce emissions in the individual country, than with what works globally. It can become a game of passing “our parts of the elephant” onto others. An example is the policy of electrifying Norwegian offshore oil and gas extraction. This cuts domestic emissions from the gas-powered electricity plants on the platforms, and thus contributes to reducing domestic Norwegian emissions. Norway gets closer to realizing the national goals. In this perspective, the reduction of emissions from the petroleum industry is also very important for Norway because this industry today accounts for over a quarter of the total Norwegian emissions of approximately 50 million tonnes. This industry is an important explanation why it has been so difficult to reduce the Norwegian emissions. However, in a global context, it means very little. The alternative to

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burning the gas on the platforms in the North Sea and the Barents Sea is to burn the same gas in gas plants on the continent. The example shows another side of the collective action problem in climate policy: For the individual country, it is important to reduce domestic emissions, regardless of whether this leads to increased emissions in other countries and in other parts of the world. The same mechanism applies when industry with large emissions in the rich part of the world moves to poorer countries with cheap labour, inadequate environmental policy and coal-fired power plants. When we import the same products, the emissions remain in the country of production. Emissions in Europe may decrease, but the result may just as well be, that total global emissions rice. Another problem with the strategy is that the actors may become more concerned with what can be measured, than with what works. Climate measures that could contribute to reduced emissions, but which are not captured by the measurement system, become less interesting. Examples of this are forest protection and several other land use issues. Forests bind CO2 through the photosynthesis. Increased CO2 concentration in the air stimulates plant growth in general and contributes to faster growth in the forest. This is a feedback effect of the increased CO2 emissions, but an effect that contributes to reducing the global warming effect of the emissions. Norwegian forests and forest soils currently have a net uptake of CO2 of around 25 million tonnes. This is about half of the registered annual CO2 emissions in Norway. The Norwegian forest area has steadily increased over the past couple of hundred years, and an effective climate measure would be to protect the forest as much as possible, let it continue to grow and bind up more and more CO2. However, CO2 storage is not included in the Norwegian climate calculation. Paradoxically, it is primarily the environmental protection organizations that have objected to including logging in forests in the global climate calculation, even though this would be both good nature conservation policy and good climate policy. Now it is the other way around. Cutting forest may count as a climate measure. The burning of forest in the form of pellets as an alternative to coal in coal-fired power plants and the production of biofuel by cutting down forests are counted in the climate calculation as renewable energy. This is done in spite of the fact that wood emits significantly more CO2 than coal when burned. One MWh of electricity produced with biomass can emit more than three times as much as one MWh produced with gas. When this is not captured in the climate calculation, it is because the burning of biomass is counted as renewable energy. That is true in a longer time perspective. If you cut down a tree and burn it, a new tree will gradually grow up, sequestering the same amount of CO2 as the tree you burned. Coal and oil, on the other hand, are stores of CO2 that do not renew themselves. The problem is the time perspective. It will take 80 to 100 years for the new tree to bind up the amount of CO2 that was released when you burned the first tree. In a time perspective where the IPCC claims that the world should get emissions under control by 2030, it would actually be more climate-friendly to burn coal during this “transition period” than to burn wood, because coal emits less CO2 per unit of energy produced. Some of the same problems are linked to the use of biofuel. Biofuel produced from various forms of organic material, such as oil plants, organic waste and forest

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products, is renewable energy. Mixing such products in fossil fuel contributes to the climate calculation by not considering the CO2 emissions from these products. The requirement to mix biofuel in petrol and diesel has also helped to reduce registered emissions from road traffic in recent years. However, this is not that simple. It quickly became apparent that increased demand for palm oil had unwanted effects by accelerating deforestation of tropical rainforests and led to increased food prices, especially in poor countries. Consequently, the authorities are now trying to reduce the content of palm oil-based products in Norwegian biofuel. The content of palm oil has been reduced. In return, the content of rapeseed oil has increased and constituted (in 2019) 24% of Norwegian biofuel.70 Rapeseed grows willingly in Europe and does not displace tropical rainforest. However, it is still not that simple. When large parts of rapeseed production are used to produce biofuel, the demand for other vegetable oils increases, precisely including palm oil. Thus, we may not have gained anything. Or worse, we may have lost. Rapeseed is less energy efficient than palm oil and thus needs a larger area and requires more energy in production. If such factors are considered, it turns out that biofuel produced from rapeseed oil emits 0.17 kg more CO2 per litre than fossil-based diesel. This corresponds to 157 million litres and an increase in Norwegian climate emissions by 26,000 tonnes.71 If this calculation is correct, biodiesel based on rapeseed increases, rather than decreases, CO2 emissions. Norwegian consumers may therefore in practice pay a higher fuel price for a product that increases global climate emissions, rather than reducing them. However, in the Norwegian climate calculation, which is reported to the UNCCC, what is shown is reduced emissions. This chapter has been an attempt to better understand some of the political mechanisms that make it so difficult to handle the climate problem within the framework of traditional, democratic politics. It has been an attempt to show why the global (and national) management by objective strategy works so poorly, and that a climate policy that is more concerned with formulating targets and asking what must be done, rather than what can be done, becomes problematic within a democracy. Therefore, it also lends itself easily to a lack of confidence that democracy can handle the climate problem. In the next chapter, I will move from being mostly critical to trying to be more constructive—to see if it is possible to “eat the elephant more bit by bit”.

Notes 1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

https://ourworldindata.org/energy. See data from the International Energy Agency (IEA): https://www.iea.org/data-and-statis tics?country=WORLD&fuel=Energy%20supply&indicator=Total%20primary%20energy% 20supply%20(TPES)%20by%20source. Birol (2021). Head and Alford (2015), Rittel and Webber (1973). Klein (2019, p. 25). Lovelock (2015), Tennsjö (2018), Wallace-Wells (2019), Welzer (2017), Øverenget (2010). See the section on Extinction Rebellion in Chap. 4. Allen (2019).

Notes 9.

10.

11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

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“Without increased and urgent mitigation ambition in the coming years, leading to a sharp decline in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, global warming will surpass 1.5 °C in the following decades, leading to irreversible loss of the most fragile ecosystems, and crisis after crisis for the most vulnerable people and societies” (IPCC, 2018). There can easily be a gap between what most people experience and what experts think they should see. This is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to connect knowledge and action in the climate area. See: Naustdalslid (2011, p. 248). Gina Gylver in Aftenposten 14.03.2020. https://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/sid/i/pLkbm6/ jeg-haaper-at-vi-kan-ta-laerdom-av-situagungen-vi-er-i-naa-gina-gylver. Jones (2020). “It’s too early to say whether the coronavirus can be linked to climate change” reported Sweden’s television (svt.se) on 22 March 2020 in the middle of the corona crisis (https:/ /www.svt.se/nyheter/utrikes/analys-for-tidigt-att-saga-om-coronaviruset-kan-kopplas-tillkl imatforandringar?fbclid=IwAR0hFUscdNLw84HucTSikQ6wfmcGLxSBNRg7pOhhoTq udh2zySgcM3BhItI). Naustdalslid (2011, p. 247f.). Weber (2008). Ungar (2000, p. 11). See Chap. 1. Runciman (2013). More formally correct: Sweden’s Riksbank’s prize in economic science in memory of Alfred Nobel. Ostrom (2009). See the discussion in Chap. 3. Brox (2009, p. 24). Fagerbakke (2019). Rayner and Malone (1998, p. 114). Hickman (2010). Lowi (1972, p. 299). Stigen (2011). Lowi (1964). Lowi (1972, p. 302ff.). Based on Wilson (1974). The classic discussions is found in Garret Hardin’s article on “the tragedy of the commons” and Mancur Olsen’s equally classic book on collective action (Hardin, 1968; Olson, 1965). As the philosopher Jon Elster has pointed out, following a central directive is in itself a collective action problem (Elster, 1989, p. 17). Kjellberg and Reitan (1995, s. 126). Elster (1989, p. 18). Kraftforbruk i et utslippsfritt Norge (n.d.). Statnett (2019). In the autumn of 2021, the new government announced arrangements so that the municipalities can be left with a larger part of the value creation linked to the development of wind power. This debate intensified in autumn 2021 when the power price in southern Norway, due to weak reservoir filling in Norway and little wind in Germany, led to electricity prices of up to two kroner per kilowatt hour. With the Russian attack on Ukraine and the closing down of gas pipelines from Russia to Europe the energy shortage in Europe became even more serious. Bevanger et al. (2017). https://www.nrk.no/norge/mener-landbruket-kan-fa-ned-klimaspieldene-selv-1.14890299. Goffeng (2020) 82-7094-123-9. Ibid. See also Shellenberger (2020, p. 19ff). Interview in the programme “Min sanning” in SVT 13 February 20, 2021. https://www.svt. se/nyheter/inrikes/peter-eriksson-mp-ser-sig-som-battre-om-man-inte-ater-closet. Hickman (2010).

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45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

Shearman and Smith (2007). Tennsjö (2018). Brox (2009) in Norwegian: Klimakrisen. Hva kan vi gjøre? Piketty (2014). World Commission on Environment and Development (1987, p. 8). Runciman (2019). Boston (2017). See the “declaration of rebellion” as reproduced in Farrell et al. (2019, p. 2). Tremmel (2006). Tremmel (2006, p. 206). See the discussion above in Chap. 2. Shearman and Smith (2007, p. 134). Jamieson, (2014, p. 131). Beckman (2008, p. 615). Hulme (2011), Storch (1997). Malthus (1975). “(A) stable global climate is an illusion”, writes British climate scientist Mike Hulme (2015, s. 19). More precisely, this is the “Swedish Riksdag Prize in Economics in memory of Alfred Nobel”. See Nordhaus (2013, ch. 16). Nordhaus argues against the so-called Stern Report by the British economist Nicholas Stern, who, on behalf of the British Prime Minister, calculated the costs of global warming against the costs of introducing climate measures to reduce warming. The report, which was published in 2006, was based on a very low discount rate, and thus concluded that it would be very profitable to deploy maximum resources today to reduce global warming. See Stern (2009). Ibid., loc. 2903. Rayner (2010). Prins and Rayner (2007). Held et al. (2011), Ostrom (2009, pp. 8–9). Elster, (1989, p. 17). Ostrom (2009). Hoff-Elimari (2020). Ibid.

62. 63.

64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

References Allen, M. (2019). Why protesters should be wary of “12 years to climate breakdown” rhetoric. The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/why-protesters-should-be-wary-of-12-years-toclimate-breakdown-rhetoric-115489 Beckman, L. (2008). Do global climate change and the interest of future generations have implications for democracy? Environmental Politics, 17(4), 610–624. https://doi.org/10.1080/096440 10802193500 Bevanger, K., Roel, M., & Stokke, B. (2017). Landbasert vindkraft. Utfordringer for fugl, flaggermus og rein (NINA temahefte Nr. 66). CEDEREN Centre for Environmental Design and Renewaable Energy. https://brage.nina.no/nina-xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2419532/66. pdf?sequence=1Stokke Birol, F. (2021). The world’s electricity systems must be ready to counter the growing climate threat—Analysis. IEA. https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-world-s-electricity-sys tems-must-be-ready-to-counter-the-growing-climate-threat Boston, J. (2017). Governing for the future: Designing democratic institutions for a better tomorrow (1st ed.). Emerald.

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Prins, G., & Rayner, S. (2007). The wrong trousers: Radically re-thinking climate policy. Joint Discussion Paper of the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilisation, Oxford and the MacKinder Centre for the Study of Long-Wave Events, London School of Economics. Rayner, S. (2010). How to eat an elephant: A bottom-up approach to climate policy. Climate Policy, 10, 615–621. Rayner, S., & Malone, E. L. (Red.). (1998). Human choice and climate change. Battelle Press. Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4, 155–169. Runciman, D. (2013). The confidence trap: A history of democracy in crisis from World War I to the present. Princeton University Press. Runciman, D. (2019). Democracy is the planet’s biggest enemy. Foreign Policy. https://foreignpo licy.com/2019/07/20/democracy-is-the-planets-biggest-enemy-climate-change/ Shearman, D. J. C., & Smith, J. W. (2007). The climate change challenge and the failure of democracy. Praeger Publishers. Shellenberger, M. (2020). Apocalypse never: Why environmental alarmism hurts us all (1st ed.). Harper. Statnett. (2019). Et elektrisk Norge—Fra fossilt til strøm. https://www.statnett.no/globalassets/foraktorer-i-kraftsystemet/planer-og-analyser/et-elektrisk-norge--fra-fossilt-til-strom.pdf Stern, N. (2009). A blueprint for a safer planet. The Bodley Head. Stigen, I. M. (2011). Saksområde—For lite påaktet i statsvitenskapelig organisasjons- og forvaltningsstudier? Det Samfunnsvitenskapelige fakultet, Universitetet i Oslo. Storch, H. von. (1997). Climate works. A anatomy of a disbanded line of research. Also: Stehr, N., & Storch, H. von. (1999). An anatomy of climate determinism. In: H. KaupenHaas (Ed.), Wissenschaftlicher Rassismus - Analysen Einer Kontinuität in Den Human- Und Naturwissenschaften (pp. 137–185). Campus-Verlag Frankfurt.a.M. ISBN 3-593-36228-7. Tennsjö, T. (2018, November 28). Så kan klimatkrisen leda fram till en global despoti. DN.SE. https://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/sa-kan-klimatkrisen-leda-fram-till-en-global-despoti/ Tremmel, J. (2006). Establishing intergenerational justice in national constitutions. In J. Tremmel (Red.), Handbook of intergenerational justice. Edwad Elgar. Ungar, S. (2000, June 22.). Why climate change is not in the air. Climate Change Communication. http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collection/En56-157-2000E.pdf Wallace-Wells, D. (2019). The uninhabitable earth: A story of the future. Weber, E. P. (2008). Facing and managing climate change: Assumptions, science, and governance responses. Political Science, 60(1), 133–149. https://doi.org/10.1177/003231870806000111 Welzer, H. (2017). Climate wars: Why people will be killed in the twenty-first century (P. Camiller, Oms.). Polity Press. Wilson, J. Q. (1974). The politics of regulation. In I. J. W. McKie (Red.), Social responsibility and the business predicament (pp. 136–168). The Brookings Institution. World commission on environment and development. (1987). Our common future. Oxford University Press.

Chapter 8

Contributions to Democratic Responses to the Climate Problem

In this chapter, I will ask whether a direction can be pointed out for a more effective and democratic climate policy. This does not imply that I set out to formulate a new and coherent climate policy, or a climate policy programme. The ambition is far more modest: I want to outline some basic principles on which an effective—but at the same time democratic—climate policy could be based.

About Taking Pieces from the Elephant In the global climate debate, there are many proposals and sketches for how one could more concretely go about getting rid of the “elephant” more piecemeal. One example can be found in the “Drawdown project”. The project is run by the voluntary organization Drawdown, led by Paul Hawken and based in San Francisco. Drawdown can best be described as a think tank to come up with a wide range of proposals for how emissions of greenhouse gases can be reduced. The name of the project can be explained as “turning point” and is meant to point towards the point in history where the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere levels out and starts to decrease again. To realize this goal, the organization has collected and described what it considers to be the hundred best measures to reduce emissions and/or sequestrate greenhouse gases.1 Eighty of these are based on known technology. This concerns, for example, investment in green roofs, various forms of circular economy, further development of solar energy and wind power and so on. The project has also attempted to calculate both the effect of each individual measure in the form of reduced emissions and the costs the measure entails. Likewise, the revised calculation of the financial gain for each individual measure is included. These calculations can of course be questioned. What still seems convincing is the claim that most of the proposals are so-called no regret measures. This means that they are measures which, in any case, and regardless of the climate effects of the proposals, will have socially beneficial consequences.2 There is no space here for a detailed review and discussion of all the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Naustdalslid, The Climate Threat. Crisis for Democracy?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34471-8_8

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various proposals. Many of them are also well known, and some of them have been commented on in previous chapters, such as wind energy on land and at sea, solar energy, energy-smart buildings, the forest as a carbon store and other measures that have to do with land use, as well as various measures in the transport sector. The interesting thing about this is that we get a general overview of the numerous ways in which various “no regret measures” for reducing the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere are practically possible. We are also presented with proposals that are otherwise not featured in the ongoing climate debate, and which in any case cannot be included in a global quota system for reducing CO2 emissions. This applies, for example, to education for girls in developing countries. In the ranking of the various measures, this is ranked number six out of the 100 proposed measures. Family planning is number seven. Educated girls get fewer children. This reduces global population growth. The difference between a women with no schooling and a women with 12 years of schooling is four to five children per woman, according to the Brookings Institution.3 The chapter on girls’ education quotes UNESCO, claiming that closing an annual financing gap of $39 billion in low- and middle-income countries “could result in 59.6 gigatons emission reduced by 2050”.4 This should remind us that the climate problem is not just a technological problem, which can be “solved” by single-mindedly aiming at emission reduction. It is also a social, economic and development-related problem. In addition to the whole range of measures based on proven and well-known technology, Drawdown also describes 20 more unconventional measures and technologies that are currently at the development and testing stage.5 This applies, for example, to alternative land use strategies that both increase the natural absorption of CO2 in nature and improve food production, “smart” buildings that are self-sufficient in energy, and cultivation of the sea using large underwater “seaweed plantations”, something that would contribute to increase the absorption of CO2 through photosynthesis, in the same way as the forests do on land. More speculative, and technologically remote, is perhaps the idea of producing hydrogen from water and CO2 through artificial photosynthesis. The process, it is claimed, should be three times as efficient as natural photosynthesis, and produce bacteria which in turn will be an alternative raw material for bioenergy. Another chapter in the book describes the attempt to make fusion energy practical and commercially available. The problem has been that this must happen under such a high temperature that it has been impossible in practice so far. If it were to succeed, we would have an almost inexhaustible source of energy without the safety and waste problems that conventional nuclear energy (fission energy) represents.6 Even more speculative is the question of whether it is possible to create cold fusion. Here, too, scientific and technological development is taking place, of which we cannot foresee future outcome.7 After the failed climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, an interdisciplinary group of researchers and experts gathered under the auspices of the London School of Economics in 2010, to discuss how climate policy could be taken forward after the breakdown in the international talks. The group included both climate scientists and social scientists from various disciplines, with commitment and extensive knowledge of the natural science and social aspects of the climate problem. What the participants

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had in common was that they agreed with the IPCC’s conclusion that the world is facing a serious climate threat, while they at the same time were sceptical of the way in which world leaders had tried to attack the climate problem. They believed that the world’s attempt to put in place a total strategy which, through the distribution of national quotas for the emission of greenhouse gases, should be able to succeed in gaining control over global warming, was doomed to failure. Instead of such a top-down strategy, they argued for a more broad-spectrum bottom-up strategy, which could attack the various parts of the climate problem more directly. The group met at a venerable conference centre south of London, Hartwell House, and the report was accordingly titled “The Hartwell Paper”.8 A central point in the report is that the climate problem and the energy problem should be separated and attacked independently of each other. In today’s climate policy, these two problems are linked together in the global strategy. The climate problem is (quite correctly) perceived as an effect of the world’s increasing use of fossil fuels, which creates the release of CO2. But today’s climate policy is somehow aimed at reducing the problem (the energy problem in the form of carbon-based energy production), by attacking the symptoms (regulating the release of greenhouse gases). It is naive to believe, the group claims, that by establishing a global trading system for emissions quotas, market forces will reduce the use of fossil fuels by making them so expensive that alternative energy sources will win, eventually replace oil, coal and gas. Seven years after the Paris summit, world leaders are struggling to get sufficient national emission reductions pledges, not to mention the problem of putting in place a system to monitor and check that the quota market works. The climate meeting in Glasgow in November 2021 finally reached some form of compromise on mechanisms to monitor the trading system. It remains to be seen how it will work in practice. The EU has a functioning system for emission quotas in place, and here the quota prices have risen in the last couple of years. Only time can tell what will happen to this quota market in the future. The authors of The Hartwell Paper claim that any agreement that is based on setting an upper limit on how large emissions the individual countries are allowed to have and on setting a market price on emissions of greenhouse gases to force a transition to renewable energy is doomed to failure. If the allowance price really threatens economic growth, the system will collapse, they argue.9 They argue instead that the climate problem and the energy problem should be attacked separately. In The Hartwell the paper, the researchers mention several measures to attack the climate problem, such as reducing emissions of soot. Soot, so-called black. “Carbon” contributes strongly to global warming, especially in the Arctic, where black precipitation helps to make snow and ice melt faster by reducing the albedo effect.10 Here one can add as positive that the so-called Gothenburg Protocol from 1999, which is supposed to regulate the emission of sulphur and nitrogen, was extended in 2012 to also include emissions of black carbon. They also mention land use and the importance of taking care of forests, as we discussed earlier, changing the traffic system towards emission-free means of transport (something that will also reduce the emission of soot) and developing the technology for carbon capture and storage.

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Several of these measures are also relevant in today’s mainstream climate policy to realize the 1.5° target. A good start to a more meaningful climate policy would nevertheless be to put an end to the target-setting debate, and to move on to discussing measures rather than targets. Climate management aiming at a global warming target, whether this is 2.0° or 1.5° , has been shown to work poorly.11 Instead, a broader set of targets and indicators should be developed for different aspects of the climate problem. It has been argued that the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere will be a better global measure than global mean temperature.12 The point will also be to “break down” the climate problem into various sub-problems and follow these up separately, both nationally and internationally. These could be targets linked to land use, emissions of soot and particles, climate-friendly forestry, climate-friendly urban development, and perhaps just as importantly, targets for climate adaptation both nationally and globally. In other words, to stick to Gwyn Prins’ hunting metaphor, attack the climate problem with a “shotgun”, rather than with a “rifle” loaded with this one silver bullet.13 Most important, however, is to stop believing that by attacking the emissions, one can remove the cause of the emissions, namely the world’s carbon-based energy regime. The climate problem is fundamentally an energy problem. True, it is important to implement all kinds of different measures that reduce emissions, such as energy saving, better insulated houses, land use measures, forest protection, electrification of the car fleet and more systematic schemes for a circular economy.14 It is the energy problem that is the underlying issue, and the energy problem should be attacked directly.15 The authors of The Hartwell Paper therefore suggested that the world’s leaders, instead of using their energies to put in place a global agreement on how much CO2 the individual countries should be allowed to emit, should have attacked the energy problem itself from the start. A global strategy should be drawn up to develop new and old emission-free forms of energy, to be able to compete with carbon-based energy in terms of price and functionality. Instead, the bet was that this would happen by itself as soon as the emissions were regulated. Their proposal was to introduce a small but general carbon tax or levy which could gradually increase and, in that way, drive up the price of carbon-based energy, while this tax could be used as a contribution to the work of developing emission-free energy sources. This, they claimed, would be a “positive strategy” that builds on knowledge development and innovation, and that could be combined with growth and development, primarily in the third world. The task of the world’s leaders would be to set up a global infrastructure and a system to manage an international fund, made up of the income from such a tax. They point out that other global “wicked problems” have been attacked in similar ways, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, or the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Vaccination (GAVI). Common to the examples that the international community to a certain extent has succeeded in handling such global “wicked problems”, is that they have been attacked piecemeal and divided, while at the same time attacking the core of the problem, not the effects. The first applies, for example, to the problem of poverty, while the latter particularly applies to the global effort to develop vaccines. The closest thing we have seen to something similar in the global climate strategy is the proposal to limit the population on earth

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through “negotiable child quotas”, something which, reasonably enough, never was taken seriously.16

Carbon Tax Rather than Emission Quotas One scientist who has most clearly argued for introducing a global carbon tax instead of the current system of climate quotas and quota trading is William Nordhaus. Ever since the Kyoto agreement in 1997, Nordhaus has argued against this strategy and claimed that it will not work, in which he has proved to be right. Instead, he has argued for introducing a gradually increasing tax or levy on all carbon-based energy.17 As the carbon-based energy became more expensive in this way, the transition to emissionfree forms of energy would win, the idea is. Nordhaus has also claimed that such a strategy could be implemented without all countries agreeing. It would be enough if a large group of consumers of carbon-based energy with global economic weight joined in a “club” and introduced common rules, so that imports from countries that did not want to join the club were subject to an additional duty, equivalent to the carbon tax. Gradually, more and more countries would then find out that it would be beneficial to “join” the club.18 On the other hand, Nordhaus’ ideas are not popular with leading politicians who see themselves as best served by the current Kyoto strategy and quota system, perhaps because they can then look for exits in a free rider game, which means that they themselves can get away more easily. However, it is not the case that there are no CO2 taxes. Several countries have introduced such taxes as part of national strategies to reduce climate emissions and meet their national emissions targets. The highest level is found in Sweden and Switzerland at nearly 120 EURO per tonne CO2 and Norway and Finland with just under 80 EURO per tonne.19 Some emissions from the industrial and petroleum industries are also regulated through EU’s trading emission system (ETS). With the war in Ukraine and soaring energy prices, quota prices have also gone up. Right from the cautious start in the early 1990s, there has been controversy over the national fees because they may imply a distortion of international competition. As long as the international strategy focuses mainly on emissions, rather than on the carbon-based energy production, it will still be difficult to achieve an international agreement on a global carbon tax according to the principles advocated by, among others Nordhaus. A discussion has therefor been raised in EU to introduce a system more like the “club” arrangement proposed by Nordhaus. In December 2022 EU decided to introduce what is called EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). The “mechanism” is presented as a “…. landmark tool to put a fair price on the carbon emitted during the production of carbon intensive goods that are entering the EU, and to encourage cleaner industrial production in non-EU countries”.20 What remains to be seen, at the time of writing, is how this mechanism will be implemented and how effective it will turn out to be. Few taxes are popular, neither are the carbon taxes. “Ordinary people” are primarily affected by higher prices for petrol and diesel. That is also the purpose

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of the taxes: to get people to drive less, travel less and switch to fossil-free means of transport. The problem with this is that all such tax increases are socially unfair. This makes all goods produced with carbon-based energy equally expensive for the poor as for the rich. As an alternative it has been proposed to levy a tax on the production and turnover of carbon-based energy itself, and that all or part of the government’s income from such taxes could go back to the citizens, so-called Carbon Tax and Rebate (CTR). This would mean that all production of oil and gas for domestic consumption was subject to such a tax, and that the income should be rebated as a cash amount to each individual citizen with the same amount to all. This would have a double effect. It would gradually make all products based on fossil energy more expensive, and thus stimulate a transition to fossil-free energy. At the same time, this—in contrast to traditional fees—would not be a tax, but a form of direct economic redistribution that would have a socially equalizing effect. One should therefore expect broader public support for this kind of tax. The wealthier generally stand for the highest emissions. If the tax were to be redistributed to all residents, large and small, with equal amounts directly into the bank account, it would have the opposite effect of traditional taxes. It would have a socially equalizing effect, and it would be particularly beneficial for low-income families with children. For such a tax to be accepted by the people, it should still probably be set up so that more than half of the citizens would benefit from the scheme. If such a tax were introduced only in individual countries, and not as a global arrangement, or in the form of a “club” of countries according to the principle outlined earlier, one also had to have exception provisions for exports to countries without such a tax. In a possible practical implementation of such a system in individual countries, one would quite obviously also discuss the fact that the tax could be geographically unfair, but this problem could most likely be solved. Today, examples of such tax schemes are fond in Canada.21 In Europe a special form of CTR scheme is found in Switzerland.22 In the case of Norway, several environmental organizations have argued for the introduction of CRT. The government has not been willing to discuss this. In an article on Norwegian Broadcasting’s website (NRK.no) in 2018, the Ministry of Finance’s spokesperson argued that CRT goes against the traditions of Norwegian tax and excise policy. That is true. But the same representative further claimed that what Canada had done is basically copying Norwegian policy, but at a significantly less ambitious level than Norway (Norway has a higher tax): “[The] increase in the CO2 tax in Norway is used to finance tax relief in other areas. Thus, the Norwegian carbon tax works in practice in the same way as the Canadian one”, claimed the spokesperson.23 This was a bold claim. Norwegian tax policy during that period had systematically aimed to reduce the tax burden for those with the highest income and assets. On the contrary, there is more reason to claim that the Norwegian carbon tax has reduced the tax for the richest. The second point is that, even if it were true that the carbon tax replaced taxes for those with the lowest income, this would be an “invisible” effect, which would not have the same potential effect as by introducing a socially and economically equalizing climate policy.

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The American climate activist James Hansen already in 2009 proposed the introduction of a carbon tax for rebate, and the Nobel Prize winner Nordhaus, who since the 1980s has argued for a carbon tax rather than buying and selling emission quotas, has joined the idea. Today, we can only speculate on what would have been the status of the work to reduce global CO2 emissions, if international climate cooperation had been concentrated on the global implementation of such a tax system, the development of a global effort to develop emission-free energy sources and a greater effort to co-ordinate, stimulate and contribute to financing a wider and more complex mix of bottom-up activities to reduce the CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere, also in other ways than through direct emission reductions. If we look at the results of today’s strategy, it is still not particularly bold to put forward a hypothesis that things could hardly have been worse. Perhaps we would also have had less conflict and greater legitimacy for climate policy. It may be appropriate to quote the other Nobel Prize winner, the economist Paul Romer, who shared the Nobel Prize in Economics with William Nordhaus in 2018: People systematically underestimate the potential to discover better ways to do things. […] I believe, […], that if we start encouraging people to find ways to produce lower carbon energy, everybody’s going to be surprised at the progress we’ll make as we go down that path. […] All we need to do is create some incentives that got people going in that direction, and that we don’t know exactly what solution will come out of it – but we’ll make big progress.24

Such a strategy could involve the state planning, not for reducing economic growth, but for developing incentives that can steer economic growth in the direction of a green transition.

Green Growth According to researchers and activists on the deep ecology side of the climate debate, economic growth is the fundamental climate problem. Growth must be slowed down as soon as possible, and preferably reversed; they claim.25 But the alternative to economic growth is not stability and perhaps a slight downward adjustment of consumption in our rich affluent societies. The alternative is economic decline and recession. The alternative, if it were to be attempted as a conscious and targeted policy, would contribute to mass unemployment and extensive social protests in our rich countries and increase poverty, decline and even more social unrest in the poorer parts of the world. But not all deep ecology-oriented researchers and activists join a degrowth strategy. One of those who is clear about this is the Norwegian writer and member of the Green Party Per Espen Stoknes. He writes: [R]ession (degrowth) is undesirable for us for many reasons; especially because you then get rapidly increasing unemployment, more social inequality, sharply falling investment levels and unmanageable debt situations. A policy that causes recession by suddenly denying citizens air traffic, driving, meat eating, or petroleum production will thus cause massive social and political backlash for green policies.26

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A deliberate policy of recession will probably not serve the task of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Today we see rapid growth in the development of alternative energy sources, primarily wind and solar. But this requires investment, research and technology development. A world economy heading towards a persistent recession will put an effective stop to this technological development. The result of deliberately planned degrowth would therefore primarily be an extension into the future of today’s carbon-based economy. It is widely believed that the most important effect of the economic growth that the world has experienced in recent decades is environmental destruction, global warming and overconsumption. It is at best a flawed picture, and it primarily represents a perspective seen from a well-to-do post-material middle class in the rich part of the world, who has the moral courage to tell the rest of the world that now the party is over. Sorry, but you came too late. There is no reason to deny that in the rich part of the world—and among the upper class in poorer countries—there is a luxury consumption that there is good reason to criticize. There is also no reason to ignore the fact that economic growth has occurred together with widening social and economic gaps in both the rich and poorer parts of the world.27 Reducing these gaps is important. But to try to do that by facilitating economic recession would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and most likely have the opposite effect of what it claims to achieve. Despite everything, the most important effect of economic growth is the reduction of global poverty and infant mortality, progress in research and development, better health care and the reduction of many diseases (such as malaria) that destroy people’s lives, especially in the poorer parts of the world.28 Among the results is improvements in living conditions for women in the third world, who have received education to a far greater extent. This has been the most important factor in reducing global population growth. If the development continues, we can look forward to a stabilization of the population on the globe towards 2100.29 Here, global economic growth has achieved what advocates of forced sterilization and the one-child policy have been far from achieving. Increasing the level of education among women is, as mentioned above in this chapter, also claimed to be one of the most important contributions to reducing global climate emissions.30 In other words, the question is not growth or no growth. The question is what kind of growth. Is it, to stick to Per Espen Stoknes’ terminology. It should not be the kind of “grey growth”, which has characterized much of the development behind us, and which we can agree has also helped create the climate problem. The challenge is to create a “green growth” to be directed at investments and development towards a carbon-independent society?31 If the world is to succeed in reducing climate emissions without undermining the basis for prosperity and welfare in the rich part of the world, and social and economic development in the rest of the world, it requires economic growth, but also through a green shift. This cannot be left to the market alone, although today we see massive market-led investments in green technology, such as solar cells and wind power. Part of the paradox in today’s climate discussion is that it is used as a strong argument against wind power development that the investors make money from the project, but in principle this should be seen as positive. It has been part of the logic behind the subsidy policy that it should make

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it profitable to invest in renewable energy, develop the technology and, in the long run, make it commercially profitable without subsidies, something that seems to be succeeding. Per Espen Stoknes wrote his warning against “degrowth” a few months before the corona crisis.32 Now we have had demonstrated what a recession means in practice. It leads to large welfare losses and unemployment in the rich part of the world. In the poor part of the world, much of the reduction in extreme poverty that has occurred in recent decades can be reversed and bring millions of people back below the extreme poverty line. One effect of the corona crisis may still be that it becomes more difficult to credibly argue for downsizing the economy as a climate policy tool. Just when the social and economic effects of the corona crisis was about to fade off, the Russian invasion of Ukraine hit Europe and the world. In climate policy terms this may be seen to have a double effect. One immediate effect was soaring energy prices due to the shutdown of Russian gas supply to Europe. Here the war achieved what deliberate climate policies had never been close to achieving, and what climate activists had fought for, namely cutting carbon-based energy. One consequence, according to Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, is that the drop in Russian fossil fuel exports after its Ukraine invasion will transform the global energy landscape for decades and can help to hasten a green energy transition. On the other hand, and in the short run, the effect may be the opposite. Germany is opening old coal power plants to prevent economic crisis and reduce the economic downturn due to the high energy prices. In December 2022, the British government approved the UK’s first new coal mine in three decades. Here we see demonstrated what Roger Pielke Jr. has called “the iron law of climate policy”: In a conflict between economic growth and climate policy, economic growth will always win. We get confirmed what seems to be a general rule: Environmental policies appears to be a surplus phenomenon that is prioritized in economically good times, not only among political decision -makers, but also in public opinion. The challenge for Europe and the EU is to prove this wrong, and to prove right the more optimistic perspective of Fatih Birol, that the crisis, at least in a longer time perspective, will favour the green shift. The question is whether it will be possible to channel the reconstruction of the economy towards a green shift. Looking at this as viewed from Norway, this raises particularly interesting questions. It is about transforming an oil-dependent society and economy into a post-carbon society. This will require stronger government management of the economy and investments than we have been used to in recent decades. In the short term it will require investments that may turn out to be “unprofitable”, but which in the longer term will strengthen Norway’s competitiveness in a less carbon-dependent world economy. Meeting the climate threat in society with future-oriented measures and restructuring requires, as many have pointed out, a stronger government hand in the economy and a willingness to carry out short-term investments that the market alone will not take on.33 A Keynesian investment policy is then required, where the focus is on green and sustainable investments. There is no necessary contradiction between socio-economic profitability and Keynesian crisis policy. But investments must be prioritized. It is not enough that measures are green.

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They must also aim at becoming economically profitable, and they must contribute to growth and employment. A paradox here is that Norway with its oil-dependent economy is better equipped than many other countries to restructure society and the economy in a climate and environmentally sensible way. Like an Egyptian pharaoh, Norway has, not through seven fat years, but through more than 20, built up a reserve for lean years. From the first transfer made to the Oil Fund in 1996 until 2023, the growth has been formidable. At the time of writing, the fund has a market value of approximately NOK 14 000 billion (ca. e 1 250 billion). “For you and future generations”, reads the text on the video screen, with the rolling update of the billions on the Fund’s web page. If we take the climate problem and care for future generations seriously, and we should, we should also take the purpose of the Oil Fund seriously. It is then relevant to ask whether it would make sense to use parts of this national wealth on a future-oriented transformation of today’s carbon-based society into a more carbonindependent country with a greener economy, rather than on financing industrial development in other parts of the world.34 After the financial crisis in 2008, the economist Erik Reinert wrote that: In Norway, we must realize that our “hoarding” of oil wealth is part of the global “over saving” that has fuelled the current crisis. Energy and environmental policy must be used consciously in counter-cyclical policy to throw resources at new solutions that can promote a new phase of real economic growth.35

If the Norwegian authorities had followed this advice, we had probably been closer to a green transformation of the Norwegian economy and society today than is the case. The climate activists on the left have as their most clearly articulated goal the liquidation of the Norwegian petroleum industry. This demand has become even louder after the IEA in May 2021 published its scenario report on what is needed to reach the 1.5° target by 2050. Here the IEA states that if this target is reached, there is no room for extracting more oil and gas or to start new coal-fired power plants. This has been interpreted to mean that ending oil exploration (and thus cutting off access to oil and gas) is a means of reaching the 1.5° target. But that is not what the report says. It says the obvious, that if the world reaches the 1.5° target, there is no room for new oil extraction. What is needed to achieve this goal, however, is a massive restructuring of energy production. Access to solar energy must increased 20-fold and wind energy 11-fold until 2050, according to the “roadmap”. And things must happen quickly. Until 2030, new solar power equivalent to the world’s largest existing solar power plant must be built every single day of the year. Enormous resources will be required in research and technology development. All this requires continued economic growth.36 In the longer term, the oil industry will be history anyway. In the short term, a much more fruitful and forward-looking strategy is to take advantage of the expertise and technology that has made Norway one of the world’s leading oil nations can contribute to the transformation that the IEA is calling for.

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The transition to a green shift will require political management and risky financing, and it will require a long-term perspective on investments in technological transition and industrial development. This is where Norway stands in a special position by having both an industrial and technological capacity developed through the Norwegian oil adventure, and an economic capacity built up through more than 20 “fat years”. There are plenty of development projects to tackle. Massive development of wind power, especially at sea, will require large investments, for example. Here, Norway, with its background precisely from the oil industry and the supplier industry on land, has relevant experience and a high level of expertise which should be easy to transfer to the development of alternative energy production. If we are to believe the International Energy Agency (IEA), Norway should in any case have extra advantage to benefit from the global transition to emission-free energy. As they write in one of their Wold Energy Outlook reports: Cost reductions and experience gained in Europe’s North Sea are opening up a huge renewable resource. Offshore wind has the technical potential to meet today’s electricity demand many times over. It is a variable source of generation, but offshore wind offers considerably higher capacity factors than solar PV and onshore wind thanks to ever-larger turbines that tap higher and more reliable wind speeds farther away from shore. There are further innovations on the horizon, including floating turbines that can open up new resources and markets.37

CO2 handling and storage will, according to the IPCC’s latest special report, the so-called 1.5° report, be absolutely necessary if the world is to be able to realize the 1.5° goal. In any case, it is difficult to envisage such a rapid winding down of all carbon-based production that carbon capture of CO2 emissions will not be needed in the relatively short term. The development of fossil-free energy systems will require large investments. There is reason to remember that so far only a good 17% of the world’s energy consumption consists of renewable energy.38 However, this is not just a question of restructuring energy production itself or of changing the world’s energy mix, but of innovation and technological development to use emission-free energy sources in new ways. For example, attempts have been made to build the charging system for electric cars into the road itself, so that the battery can be charged while driving. This is a technology that make it possible to reduce the need for large and heavy batteries, and which would be particularly revolutionary for the electrification of the truck fleet. The technology that we can see as the closest today when it comes to large-scale conversion of shipping from fossil to emission-free fuel is the transition to hydrogen. This does not only apply to shipping and road traffic. On September 24, 2020, a plane took off from a small airport outside London. The only emission from the aircraft was water. The airline Airbus is working with technology that will make it possible to fly emission-free with hydrogen on stretches of up to 400 miles.39 This in turn will require large amounts of energy in the hydrogen production itself, and if the raw material is natural gas, it will also require carbon capture and storage. In other words, the key to the green shift is not reduced energy consumption. The green shift will require more energy. Therefore, the transition from carbon-based to emission-free energy is the key to the green shift, such as electric cars, emissionfree aviation and shipping, industrial production, and in reality, everything else. The

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world does not have an overconsumption of energy, as parts of the climate activist movement would have us believe. If a green shift is to become more than empty talk, and if the poorer parts of the world are to lift themselves out of poverty, the world has a major under-consumption of energy. The climate challenge cannot be met by reducing the world’s energy use. The “low energy society” will only lead to recession in our rich societies and lock the poorer parts of the world into continued poverty. Economic development cannot be separated from increased energy use,40 despite all attempts to show that it can be done.41 As long as the world’s energy regime is based on coal, oil and gas, economic growth and development will necessarily also lead to increased CO2 emissions.42 Therefore, the transformation of the world’s energy regime from carbon-based to emission-free energy, must be the most important and overarching goal for a sensible climate policy, both nationally and globally. As underlined earlier, most important in the fight against climate change should not simply be to wind up the oil industry, but to lay down strategies, financially, industrially and organizationally, for how the industrial capacity, expertise and infrastructure that has been built up through almost 50 years of petroleum operations, can be readjusted to support the transition to a carbon-neutral society. As long as there is a market for oil, there will also be a supply. To replace oil and gas, alternative emission-free and cheap alternative sources of energy therefore need to be developed. If the world fails in this, we will leave behind a poorer world for our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. They are the ones usually referred to as “future generations”.

A Green New Deal In the global climate debate, the label “Green New Deal” (hereafter GND) has stuck as a headline for a special strategy for a green shift. It refers to the American president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Keynes-inspired crisis programme to restore the American economy from the crisis in the 1930s, called the “New Deal”. In today’s climate debate, the idea has been linked to an aggressive investment and restructuring programme to transform society away from a carbon dependency to a green economy. There is no simple recipe for what GND is, or what a GND programme should be about. Generally, it is about something more than just a change to emission-free energy. At the same time, there is a change and restructuring of social institutions and the economic system, and it is to varying degrees a “utopian” programme away from today’s carbon-based, global economy to an alternative economic system that it has been difficult for the actors to fully explain. The proposals for a GND also have in common that, just like the original New Deal in the 1930s, they are based on a perception that the world is in crisis. This understanding of crisis has been dramatically actualized with the corona crisis, which hit the world economy almost overnight in February/March 2020. This has clearly influenced how various actors have interpreted the relevance of the GND programme. If we look at it roughly, we can distinguish between a historically European, an American and an EU variant of GND.

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Although it is the initiative of a GND in the USA that has primarily shaped the debate in recent years, the initiative, and the idea of a “green new deal”, has a European background that goes back to 2008. The first GND programme was launched by politicians and activists linked to the left in Labour and the environmental movement in Great Britain, after the financial crisis. The basic idea was not so much related to a climate crisis as to the economic crisis with its origin in the financial market. The “recovery” of the economy after the collapse was seen as an opportunity to also solve the climate problem. One of the central initiators was the economist Ann Pettifor. In her book The Case for the Green New Deal, which was published in 2019, she describes how the idea was to solve three problems simultaneously: the financial crisis, the climate crisis and the high oil price.43 Despite support for the idea both in Europe and the USA, she wrote that “our efforts were soon eclipsed by the chaotic aftermath of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy”.44 Here it could be objected that it was to some extent this chaos that the strategy was supposed to clean up. It may therefore look as if those who claim that in economic crisis, economic recovery will win over concern for the environment, have a strong point. It may also be that the original British initiative for a GND was too ambitious. The basic idea seems to have been to combine the solution to the climate problem with a total transformation of the global financial economy. It is also such a project that Ann Pettifor sticks to, in her latest book. Today’s political leaders, she writes, … [...] will have to dismantle and transform the current globalized financial system and its embedded ideology, to regain the powers and public authority needed to protect and repair the earth’s life supporting systems. […] The world can no longer afford the orthodox economic logic of financial global capitalism […].45

Correspondingly, the climate activist and author Naomi Klein writes that a Green New Deal must be combined with the abolition of the market economy and the transition to a “dramatically more humane economic model”. She also refers to IPCC for support, claiming that “we will not get the job done unless we are willing to embrace systematic economic and social changes”.46 Most prominent in the relevant debate has nevertheless been the American variant of GND. It also calls for stronger government control over the economy and investments, but it has far less pronounced ambitions to revolutionize the entire global financial economy. Given the current situation in the USA, an extremely liberal state with almost no public welfare schemes of the type we know from most countries in Europe, it may be understandable that the American strategy is based on a more “social democratic” line of reform. The proposal for an American GND was presented in a resolution to Congress, by the Democratic Congress representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on 5 February 2019.47 The plan lays out a programme that, over a ten-year period, will: • result in zero emissions of greenhouse gases through a programme for fair transition for all local communities and workers. • create millions of good, well-paid jobs and ensure growth and economic security for everyone in the United States.

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• ensure clean air and water, resilience to face climate and societal changes, a healthy diet, access to nature and a sustainable society for all. • promote justice and equality by stopping ongoing, preventing future and reversing historical oppression of vulnerable communities.48 As one can see, this is a quite ambitious programme. It is nevertheless a programme that is meant to be able to be carried out within today’s global economic system, albeit with stronger public and political management of the national economy. First and foremost, it is a fundamental break with conventional climate and environmental policy, where this has been handled as a sector programme and as “expenditure items” in the economy. Climate policy in the USA had for a long time been conducted as a debate about how costs could be reduced through the most “cost-effective” climate measures possible, something Obama also set out to do by joining the global agreement for the purchase and sale of climate quotas. This was seen as an effective stopgap when the attempt to establish a renewed global climate agreement collapsed at the summit in Copenhagen in 2009. The environmental movement in the USA gradually lost faith in the idea that it was possible to win and create a global consensus on a climate policy to reduce emissions. It gradually switched to an alternative strategy, to connect the climate issue to an offensive strategy that combines the climate fight with a fight for a more balanced and fairer USA. Parts of the Democratic Party, led by Bernie Sanders, have stood behind this GND strategy. Both the first industrial revolution in the nineteenth century and the second in the twentieth century depended on a strong and robust state that cooperated with private business, writes Jeremy Rifkin in his discussion of GND as a midwife for a third industrial revolution.49 Here, in other words, is a need for a far more active and intervening state than what is found ideologically supported in the USA today. Parts of the Democratic Party have quite rightly linked the development of a more “social democratic state” to an offensive investment programme which will simultaneously reshape the energy regime and the socio-economic system in the country, but do not have broad support. Thus, this too has become an issue that deeply divides America and which—to some extent rightly—is seen as an attack on the liberal economy and the introduction of a more active state.50 Many European countries, with their social democratic traditions, should be better equipped to capture some of the ideas from GND in a strategy towards a green shift, even if here too we have something to learn from the principle of linking climate measures with strategies for reduced social differences. The social democratic traditions should make such a strategy less revolutionary—and thus more realistic—in Europe than in the USA. The least “revolutionary” version of GND is the European Commission’s proposal for a European “Green Deal”. In the case of the EU, it is primarily about putting the label “Green Deal” on a strengthening of the EU’s existing climate policy, in the form of a programme to prioritize the financing of green investments and legislate the goal of climate neutrality by 2050.51 It is not possible to list all major and minor measures in the “road map” that the Commission has presented. It includes, among other things, the preparation of a new strategy for climate adaptation, the development of an industrial strategy for a circular economy, a strategy for the development of wind

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power, smart transport, measures to preserve biodiversity and so on. The strategy takes as its starting point the double threat posed by global warming and reduced biological diversity and aims to be an answer to both challenges: The European Green Deal is a response to these challenges. It is a new growth strategy that aims to transform the EU into a fair and prosperous society, with a modern, resource-efficient, and competitive economy where there are no net emissions of greenhouse gases in 2050 and where economic growth is decoupled from resources use.52

What is not particularly visible in the European Green Deal is the social dimension. This has a natural explanation in that the EU, to a far lesser extent than national states, has control over social and economic policy. It is, therefore, as can be seen from the quote above, primarily a growth strategy which aims to strengthen Europe’s global competitiveness with a programme for green transition and sustainable development. The programme was designed and launched before the corona crisis, and indeed before the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the energy crisis, and there is thus a certain uncertainty associated with the further development of the programme. The American and EU Green New Deal programmes are formulated within the framework of today’s economic and political systems. Critics on the more radical left call for more fundamental system changes. Here, Ann Pettifor’s anti-capitalist strategy, supported by activists such as Naomi Klein and others on the left, goes as far as to make the abolition of the capitalist economy a condition for the realization of a Green New Deal.53 More moderate supporters would claim that it should be possible to combine profitable investments with a green transition. This is a question of political governance, also within a capitalist market economy. The challenge for both the EU’s programme and the GND initiative in the USA is whether they can turn the recovery of the economy into a green recovery. The alternative will be either a recovery following the pattern of what happened after the financial crisis in 2008 and a setback for a green transition, or it could result in a much longer recession, which set the world economy back several decades. This danger has become even more threatening in the shadow of the Ukraine war and the economic setback caused by the energy crisis. Then the climate emissions will probably decrease, and we will get what some climate activists have longed for, namely a reduction of emissions through a reversal of economic growth. What will then be lost at the same time, is much of what has been built up in the rich world in the form of welfare schemes and economic prosperity, together with a reversal of the development towards growth and development that we have seen in the poorer part of the world during the last 50 years.

What About Nuclear Power? At the end of the day, all discussion of the green transition becomes a question of energy, of the transition from fossil-based to emission-free energy. In this discussion, there is one topic that is almost taboo among many climate and environmental

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activists: the question of nuclear power. Virtually all discussion of alternative energy today revolves around renewable energy, in addition to hydropower, primarily solar, wind and bioenergy. True, there are other forms of energy waiting for attention, such as wave power, geothermal energy, tidal energy and “salt power”. The form of energy that could really make a difference, and where the potential is as good as inexhaustible in a millennium perspective, namely nuclear power, is on the other hand virtually absent from the debate. Germany aims at phasing out nuclear and shift to wind and solar. The discussion about the Green New Deal in the USA involves combining the green shift with the reduction of nuclear power. At the same time, we see that the development of renewable energy, primarily wind power, is also facing increasing resistance. There is no doubt that wind power is problematic. Firstly, it requires large areas. The most relevant areas for wind power are to be found in valuable natural areas. Wind turbines are harmful to bird life and give those who get 200-m-high wind machines in their immediate area the experience of having their landscape razed. Nevertheless, there will be a trade-off against the need to develop alternative energy. The “solution” is often to try to circumvent the problem by pointing to the possibilities for energy saving, the development of more hydropower (although this also quickly meets resistance), or the deep ecological solution: Returning to the “low-energy society” and a “simpler life”. If we disregard the “degrowth” option for the time being, the current strategy for conversion to renewable energy still has a major problem: From a global perspective, it will in practice be impossible to fully replace the current use of carbon-based energy through the development of solar—and wind power.54 If we go back to 1950, oil, coal and gas accounted for about 63% of a total global energy consumption of 28 000 TWh, and traditional bioenergy (like wood and charcoal) and hydropower accounted for 37%.55 Despite the massive development of renewable energy, primarily solar and wind in the last couple of decades, figures from 2021 show that about 83% of the global energy consumption of approximately 160 000 TWh is covered by oil, coal and gas, around 17% by renewable and a tiny 2–3% by nuclear.56 Even though there has been a significant investment in renewable energy in the world in the last 20 years, as the climate problem has become ever more pressing, the development has far from compensated for an even much faster growth in energy demand which has been covered by oil, coal and gas. Although it is important to develop renewable energy in the green shift, it is still illusory to believe that the world’s energy needs today and in the future, can be met by renewable energy only.57 Today’s renewable energy in the form of wind and sun is also unstable in the sense that it varies with day and night, weather and wind, and that excess energy production for a period is difficult to store for windless nights. Here, hydropower has its great strength in that it can be stored, and thus provide consistent production regardless of weather and wind. In the short term, gas is a better alternative as compared to coal as “balancing power” because the greenhouse gas emissions from gas are much lower than from coal. The explanation for reduced emissions in the USA is largely due to a transition from coal to gas. Equally, it is a fact that together with the development of solar and wind power, the production of

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coal power in the world is also increasing to serve as “balancing power” and ensure steady electricity production.58 After the Fukushima accident in 2011, Germany decided to phase out nuclear power in favour of renewable energy—mainly wind power. A study, published in 2019, of the effects this has had, concludes that the electricity production that has been lost through the phasing out of nuclear power has largely been replaced by coal power and imports (i.e., gas from Russia and from the North Sea gas fields). The costs of this are calculated at approximately 12 billion dollars per year, including the costs of lost human lives due to local air pollution because of the production of coal power. The reduction of nuclear power in Germany has so far been calculated to cost approximately 1,100 deaths annually, or three per day, due to air pollution from the new coal-fired power plants.59 With the energy sources we can currently see, only a massive development of nuclear power will have a chance to “decarbonize” global energy production. This applies with today’s energy use, but it applies even more if we consider that today’s poor billions of people should be able to raise their living standards, and that two to three billion more people on earth during this century will also require large amounts of new energy. Seen in this perspective, there is hardly any alternative to investing in nuclear power, if one takes the climate threat seriously. This is also the energy source with least problems. Nuclear power, in contrast to all forms of carbon-based energy, is completely emission-free. It is estimated that pollution from coal power kills several million people every year. A scientific study published in the journal Environmental Research in the spring of 2021 claimed that in 2018, approximately eight million people died globally due to air pollution caused by emissions from fossil-based energy every year.60 In other words, it is not only the threat of global warming that makes it imperative to switch from carbon-based to emission-free energy. Accidents with nuclear power plants have so far cost a few hundred human lives.61 The problem is that the accidents with nuclear power are extremely dramatic and visible. The many millions who die every year from air pollution due to coal-fired power and emissions from carbon-based transport, die “invisibly” and one by one. The fact that far more people die because of coal power can of course be linked to the fact that it is precisely coal power and other carbon-based forms of energy that dominate global energy production. It is therefore relevant to look at deaths per unit of energy produced. A study published in the medical journal The Lancet has calculated deaths per year per TWh.62 This shows that lignite accounts for approximately 33 deaths per year per TWh produced, coal in general for close to 25, oil for 18, gas for closer to three, while nuclear power, by comparison, is responsible for a vanishingly small 0.07 deaths per year. All forms of renewable energy also require more lives than nuclear energy, but these are still very low numbers. The only problem is that all forms of renewable energy have several other disadvantages, primarily the conflict with nature conservation and the rather indisputable fact that it will be unrealistic to achieve global carbon neutrality only with the help of renewable energy, without either global economic collapse, or that some form of global eco-dictatorship is forcing through a worldwide “degrowth”.

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In contrast to wind and solar energy, but also compared to hydropower, the development of nuclear power requires almost no intervention in nature. This is a dramatic difference. The Hinkley Point nuclear power plant, which is under construction on the coast of Wales, occupies about one square kilometre of land. It will produce 25.5 TWh of electricity. This corresponds to a fifth of all Norwegian hydropower, with its dammed water reservoirs and dry rivers and waterfalls, and almost twice as much as the power production from all the windmills in Denmark.63 There are mainly three strong counterarguments against nuclear power: First, there is the risk associated with accidents at nuclear power plants. The two major disasters that are usually referred to are Chernobyl and Fukushima. It was the meltdown of the Fukushima reactor that caused Germany to initiate the phase-out of nuclear power. When all is said and done, the effects of these accidents are still relatively small compared to the negative effects of all other forms of energy production. It is in a way like the difference between travelling by car and by plane: Travelling by plane is demonstrably the safest way to travel and much safer than travelling by car. Equally, plane accidents get far more attention and create a greater fear than travelling by car. With the development of technology and more attention directed towards the location of new nuclear power plants, the risk of major accidents also decreases. Here, too, extensive technological development is taking place, which will hopefully make the disadvantages associated with nuclear power even smaller in the future. The other major counterargument is the pollution problem linked to the storage of the nuclear waste. As a non-expert, it is of course difficult to be certain about this. Nevertheless, it is the case that all forms of energy produce waste in one way or another. The wind power plant must be dismantled at one point, and the material must be deposited or recycled. It has turned out to be a big problem. The problem of plutonium disposal is often held up as an enormous threat, as it is claimed to produce deadly radioactivity for hundreds of thousands of years. As the Norwegian nuclear physicist Sunniva Rose writes in a column on Norwegian Broadcasting (“NRK Ytring”), the question of how toxic it is, depends on what you do with it. Deposited inaccessible to humans, the nuclear waste is harmless. Other toxins that people come into contact with on a daily basis, such as caffeine, are more lethal in concentrated doses than plutonium. In the chronicle, Rose refers to a Finnish study of the effects that could result from radioactive waste stored underground leaking out. A person who lived above this waste would get an extra annual dose of radioactivity that would be equivalent to eating two bananas (because bananas contain radioactive potassium). In addition, plutonium can be recycled and used as fuel with new technology in today’s new nuclear reactors.64 Other common counterarguments are that nuclear energy is expensive, that it cannot be developed quickly enough to avert the “climate catastrophe” and that it is not a renewable resource as the reserves of uranium are limited.65 All this is in a strict sense true but should be put into perspective. The argument that it takes too long seems unreasonable, seen in relation to how long it can alternatively take to replace all fossil-based energy with renewables. The argument seems even more unreasonable when it comes from environmental organizations which are among the strongest opponents of the development of wind power. Development of nuclear

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power is expensive, but the technology is undergoing rapid development, and could be developed even faster if greater resources were invested. The costs of new plants are decreasing, in the same way as they have been for wind and solar energy. It has been claimed that it is entirely realistic to develop nuclear power at around EUR 0.06 per KWh.66 It is true that nuclear power is not renewable. Uranium is a finite resource. Still the world may have uranium reserves for the next 10,000 years.67 In addition, as mentioned, rapid technological development is taking place, where one of the most interesting is the development of new types of reactors, based on thorium. India in particular is far ahead in developing this technology, partly because the country has large deposits of thorium. Known reserves in the world are in practice inexhaustible. In other words, there is good reason to look at nuclear power as a real alternative. No element of a global green shift is problem-free, and nuclear power obviously has problems associated with it. Still nuclear power is probably the only source of electricity that can be expanded quickly enough to meet the 2° target.68 This means that one of the most important obstacles to achieving the 2° target is activist groups within the modern nature and environmental movement. These groups are not only opposed to the development of nuclear power, but they also campaign against wind power and to some extent also other forms of renewable energy. The only answer they usually suggest is energy saving, the “low-energy society”, degrowth and a return to a “simpler life”. Seen from a democratic perspective, this is problematic, as it can hardly be carried out democratically. It also seems quite paradoxical that the same climate activists who, with reference to the IPCC’s so-called 1.5° report, claim that we only have a few years left, at the same time ignore the fact that the same report clearly states that in order to reach the 1.5° target, we must dramatically increase the use of nuclear power in the world, and that it must at least triple from the current level until 2050.69

Some Reflections on Adaptation to a Changing Climate If the world shall be able to handle the climate threat, it is important to reduce emissions, change energy use and develop more energy-smart societies. Nevertheless, as I have underscored several times, we cannot solve the climate problem. Even if we reduce global emissions and actually succeed in keeping the average global temperature increase within the 1.5° target, significant climate changes will occur. Furthermore, we should perhaps also be realistic and listen to the researchers, who say that it is quite unrealistic to limit global warming within the 1.5° limit.70 Therefore, it is not enough just to be concerned with climate measures that can reduce emissions. We should be at least as concerned with adapting society to a future with a warmer, and above all, more unpredictable climate. In the first phases of the climate debate, it was close to taboo to talk about climate adaptation. It was seen as giving up the fight against global warming.71 It was jokingly said that the scepticism about climate adaptation was like the scepticism about sex education in some environments: too much knowledge could lead

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to dangerous behaviour and “immorality”. But, as was commented: “For better or worse, we are already pregnant.”72 It was only in the third IPCC report in 2001 that climate adaptation was made a topic of its own.73 Subsequently, climate adaptation has received ever-increasing attention in the later IPCC reports.74 Whereas mitigation may be seen as protecting nature from the effects of human activity, adaptation in the beginning, around 2000, mostly seen as a form of “defence activity” to protect society against a nature affected by climate change.75 The challenge was to adjust infrastructure, such as buildings, water and drainage, roads and protection against flooding, landslides and mudslides, so that we could carry on with “business as usual”, despite climate change. The central challenge has been to scale down global climate models, to best predict the regional and local effects of global warming.76 This has been called “outcome vulnerability”.77 This perspective is being challenged in recent climate and adaptation research, and in the latest report from the IPCC. The model-based future is notoriously uncertain, and the further into the future one tries to see, and the more detailed geographical perspective one puts on the future scenarios, the greater the uncertainty. Gradually, it has also been accepted, albeit reluctantly, that climate change is here to stay. If we consider the quantities of greenhouse gases that have already been released into the atmosphere, it will not be possible to stop global warming at a level that we can adapt us away from, and so that society can otherwise continue as before.Example of this is seen when milder winters with less snow threatens winter holiday resorts and skiing. The answer has so far been to produce large amounts of artificial snow to compensate for the effecters of climate change. One might ask whether it is good climate adaptation to use large amounts of energy to produce artificial snow. The IPCC report now talks about adaptation, not only as measures for society to be able to continue with “business as usual”, but also adaptation with the aim of changing society in interaction with a climate and a nature that is becoming more uncertain and riskier. The challenge for climate adaptation is therefore to handle new and composite forms of uncertainty.78 According to the IPCC, there is a need, not only for traditional adjustment, but for a more radical transformation of society. Here, climate adaptation becomes a more extensive process, which involves readjusting society towards a future with a different, more changeable and less predictable climate. Climate adaptation will therefore not only involve physical adaptation to, and defence against, a changing climate, but more fundamental adjustment, which also has to do with changes in human ways of acting and thinking. Adaptation should be “mainstreamed” into all policy sectors of local politics it is underlined in a German programme for adaptation. “This simply means ‘factoring climate change into our thinking’—in other words, considering climate risks and adaptation aspects in every decision we make”.79 This will not only be a question of making use of existing knowledge, but a question of learning and innovation. If we accept that today we live in a world where the climate is changing, this also opens a more positive perspective. We can, like Mike Hulme, ask what “the climate can do for us”. This opens, for example, for the possibility to make climate adaptation part of a green shift, down at the grassroots level in the individual local communities. In other words, the perception of, and the

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relationships between, nature and society must be redefined.80 No general recipe can be given for what such an adaptation policy should entail in practice in individual regions and in different parts of the world, because climate change act differently in different locations. Basically, it will have to do with building societies that are more flexible and ready to face changes. Because climate adaptation must primarily take place regionally and locally, regional and local plans and policies stand out as important instruments in the work on climate adaptation. Gradually, the view on adaptation has also changed from largely being a “defence activity” to prevent and protect society from the effects of climate change, to becoming a more active strategy for developing societies that can function well in a changing and uncertain climate. With this shift, climate adaptation becomes more of a political than a technical challenge. Looking back at the first phases of climate adaptation in Norway, research shows that adaptation was mainly seen as a technical matter, and left with the technical sector in the municipalities and regional authorities. The politicians were largely absent.81 Even today, the politicians seem to be unconcerned with climate adaptation. A study of how climate adaptation is handled in the municipal plans in Norwegian municipalities shows that in most municipalities, adaptation is not mentioned as a problem or challenge at all.82 The community part of the municipal plan can be seen as the politicians’ political “agenda” for the challenges the municipality faces. At a time when adaptation to a changing climate will probably become an increasing challenge at the local level, it is therefore a democratic problem that climate adaptation seems to go under the political radar of the politicians in most Norwegian municipalities. One may suspect that this is the case also in other countries and more generally. Adaptation has become a concern for national policies, but to become effective it must also be taken seriously down to the very local level.

No Quick Fix There is no “quick fix” to “wicked problems”, so also with the climate problem. In this chapter and in the previous one, I have argued that instead of aiming to “solve” the climate problem, policies should rather be directed towards approaching the climate problem more piecemeal. Take small and large pieces of the big “elephant”, to stick to the elephant metaphor, and to place greater emphasis on climate adaptation. First and foremost, as the researchers behind “The Hartwell Paper” suggested, one should loosen the link between the emissions problem and the energy problem and attack these two problems separately. We have seen, both in Chap. 5 and in Chap. 7, how the attempts to force emissions down as a means to restructure energy production has not only been partially unsuccessful, but also created counter-reactions that contribute to undermining democracy. This is linked to the fact that many of these measures, such as taxes and tolls, seem socially and economically unfair. I have therefore argued for a so-called carbon tax with rebate which, in addition to contributing to reduced emissions, will also have a social and economic equalizing effect. But most important,

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as I see it, is to attack the energy problem more directly, and to combine this with a massive public effort to realize a green shift. This will be a win–win strategy that both creates economic growth and development, and which reduces emissions through a gradual restructuring of society’s energy mix in the direction of emissionfree energy. Nuclear power should, and must, have a place here. Transition to a carbon neutral world is not possible without massive development of nuclear energy. Finally, politicians and climate activists should listen, also to climate scientists who point out that it may be unrealistic to keep global warming within 1.5°. I therefore argue that measures and strategies for climate adaptation should be given more greater attention in the climate debate, and in the governing authorities’ handling of the climate problem. A simple way to create distrust of democracy is to constantly set high goals that most people perceive are unlikely to be realized. A recurring theme throughout this book—and in this chapter—has been to point out how a strategy aimed at “solving” the climate and environmental problem through “degrowth” and a return to a “simpler life”, will neither solve the climate and environmental problem nor can it be carried out as a democratic project. It is this argument that I will elaborate on in the next and last chapter.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

Hawken (2018). Ibid. p. 10. Ibid. p. 81. Ibid. p. 82. Ibid. pp. 172–217. On February 22, 2022, the journal Nature reported in a news release that the ITER reactor in Great Britain was about to start up the world’s largest experiment with fusion energy. (Gibney, 2021) In November 2022 the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California announced that researchers at the laboratory had overcome a major barrier—producing more energy from a fusion experiment than was put in. Valmot (2015). Prins et al. (2010). Pielke (2010, s. 108). Prins et al. (2010, p. 22). Victor and Kennel (2014). Pielke (2010), Victor and Kennel (2014). Prins and Rayner (2007). On circular economy, see for example (Ellen MacArthur Foundation; Lundqvist, 2017; Preston, 2012). For a comprehensive study of technological solutions to the energy problem, claiming that “no miracles are needed” to decarbonize the world’s energy production with renewable energy from water, wind and sun, see Jacobson (2023). Kunkel (2018, p. 92). Nordhaus (2013). See William Nordhaus’ Nobel lecture: (Nordhaus, 2018). See CEP Council on Economic policies: https://www.cepweb.org/denmarks-green-tax-ref orm-g20-countries-should-take-notice/.

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20. https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/green-taxation-0/carbon-border-adjustment-mechan ism_en. 21. For an overview of the Canadian system and how it works, see this post in the Financial Post: https://business.financialpost.com/commodities/energy/canada-to-collect-c2-81-bln-indirect-revenue-from-federal-carbon-price-in-2019-20. 22. See: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/01/carbon-tax-with-rebates-might-be-popular-ifpeople-noticed-the-rebate/. 23. Fjeld (2018). 24. Paul Romer in interview with Canadian Broadcasting: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asitha ppens/as-it-happens-monday-edition-1.4843029/nobel-prize-winning-economist-says-car bon-taxes-are-the-solution-to-climate-change-1.4854639. 25. Kallis (2018), Aall and Næss (2019). 26. Stoknes (2019). 27. Piketty (2014). 28. Pinker (2019), Rosling et al. (2018). 29. Rosling op.cit. 30. Fiorino (2018, s. 94), Hawken (2018, s. 222). 31. Stoknes (2019). 32. Since then, Stoknes developed his arguments for green growth more thoroughly in his book “Grønn vekst” (Green growth) which was published in 2020 (Stoknes, 2020). 33. Giddens (2009), Pielke (2010). 34. Reinert (2009). 35. Reinert (2009, p. 28). 36. IEA (2021). 37. https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2019. 38. https://ourworldindata.org/energy. 39. Alestig (2020). 40. Kander (2013). 41. Jackson (2009). 42. Environment, Energy, and Economy (1997). 43. Pettifor (2019, ss. 3–4). 44. Ibid. p. 5. 45. Ibid. p. 59. 46. Klein (2019a, s. 33). 47. Ibid. p. 10. 48. Ibid. p. 11. 49. Rifkin (2019, p. 32). 50. Zycher (2019). 51. European Commission (2019). 52. Ibid. 53. Klein (2019b), Pettifor (2019). 54. (Shellenberger, 2020). 55. For a more detailed account of the global trends in energy consumption, see Chap. 1. 56. 1TWh = 1 billion kilowatt hours. 57. Shellenberger (2020). 58. Ibid. 59. Jarvis et al. (2019). 60. Vohra et al. (2021). 61. Shellenberger (2020, s. 151). 62. Here as reproduced in Ritchie (2020). 63. Heggdal (2018). 64. Rose (2020). 65. See, for example, a post from the owner? energy worker in Nature and Youth: (Pasovic, 2020). 66. Heggdal (2018).

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67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

Bendix (2010). Heggdal (2018). IPCC (2018, s. Fig. SPM. 3B). Bergskaug (2020). Giddens (2009, p. 162). Rayner and Malone (1998, p. 112). Orlove (2009). IPCC (2022). Stehr and Storch (2005). Hanssen-Bauer et al. (2009, 2015). O’Brien and Wolf (2010). Orderud and Naustdalslid (2018). Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuklear Safety (2016, s. 28). 80. Adger et al. (2009), Knieling (2016). 81. Hovik et al. (2015). 82. Naustdalslid (2019).

References Aall, C., & Næss, P. (2019, juni 30). “Reell grønn vekst”: Noe nytt eller bare mer av… [Text/html]. Harvest Magazine. https://www.harvestmagazine.no/pan/reell-gronn-vekst-noe-nytt-eller-baremer-av-det-samme Adger, W. N., Lorentzoni, I., & O’Brien, K. (2009). Adapting to climate change: Thresholds. Cambridge University Press. Alestig, P. (2020, October 22). Tekniskt genombrott skapar klimatsmarta flyg–på riktigt | SvD. SvD.se. https://www.svd.se/nu-tands-drommen-om-att-flyga-klimatsmart-pa-riktigt Bendix, H. (2010, January 10). Spør en forsker: Når går verden tom for uran? https://forskning.no/ spor-en-forsker-energi-radioaktivitet/spor-en-forsker-nar-gar-verden-tom-for-uran/877580 Bergskaug, E. (2020a, February 19). Forskere om 1,5-gradersmålet: Det kommer ikke til å gå. abcnyheter. https://www.abcnyheter.no/a/195650251/ Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Towards the Circular Economy. Opportunities for the consumer goods sector. Ellen MacArthur Foundation. https://emf-packs.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/ Towards%20the%20Circular%20Economy%20VOL%202/TCE_Report%202013.pdf?AWS AccessKeyId=AKIAITAQSOURJ2COPP2A&Signature=moAAOFAgzEk2XC5t8LN1FZaC nAo%3D&Expires=1442398845 Environment, Energy, and Economy. (1997). Strategies for sustainability. United Nations University Press. European Commission. (2019). The European green deal communication from the commission. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1588580774040&uri=CELEX:520 19DC0640 Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety. (2016). Adaptation to climate change. Initial progress report by the Federal Government on Germany’s adaptation strategy. https://www.bmuv.de/fileadmin/Daten_BMU/Pools/Broschueren/fortschri ttsbericht_anpassung_klimawandel_en_bf.pdf Fiorino, D. J. (2018). Can democracy handle climate change? Polity Press. Fjeld, I. E. (2018, November 13). Canada innfører karbonskatt som vil gi mer penger til folk flest. NRK. https://www.nrk.no/urix/canada-innforer-karbonskatt-som-vil-gi-mer-pengertil-folk-flest-1.14264523 Gibney, E. (2021). Fuel for world’s largest fusion reactor ITER is set for test run. Nature. https:// doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00408-1

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Giddens, A. (2009). The politics of climate change. Polity Press. Hanssen-Bauer, I., Drange, H., Førland, E. J., Roald, ’Lars A., Børsheim, K. Y., Hisdal, H., Lorence, D., Nesje, A., Sandven, S., Sorteberg, A., Sundby, S., Vasskog, K., & Adlandsvik, B. (2009, September). Klima i Norge 2100. Bakgrunnsmateriale til NOU Klimatilpassing. Norsk klimasenter. Hanssen-Bauer, I., Førland, E. J., Haddeland, I., Hisdal, H., Mayer, S., Nesje, N., Nilsen, J. Ø. E., Sandven, S., Sandø, A. B., Sorteberg, A., & Ådlandsvik, B. (2015). Klima i Norge (Nr. 2/2015; NCCS report). Meteorologisk institutt, Uni Research & NVE. Hawken, P. (Red.). (2018). Drawdown: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming. Heggdal, Ø. (2018, October 3). Debatt: Klima og kjernekraft-Nei, kjernekraft er ikke for dyrt. dagbladet.no. https://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/nei-kjernekraft-er-ikke-for-dyrt/70278391 Hovik, S., Naustdalslid, J., Reitan, M., & Muthanna, T. (2015). Adaptation to climate change: Professional networks and reinforcing institutional environments. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy. https://doi.org/10.1068/c1230h IEA. (2021). Net zero by 2050—A roadmap for the global energy sector (p. 224). IPCC. (2018). Global warming of 1.5 °C. Summary for policymakers. http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ sr15/ IPCC. (2022). AR6 climate change 2022: Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability—IPCC. https:// www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-ii/ Jackson, T. (2009). Prosperity without growth. Economics for a finite planet. Earthscan. Jacobson, M. Z. (2023). No miracles needed: How today’s technology can save our climate and clean our air. Cambridge University Press. Jarvis, S., Deschenes, O., & Jha, A. (2019). The private and external costs of Germany’s nuclear phase-out (Nr. w26598; s. w26598). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/ 10.3386/w26598 Kallis, G. (2018). Degrowth. Agenda Publishing. Kander, A. (2013). Power to the people: Energy in Europe over the last five centuries. Princeton University Press. Klein, N. (2019a). On fire the burning case for a green new deal. Allen Lane Penguin Random House. Klein, N. (2019b). On fire: The (burning) case for a green new deal. Knieling, J. (2016). Climate adaptation governance in cities and regions: Theoretical fundamentals and practical evidence. Wiley Kunkel, B. (2018). Herman daley. Ecologies of scale. Interview by Benjamin Kunkel. New Left Review, 109. Lundqvist, L. (2017). Miljöpolitik—I går, i dag, i morgon. Arkiv Förlag. Naustdalslid, J. (2019). Klimatilpassing som utfordring for kommunal planlegging. Plan, 51(03), 50–55. Nordhaus, W. (2018, December 8). Climate change: The ultimate challenge for economics. Nobel Lecture in Economic Sciences Stockholm University. https://www.nobelprize.org/upl oads/2018/10/nordhaus-slides.pdf Nordhaus, W. D. (2013). The climate casino: Risk, uncertainty, and economics for a warming world. Yale University Press. O’Brien, K. L., & Wolf, J. (2010). A values-based approach to vulnerability and adaptation to climate change. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.30 Orderud, G. I., & Naustdalslid, J. (2018). The understanding and role of uncertainty and risk in climate change adaptation: Local and central authorities in Norway. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 25(7), 579–591. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504509. 2018.1443524 Orlove, B. (2009). The past, the present and some possible futures of adaptation. In Adapting to climate change. Thresholds, values governance. Cambridge University Press.

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Pasovic, U. (2020, Februar 20). Nå må vi legge atomkrafthypen død. pluss.nettavisen.no. https:/ /pluss.nettavisen.no/debatt/meninger/leserbrev/na-ma-vi-legge-atomkrafthypen-dod/o/5-9576773?ns_campaign=article&ns_mchannel=recommend_button&ns_source=fac ebook&ns_linkname=facebook&ns_fee=0 Pettifor, A. (2019). The case for the green new deal. Pielke, R. A. (2010). The climate fix what scientists and politicians won’t tell you about global warming. Basic Books. http://public.eblib.com/EBLPublic/PublicView.do?ptiID=584892 Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Pinker, S. (2019). Enlightenment now: The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. Preston, F. (2012). A global redesign? Shaping the circular economy (Nr. 2012/2. Chatham House Briefing Paper. Chatham House. http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/ Research/Energy,%20Environment%20and%20Development/bp0312_preston.pdf Prins, G., & Rayner, S. (2007a). Time to dich Kyoto. Nature, 449, 973–976. Prins, G., Galiana, I., Green, C., Gundmann, R., Hulme, M., Korhola, A., Laird, F., Nordhaus, T., Pielke jnr, R., Rayner, S., Sarewitz, D., Shellenberger, M., Stehr, N., & Tezuka, H. (2010). The Hartwell paper. A new direction for climate policy after the crash of 2009. London School of Economics. http://www.google.se/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd= 2&ved=0CDYQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Feprints.lse.ac.uk%2F27939%2F1%2FHartwel lPaper_English_version.pdf&ei=Vw96U_ClCqz_yAOJ04C4Bw&usg=AFQjCNFKO56G7cV Vp14pNyoPwiP2w6uCig&sig2=pMHcT2HHiC0mlCtL3kTY4w&bvm=bv.66917471,d.bGQ Rayner, S., & Malone, E. L. (Red.). (1998). Human choice and climate change. Battelle Press. Reinert, E. S. (2009). Spontant kaos: Økonomi i en ulvetid. Res Publica. Rifkin, J. (2019). The green new deal: Why the fossil fuel civilization will collapse by 2028, and the bold economic plan to save life on Earth (1st ed.). Martin’s Press. Ritchie, H. (2020). What are the safest sources of energy? Our World in Data. https://ourworldi ndata.org/safest-sources-of-energy Rose, S. (2020, September 27). Ikke velg bort kjernekraft på grunn av avfallet. NRK. https://www. nrk.no/ytring/ikke-velg-bort-kjernekraft-pa-grunn-av-avfallet-1.15160250 Rosling, H., Rosling, O., & Rönnlund, A. R. (2018). Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world--and why things are better than you think (1st ed.). Flatiron Books. Shellenberger, M. (2020). Apocalypse never: Why environmental alarmism hurts us all (1st ed.). Harper. Stehr, N., & von Storch, H. (2005). Introduction to papers on mitigation and adaptation strategies for climate change: Protecting nature from society or protecting society from nature? Environmental Science & Policy, 8(6), 537–540. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2005.08.001 Stoknes, P. E. (2019, mai 28). Reell grønn vekst er i dypøkologiens ånd [Text/html]. Harvest Magazine. https://www.harvestmagazine.no/pan/er-gronn-vekst-en-illusjon Stoknes, P. E. (2020). Grønn vekst. En sunn økonomi for det 21. Århundre. Tiden Norsk Forlag. Valmot, O. R. (2015). Hvis dette er sant, blir oljen verdiløs. TU.no. https://www.tu.no/artikler/hvisdette-er-sant-blir-oljen-verdilos/223232 Victor, D. G., & Kennel, C. F. (2014). Climate policy: Ditch the 2 °C warming goal. Nature, 514(7520), 30–31. https://doi.org/10.1038/514030a Vohra, K., Vodonos, A., Schwartz, J., Marais, E. A., Sulprizio, M. P., & Mickley, L. J. (2021). Global mortality from outdoor fine particle pollution generated by fossil fuel combustion: Results from GEOS-Chem. Environmental Research, 195, 110754. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. envres.2021.110754 Zycher, B. (2019). The green new deal. Economic and political analytics. American Enterprise Institute.

Chapter 9

The Dream of Paradise

Modern society, with its economic growth and large consumption, has rightly been made responsible for the climate problem. It is indisputably true that the carbondriven economic growth that the world has experienced over the past 200 years has global warming as one of its downsides. The parts of the climate movement that are inspired by ecological and deep ecological thinking have therefore primarily directed its criticism at economic growth and argued that growth must be reversed. We must adapt to a type of society that existed before it all “took off”, and where nature and society were in balance, it is claimed. My counterargument in this book is that such a return to a utopian “paradise” is politically impossible, without at the same time to abolishing democracy.1 Here the Swedish philosopher Torbjörn Tennsjö is right: It would require a “global despotic government”.2 Economist Wilfred Beckerman’s criticism of the Club of Rome and Limits to Growth back in 1974 is just as relevant today, even if it is now the climate problem that has taken the place of the ecological crisis: [T]he risk of future catastrophe on account of the sort of factors that the eco-doomsters are talking about are insignificant by comparison with the enormous economic and social costs – not to mention political costs (since democratic government would have to be sacrificed) – of trying to stop economic growth.3

I have therefore argued that the world must learn to live with the climate problem, attack it “bit by bit”, and that reducing the economy and rejecting democracy to “save the climate” will not serve its own purpose. The alternative must be, as I have discussed in the previous chapter, to steer the content of economic growth towards a carbon neutral society, primarily through a dramatic growth in the development of emission-free energy. I still think that very few of those who argue for a return to a more traditional society and a simpler life have reflected on what kind of political mechanisms stand in the way of such a return to a paradisiacal state of innocence. Many who argue in favour of slowing down or reversing economic growth also seem to do so without much thought for what the alternative “decline society” should look like. They seem to think that the world can go on as usual, only with a more or less reduced level © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Naustdalslid, The Climate Threat. Crisis for Democracy?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34471-8_9

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of consumption. This is not the case, and in this sense, it is easier to take seriously those who try to outline the alternative ideal society. I will therefore end this book by trying to shed some light on this discussion, from my point of view, and I will start by letting the Swedish “environmental guru” and climate activist, Professor Johan Rockström, describe for us the dream of the green paradise.

About Recreating Paradise One summer day in 2015, I was driving on the E6 motorway in southern Sweden, listening to the popular music and talk programme “Summer in P1” on Swedish Radio. Here, big and small Swedish celebrities can talk about anything and play their favourite music. This summer day it was Sweden’s environmental political celebrity, professor and environmental activist Johan Rockström, who shared with us his reflections on how the world today is facing a climate and environmental crisis. The earth is approaching its limits, said the professor. If we do not keep our consumption within nature’s limits, we face a global catastrophe. In our new planetary age, the Anthropocene, we humans have acquired the ability to exceed nature’s tolerance. The task that humanity now faces is to use our control over nature to steer us back to the Holocenethe geological epoch in which humans have lived on earth for 12,000 years, since the last Ice Age. The Holocene, the professor said, was the time when the planet was in a “recovery position”. Humans developed societies within the limits of nature. Nature was stable and predictable. The relationship between nature and society was a coherent, stable idyll from one millennium to the next. It was this condition that the professor wanted to recreate. “The Holocene is the planet’s Paradise, our Garden of Eden”, Professor Rockström told the radio listeners this day in July day, 2015. During the past five to six years, an increasing number of climate activists and researchers have joined Professor Rockström’s principle for the way out of the climate and environmental crisis: The world must return to a balance between society and nature. We overconsume nature’s resources at an ever-increasing pace. In line with the (deep) ecological heritage of ancestors such as Arne Næss, we must therefore adapt our consumption and our lifestyle to the limits set by nature. As early as 2009, Rockstrøm, together with a large group of natural scientists and experts on the global system, had developed a set of global indicators to identify the limits of the Holocenewhat they called “a safe operating space for humanity”.4 One may say that they took the ideas of the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth5 one step further, by attempting to quantify the limits of global growth within the Holocene.6 Together with Per Espen Stoknes, a Norwegian climate psychologist, economist and green politician, Rockström did also, with experience from the Nordic countries, try to demonstrate how it is possible to combine green growth with development that stays within the limits of what the planet can tolerate.7 Stoknes elaborates on this in an article in the online Norwegian journal Pan, where he argues that it is not only necessary, but also possible, to maintain a certain level of economic growth

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within the limits set by nature. The challenge is to turn today’s “grey growth” which contributes to climate emissions and the loss of nature and to global warmingto an environmentally friendly restructuring of society, in the form of “green growth”.8 Realor—or genuine—green growth is just that: a model that makes the old grey growth old-fashioned and inadequate. The idea is that “rapid, new green growth can outcompete and displace the grey growth”, he writes. The alternative to growth, he claims, is depression, mass unemployment and social upheaval.

Forward Towards the Past However, the idea of green growth was not at all well received by more orthodox deep ecologists, and Stoknes’ defence of green growth led to a lively debate among Norwegian ecologists. “The idea of a society with real green growth is like the communists’ dream of a classless society: a vision that will quickly do more harm than good to try to realize”, on critic writes.9 His alternative is a green downsizing of the money economy. He wants to return to a simpler lifestyle, based on more artisanal production. Fossil tractors will be replaced by muscle power, which will create tens of thousands of new jobs in the primary industries. We are going back to a time when life was lived locally: “Local community centres, inns, dance halls and village festivals get a long-awaited Renaissance. Regional and local identities are strengthened at the expense of flattening and commercial mass culture”.10 According to another commentator, the environmental movement has been hijacked by technology optimists who only concentrate on the climate problem and forget that new technology to deal with climate change also leads to the “destruction of nature”. This applies, for example, to mining, wind turbines and changing land use. With reference to the report from the UN’s environmental panel, he states that we must quickly reverse growth, stop using more wood, minerals, metal, cement, plastic and land.11 Correspondingly, still another commentator claims that as long as “politicians and businesses assume that green growth only is about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the pressure on untouched nature will be there”. The low-emission society is a mistake. We must build cities and towns, not only so that we minimize emissions, but minimize the use of energy. The villages can revert to “small village-like dense settlementslike in the old days”, he writes.12 If we are to save nature, we must steer towards a low-energy society, rather than a low-emission society.13 Two professors, Carlo Aall and Petter Næss, also joined the criticism of Stoknes, in claiming that that green growth is basically no different from other forms of economic growth. Like the other critics, they claim that decoupling growth from environmental destruction is an illusion. Secondly, they claim that in “rich countries like Norway, the growth in gross national product per inhabitant […] should stop sooner rather than later, and instead be replaced by a solidarity downscaling of the economy to an environmentally sound level”.14 The solidarity side of the downscaling of the standard of living in rich countries must consist of a redistribution of our prosperity, to increase the standard

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of living for the world’s poor. However, nothing is said about the mechanisms for how this should be done. Professor Rockström has also changed his opinion, concluding that green growth will not be able to keep global warming within 1.5°. In an article in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, published four years after the radio broadcast I listened to, he writes that he has felt compelled to put a question mark behind two fundamental arguments that he has always defended, namely that it is possible to stop global warming at 1.5° and that it is possible to achieve green growth.15 It is nevertheless difficult to see that he has an alternative answer, and to the extent that he has, it is not very original: to set an end date for the use of fossil energy and to start this process by setting a price of at least 50 euros per tonne of CO2 . The critics of green growth have a point. It is difficult to imagine that it will be possible to keep global warming within 1.5°, with or without green growth. The researchers are in fact in agreement that the goal is unrealistic and unattainable.16 Nevertheless this target does live on as a framework for almost all debate about global warming and climate policy. Therefore, the more fundamentalist and deep ecological environmental movement sees no other answer to the climate and environmental problems than to look back at what is perceived as the ideal society, to the Holocene when the globe, as Rockström put it, was in a “stable recovery position” and an “Eden’s pleasure garden”. Those who want to return to a simpler society “in harmony with nature” can also get support and ideological ammunition from one of the leading figures from the ecological movement back at the end of the twentieth century, William Ophuls. In order to save the planet, we must return to Rousseau’s ideal society and live in simple and transparent societies within the framework set by ecology, he claims: A simpler and more natural existence will tend to maximize an individual ’s chance of enjoying the good life – defined as a way of living that is filled with nature, beauty, family, friendship, leisure, education, and, for those inclined to it, philosophy in the platonic sense of personal and spiritual self-development. These things, not material goods, bring true felicity.17

Neither Ophuls nor the Norwegian deep ecologists I referred to above seem particularly concerned about how the transition to such a society should take place. The most startling thing is that they cannot have grasped the simple fact that right from the time of Thomas Malthus, at the start of the industrial revolution until today, the population on earth has increased from about one billion people to today’s eight billion. The majority of this population increase, and the last four billion or so has happened after year 1900. And even if the growth rate in global population is on the way down, it is only a total global catastrophe that can prevent there being 9–10 billions of people on earth in 2100. Let us take a closer look at the Anthropocene: It is the enlightenment’s revolution in science which enabled humans to control nature, develop industry, gain the capacity to produce more food with less muscle power and develop technology that makes life easier for us all. It is this same revolution that has provided us with medicines and control over diseases so that the population on earth has increased, from one billion

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to eight billion in a couple of hundred years. Today, we see that with economic development in the poorer parts of the world, the population rate is about to decline. This entire development is, as the deep ecologists quite correctly point out, driven by increased energy use. And as long as we are talking about the utilization of fossil energy sources, this is the explanation, not only for the growth in prosperity and welfare, but also for the climate problem. Nevertheless, today this is the world we have, with eight billion people, where almost half of them live in cities. Those who in the Norwegian debate argue for a return to a time based on muscle power and simple “nature-based” technology seem to lack perspective beyond the sparsely populated Norway, which has more nature per inhabitant than most other countries in the world. Even if I, for a moment, use Norway as an example and forget countries like Bangladesh, India and China, we actually do not need to go that far back in time before we find a society that resembles the ideal society the idealists want to create. If we go back to the beginning of the twentieth century, there were only about two and a quarter million people in Norway. Nevertheless, every tiny bit of vacant land was used. In old town names, we find “mound meadows”, “bog meadows” and other field names that point back to a time when nature was exploited to the smallest detail. The mountain areas were exploited as pastureland during summer and were strewn with small huts for people to stay in and look after their cattle. If you look at old photographs from the beginning of the twentieth century, you see hills and valleys in Western Norway, the area which I know best, almost without forests. The open fields and the forest were intensively used and grazed by livestock and used for gathering fodder and for firewood. There was not much untouched nature. Today, the forest stretches up the ridges. Instead of grazing livestock, deer, elk and roe deer graze today in the open fields and forests. To the extent that this is “unspoiled nature”, the unspoiled nature has spread dramatically in the last 100 years. The forest grows like never before and absorbs large amounts of CO2. Furthermore, it is important to remember that this society, if it really was the Holocene and a society in harmony with nature, had room for far fewer people than today’s Norwegian society. After the war, there were about three million people living in Norway. Nevertheless, the natural resources were exploited to the limit. At the same time, industrialization had accelerated, and we were well on our way into a new era. During the 75 years that have passed, the population has almost doubled. In the roughly 70 years from the middle of the nineteenth century to around 1920, the population in Norway increased from under 1.5 million to over 2.6 million, but in the same period around 800,000 people emigrated to America, due to poverty and a lack of resources to feed the growing population. During the next 70 years, Norway went through an economic development that has built up the prosperity and welfare society that we enjoy today and where emigration has turned into immigration. If one looks back to the low-energy society that existed in Norway as late as the middle of the twentieth century, it is not a rhetorical question to challenge today’s modern deep ecologists on how they envision today’s soon-to-be 5.5 million Norwegians to be given space and feed themselves in the low-energy society that they claim is the salvation for the planet. How much “unspoiled nature” would be left if we were to return to something like this low-energy society? How, for example,

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will they move redundant flight attendants, shop assistants, bureaucrats, oil workers, transport workers and industrial workers out into the countryside and collect them in small villages and there create “tens of thousands of new jobs in the primary industries”? What kind of mechanisms do they envisage for distributing land to all these who will now go out and live in harmony with nature? The closest historical example we have of something similar must probably be Pol Pot’s forced relocation of Cambodia’s inhabitants from the cities to the countryside in the 1970s, to create the start of a “new civilization”. I venture the claim that when all these, who have become redundant in today’s consumer society, in one way or another inscrutably move out into the countryside, there will not be much untouched nature left. How do these idealists and the others who share their vision that this low-energy society will have the resources and surplus for something close to today’s welfare, with healthcare, education, science and cultural life? It is difficult to imagine other than that a great deal of that society, those institutions and the welfare that is a result of the economic growth and development of society only in the last 70–80 years, must be demolished. How will this low-energy society, based on muscle power and wood burning, acquire resources to run healthcare, hospitals, schools and universities? It is just as difficult to imagine how the downsizing of our consumption in the rich world should be redistributed to the poor part of the world and to those who have the least in our society.18 The recession, with more or less total economic collapse, which the tentative implementation of such a programme would bring, will primarily affect those who have the least, both in our part of the world and in countries that are currently in the process to work their way out of extreme poverty in the third world. We can also learn from the corona pandemic that without warning hit the world economy in February 2020. Climate activists in our rich part of the world have used the pandemic as proof of our willingness to accept coercive measures and economic decline, if only crisis awareness and the motivation is strong enough. On the other hand, the World Bank has estimated that the economic downturn in the world economy in the wake of the pandemic is about to send 150 million people into extreme poverty.19 In his book Apocalypse Never, the author and environmental writer Michael Schellenberger deals with the dystopian scenario of a globe that climate change will make almost uninhabitable within a few decades and shows with solid documentation from precisely the IPCC reports that even if the climate problem is serious, there is no scientific basis for the apocalyptic vision of the future that the most extreme climate activists vouch for. Precisely because the rich world, through economic growth, has built up capacity and infrastructure to handle crises and dramatic environmental changes, we in this part of the world also have the capacity to face dramatic climate changes. Despite climate change, and despite the global population increase, the number of people killed in natural disasters has steadily decreased from the beginning of the twentieth century until today. While famine and drought took the lives of hundreds of thousands of people every year until the 1980s and 1990s, in the last 30 years this figure is vanishingly small. Most people who die in natural disasters today die in earthquakes, not because of drought or flooding.20 This is not necessarily because there has been less drought and less flooding, but because the world,

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due to economic progress and capacity to face natural disasters, saves hundreds of thousands of lives every year. The apocalypse that the climate activists in the rich part of the world envision is still a reality in parts of the poor world even today, and Michael Schellenberger describes in his book, based on his own encounters with poor villages in the interior of the Congo, how apocalyptic visions of a society in disintegration are an actual reality here. This is a society characterized by an eternal struggle for survival. There is a total lack of social infrastructure and a ”fight of all against all”. The “cure” against climate change that the more affluent part of the rich world argues for, such as “degrowth”, is more likely to create the type of society that Schellenberger describes in Congo, than a return to an idyllic life in the countryside filled with “nature, beauty, family, friendship, leisure and Platonic philosophy”. It will have as its most likely effect to continue where the corona crisis started: tear down again the results of the global economic growth which in recent decades has lifted millions of people out of extreme poverty, liberated women and slowed population growth in the poor parts of the world. Thus, the proportion of malnourished people in the world has decreased from 28 per cent in 1970 to 11 per cent in 2015. In 1970, 65 per cent of all girls in the world received primary school education. In 2015, the figure was 90 per cent. If we look at the world in a slightly longer perspective, after the industrial revolution, we find that in 1800 almost half of all children (44 per cent) died before reaching the age of five. In 2016, this figure was four per cent, and most of the decline has occurred after 1900. While 10% of the world’s population could read in 1800, this figure was 86% in 2016. We could go on like this and see that the correlation between economic development and the improvement of almost all aspects of people’s living conditions is indisputable. If we look at one central indicator, the connection between life expectancy and economic growth, we find a positive statistical correlation that no one can question.21 In short: a political strategy that aims to transform today’s society, growing towards 10 billion, to change production methods, lifestyles and energy use at the level of what existed only 100 years ago, when the world had less than half as many people, is a utopian project that is difficult to take seriously.

The Lost Paradise So, can the green shift bring the world back to Rockström’s “lost paradise”, to the “Garden of Eden” he believes the Holocene was? In that case, what is nature’s limit? The deep ecologists are right that even green growth requires the use of resources and the degradation of nature. Where is the balance between what is growth within nature’s limits and when do we cross this limit? In other words, where are the boundaries of the Holocene? This was what Rockström had set out to answer, but which he seems to have given up. That is understandable. Nor will a green shift bring society and nature back to the Holocene. This is not possible, neither in practice nor in

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principle. In the Holocene, Rockström and his colleagues wrote in 2009, “environmental change [happened …] naturally and Earth’s regulatory capacity maintained the conditions that enabled human development”.22 Firstly, the claim that the changes in nature occurred “naturally” in the Holocene is debatable. It is not clear when the transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene took place. There is no agreement on that. Humans have influenced nature for thousands of years. Animals have been exterminated through hunting, forests have been cleared and burned to make way for agriculture, and humans have bred livestock, regulated waterways and constructed irrigation systems at least 8,000 years back in history.23 The truth is that almost every ecosystem that exists on the planet today is affected by human activity. Consequently, there is no “Holocene baseline” that can serve as a benchmark for what Rockström envisioned to recreate and take care of.24 Secondly, the notion that we can steer our way back to a man-made Holocene is a contradiction. It is the knowledge built up during the enlightenment and man’s ability to control and shape nature based on this knowledge, in other words the Anthropocene, that makes it possible to imagine that we can control nature in such a way that we can recreate Holocene. This will be even more clearly the Anthropocene. It is the notion of a man-made Holocene, something that is just becoming a clear self-contradiction. The real difference between the Holocene and the Anthropocene is not man’s ability and capacity to influence nature, including the atmosphere and climate, even though the changes have been particularly dramatic over the past half century.25 Firstly, the big and fundamental difference is that people todayin contrast to in earlier timeshave the scientific knowledge and insight to consciously influence nature and secondly, to acquire knowledge about the effects of this human influence. That is how we discovered the climate problem. It is our scientifically based insight into the connections between man and nature that is the great and important dividing line between the Holocene and the Anthropocene. In other words, we have “eaten the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge”, and we know how it went the first time: Humans were thrown out of paradise. This innocent paradise, this “Garden of Eden”, as Professor Rockström fantasized back to, that July day in 2015 when I heard him on the radio, iswhether we like it or nota lost paradise. Humans have acquired a knowledge of, and an insight into, nature which means that we are doomed to live with the ability and capacity to shape nature. We are condemned to live in the Anthropocene26 Come to think of it, perhaps we don’t want to return to the Holocene. Rockstrom’s Holocene was “in a stable recovery position” because humans lacked the knowledge and technology to feed more than about a billion people on the planet. The self-regulation consisted of famine, plague disasters, continuous wars, extensive infant mortality and early death from diseases that we perceive today as light, transitory discomforts. Most people on the planet lived on what we would today call a bare minimum of existence. Nor were there 12,000 years with a stable climate. On the contrary, large and dramatic climate changes occurred that meant death and destruction for humans because society lacked the ability and technology to handle the challenges nature exposed them to.

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Today’s challenge is to accept the Anthropocene, and that it is not something we can plan ourselves away from. If we accept this, the alternative with green growth is a far more rational and meaningful than the deep ecological imagination, whichif it had been possible to implementwould more certainly than climate change destroy life on earth, as we know it. In our modern world, under Anthropocene, we must accept that nature and society are woven together and in motion so that we no longer have fixed markers to steer by. We will depend more than ever on natural science, but natural science (including climate science) cannot answer how we should weigh conflicting (good) goals against each other. We have set the globe in motion in a way that leads to no return or going back to a stable and predictable climate, within which society can manage and plan. Climate researcher Mike Hulme has claimed that we might just as well stop talking about climate. The term “climate” itself refers to something stable and predictable. Climate in such a sense cannot be brought back.27 In other words, it is meaningless to claim that we must “save the climate”. We are condemned to live with, not a stable climate, but a changeable and unpredictable weather, continuous change and a nature with more uncertain standards for what is “natural”. It will be our human capacity for collective management and manoeuvring in a continuously changing world, both climatically and in other ways, that will be decisive for how we will handle this and what kind of society people will have in the year 2100 and later. I cannot see that anyone has pointed to a form of government that is better than democracy, even with its shortcomings to meet the challenges that the world is facing in the Anthropocene, in which we are condemned to live.

The Climate Problem, Democracy and Defence of an Open Society There are two forms of utopian thinking, according to the Austrian/English philosopher Karl Popper. One goes back to Plato, and the other has its basis in Marxism.28 In both cases, it is a form of thinking that assumes that the “good society” requires a total and “holistic” change of the existing society. Plato, writes Popper, was the pessimist who believed that all social change were for the worse. The ideal lay in the past. Consequently, his utopian scheme consisted of stopping all change and returning society to the ideal society of the past. Marx, on the other hand, was the optimist who wanted to revolutionize today’s society towards the future ideal society.29 What both have in common is the idea that society’s problem must be solved through totalizing measures. We find both forms of utopian answers represented in the current climate debate. The holistic thinking is based on the belief that the climate problem can be “solved” that we can put it behind us and look forward to a global society with a climate as it was before the industrial revolution. The climate and environmental activists are right to the extent that this goal cannot be realized within the framework of today’s

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society, neither nationally nor internationally. It is also an open question whether it can be realized at all. It is therefore not surprising that the activists are looking for an alternative to the current global Management by Objective project. On the one (and more radical) side, there are loud demands that what is needed is a total change of the current capitalist system. The non-capitalist alternative is quite difficult to get a clear picture of, but the historical examples do not seem enticing either. The alternative society is often referred to as a future project to be created through popular actions.30 Others are more “constructive” and envision a form of “ecological socialism”.31 An appeal from the Canadian organization “Socialist Project”, with support from a number of organizations and individuals, sees eco-socialism as the solution, not only to the climate problem, but to most of the world’s problems: As eco socialists, we say another world is possible, but a massive social and political transformation is needed, requiring the mobilization of the mass of working people across the globe. Only the end of capitalism’s relentless pursuit of private profit, endless waste, and rapacious drive for growth, can provide the solution not only to climate change, environmental degradation, and mass extinction, but to global poverty, hunger, and hyper exploitation.32

It is unclear how this mass mobilization of working people across the globe will proceed and progress. The voices in this debate that stand out as more dominant are nevertheless those who, without ideological connections, argue for a return to a society characterized by a simpler lifestyle, less consumption, reversal of economic growth (which is seen as the root of the entire climate problem) and in more extreme cases “recreation” of the pre-industrial society in our rich part of the world.33 This direction in the debate has gained more wind in its sails after the so-called Nature Panel published its report at the end of 2019, with the threat of collapse also in the global ecological system.34 With this, climate alarmism from the twenty-first century and eco-philosophy from the end of the twentieth century have come together in an alliance, where the climate problem and the problem of biological diversity can be “solved” with a common holistic approach: In a kind of Platonic spirit, society must be restored to a state in harmony with nature. Most of the activists who argue for such a path probably imagine that this can be done by convincing people that they must change their lifestyle to save the planet. The more “realistic”, on the other hand, realize that this is not possible without extensive coercion and some form of authoritarian rule. Some of these are outspoken anti-democrats in the climate debate, as I showed in Chaps. 3 and 4. Rejecting authoritarian, totalitarian and “holistic” answers to the climate problem does not mean that one refuses to take the climate problem seriously. Karl Popper’s response to the totalitarian attacks on the open society was what he called “piecemeal social engineering, or what we could call piecemeal social change.35 It is such an approach to the climate problem that I advocated in Chaps. 7 and 8, where I argued that we must ask what can be done rather than what must be done. The problem with the “totalizing” strategy, which requires some form of social upheaval, is that it is in danger of making it more difficult, rather than easier, to meet the challenges that

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climate and environmental problems actually represent. There should be no doubt that it is important to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, and that society should take seriously pollution on land and at sea, the use of natural resources, the pressure on biological diversity and so on. The answer should not, however, be an ideological phantasy project that overlooks the fundamental fact that today we are moving towards ten billion people on the planet, and the equally fundamental fact that such a project cannot be carried out without a dictatorial world regime that has the power to suppress social uprisings and let large parts of the earth’s poor perish. As I have argued above, we also have no reason to believe that such a dictatorial world regime would be able to realize its own vision. One cannot dream back and believe that one can plan for a globe with a couple of billion people. Then the medicine will kill the patient, and the result will be as the doctor explained to Holberg’s grieving widow: “Your husband truly died, but the Fever now has gone”. We have no realistic choice but to try to “reduce the fever”. We must do the best for the patient without killing him. We can work systematically to give meaningful and rational content to a green shift, both nationally and globally. There will be a need for change, call it a “transformation of society”, with changes in both consumption and lifestyle. There will of course also be missteps and wrong investments. In this book, I have argued that there is primarily a need to develop and use emission-free energy sources, and I have tried to show how this is possible and realistic within the framework of today’s society. The world today does not have an overconsumption of energy. We are facing a major under-consumption of energy. The green shift, and further (green) development in the poorer parts of the world, will require large amounts of energy. Around one billion people in the world today lack access to electricity. And the new billions that will arrive towards 2100 will need even more new energy. As I have argued, the climate problem is therefore fundamentally an energy problem. Globally, there is only one “non-dictatorial” way to control population growth, and that is through further economic development in the third world, and today primarily in Africa. This is impossible without simultaneous growth in energy use.36 And as long as the energy is carbon-based, economic growth as a pure law of nature will lead to increased CO2 emissions. The key to the green transformation of society is the transition from carbon-based to emission-free energy. It is of little use to convert to a battery-powered car fleet if the batteries are charged with electricity based on coal power and where both battery production and car production are based on carbon energy. It is quite right that the climate activists point out that the transition to renewable energy will have to require major interventions in nature, such as wind turbines on land and at sea. Also, the development of solar energy of the dimensions we can imagine today will require major land interventions. Still, only investment in renewable energy in the green shift will not be enough to supply the world with the energy that will be necessary, if the carbon age is to be phased out. This cannot be achieved without a strong investment also in nuclear energy.37 Today, this is the form of energy with the least risk associated with it and the one that can save nature from major natural interventions. Then it is difficult to understand that those who are the most negative to wind turbines are also often the strongest opponents of developing nuclear power.

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One of, if not the biggest, the problems with today’s “Platonic” answer to the climate and environmental problem is that it envisages a reduction in the world’s energy needs and thus removes attention from the best solution we can see today to the world’s energy problem, namely an investment in nuclear power. In the Anthropocene, with a population heading towards ten billion people in this century, and where we humans are undeniably helping to shape the framework that nature has set for our own existence, there is no single definite answer to solve the problem. There is no “silver bullet”. Complex social problems cannot be dealt with in the form of what Charles Lindblom has called “superhuman comprehensiveness” (or superhuman total solutions). We can best approach them through step-by-step measures and through balancing different interests and values against each other to the best of our abilitywhat Lindblom has called “muddling through”.38 We must learn to live with “wicked” problems and meet them with a varied battery of different, larger and smaller, short-term and longer-term measures and strategies. If, in our part of the world, we want to protect the open society with its democratic institutions, it is important that, in the face of the complex challenges of climate and environmental problems, we shape the policy so that it has legitimacy in larger parts of the population. The climate threat is far too serious for the political stage to be left to extremists or climate and environmental activists who shout the loudest and demand impracticable measures immediately, in a misunderstood belief that we only have a few years left to save the planet. Neither will those who call for totalitarian measures, or for degrowth, bring us any closer to “saving the world”. These are all forces that in different ways undermine society’s opportunities to face the climate threat with rational and democratic means. If it was true, that we only have ten or seven years to avoid disaster, then it is already too late. Then we might as well, like Madame de Pompadour, conclude that “after us comes the deluge”. The danger is that if doomsday scenarios gain the upper hand in how people perceive the climate problem, many will think that we can basically just give up and carry on business as usual for as long as possible. My conviction is that we have not yet reached such a point. But the climate problem is so serious that both national and international leaders should rethink how the problem can be met. It is democratic countries that have the greatest chance of dealing with the climate problem, so let us not act in a way that we, in our eagerness for the utopian “solution”, undermine democracy which, despite all its shortcomings, is better than any other system to face an unpredictable and uncertain future.

Notes 1. 2.

Much of the text in this chapter has been written and edited on the basis of a text that was first published in the online journal Pan in 2019. Tennsjö (2018).

References 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38.

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Beckerman (1976, p. 244f). Rockström et al. (2009). Meadows et al. (1972). For a discussion about the differences and similarities between the Limits to Growth debate and the debate about climate change, see Eastin et al. (2011). Stoknes and Rockström (2018). Stoknes (2019). Fagerheim (2019). Ibid. Henriksen (2019). Hoel (2019). Ibid. Aall (2010). Rockström (2019). Bergskaug (2020). Ophuls (2011, p. 137). Aall and Næss (2019). World Bank (n.d.). Source: “Our World in Data” website: https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters. Rosling et al. (2018). See also Pinker (2019). Rockström et al. (2009). Ruddiman (2008). Lewis and Maslin (2018), Purdy (2015), Seielstad (2012). Steffen et al. (2015). Dryzek and Pickering (2019). Hulme (2017a, 2017b). Popper (1971a, 1971b). Popper (1961, p. 73f). Klein (2014). Baer (2019), International Youth and Students for Social Equality, Molyneux (2019). Ecosocialism Not Extinction!—The Bullet (2021). Ophuls (2011, p. ix). Díaz et al. (2019). Popper (1961, p. 64 ff.). I do not say that energy is the only factor that matters for development in Africa. Corruption and mismanagement in many African countries are at least as big an obstacle to development in this part of the world. Shellenberger (2020). Lindblom (1959, p. 88).

References Aall, C. (2010). Consumption—A missing dimension in climate policy. In I. R. Bhaskar, C. Frank, K. G. Høyer, P. Næss, & J. Parker (Red.), Interdisciplinarity and climate change. Transforming knowledge and practice for our global future. Routledge. Aall, C., & Næss, P. (2019, juni 30). “Reell grønn vekst”: Noe nytt eller bare mer av… [Text/html]. Harvest Magazine. https://www.harvestmagazine.no/pan/reell-gronn-vekst-noe-nytt-eller-baremer-av-det-samme Baer, H. (2019). Democratic eco-socialism as a real Utopia. Transitioning to an alternative world system. Berghan. Beckerman, W. (1976). In defence of economic growth. Cape.

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Bergskaug, E. (2020, February 20.). 1,5-gradersmålet er urealistisk, men politikerne vil ikke slutte å snakke om det. https://www.abcnyheter.no/a/195650574/ Díaz, S., Settele, J., Brondízio, E., Ngo, H. T., Guèze, M., Agard, J., Arneth, A., Balvanera, P., Brauman, K., Watson, R. T., Baste, I. A., Larigauderie, A., Leadley, P., Pascual, U., Baptiste, B., Demissew, S., Dziba, L., Erpul, G., Fazel, A., et al. (2019). Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the intergovernmental science-policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services (p. 45). Dryzek, J. S., & Pickering, J. (2019). The politics of the anthropocene (First edition). Oxford University Press. Eastin, J., Grundmann, R., & Prakash, A. (2011). The two limits debates: “Limits to Growth” and climate change. Futures, 43(1), 16–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2010.03.001 Ecosocialism Not Extinction!—The Bullet. (2021, oktober 24). Socialist project. https://socialist project.ca/2021/10/ecosocialism-not-extinction/ Fagerheim, J. (2019, June 2.). Grenser for grønn vekst [Text/html]. Harvest Magazine. https://www. harvestmagazine.no/pan/grenser-for-gronn-vekst Henriksen, J. (2019, June 6.). Hvorfor vil ingen snakke om konklusjonene i… [Text/html]. Harvest Magazine. https://www.harvestmagazine.no/artikkel/hvorfor-vil-ingen-snakke-om-kon klusjonene-i-rapporten-fra-fns-naturpanel Hoel, J. (2019, May 28.). Lavutslippssamfunnet verner ikke naturen—bare… [Text/html]. Harvest Magazine. https://www.harvestmagazine.no/pan/lavutslippssamfunnet-verner-ikke-nat uren-bare-lavenergisamfunnet-gjor-det-2 Hulme, M. (2017a). Weathered: Cultures of climate. SAGE. Hulme, P. M. (2017b). Weather-worlds of the anthropocene and the end of climate. Contribution to the Collaborative Double Issue of the Journal Weber with the Rachel Carson Center, on the Theme Transformations of the Anthropocene, Scheduled for Fall 2018, 34(1), 12. International Youth and Students for Social Equality. (n.d.). The only solution to climate change is world socialism. World Socialist Web Site. Klein, N. (2014). This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate (First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition). Simon & Schuster. Lewis, S. L., & Maslin, M. (2018). The human planet: How we created the Anthropocene: A pelican book. Pelican an imprint of Penguin Books. Lindblom, C. E. (1959). The science of “Muddling Through.” Public Administration Review, 19(2), 79–88. Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens, W. W. (1972). The limits to growth. Universe Books. Molyneux, J. (2019, oktober 1). Socialism is the only realistic solution to climate change. Climate and Capitalism. https://climateandcapitalism.com/2019/10/01/why-socialism-is-theonly-realistic-solution-to-climate-change/, https://climateandcapitalism.com/2019/10/01/whysocialism-is-the-only-realistic-solution-to-climate-change/ Ophuls, W. (2011). Plato’s revenge: politics in the age of ecology. MIT Press. Pinker, S. (2019). Enlightenment now: The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. Popper, K. R. (1961). The poverty of historicism (3rd ed.). Routledge & Kegan Paul. Popper, K. R. (1971a). The open society and its enemies. In Vol 1: The spell of Plato (5th ed., 1. paperback print). Princeton University Press. Popper, K. R. (1971b). The open society and its enemies. In Vol. 2: The high tide of prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the aftermath (5th ed., 1. paperback print). Princeton University Press. Purdy, J. (2015). After nature: A politics for the Anthropocene. Harvard University Press. Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., Chapin, F. S., Lambin, E. F., Lenton, T. M., Scheffer, M., Folke, C., Schellnhuber, H. J., Nykvist, B., de Wit, C. A., Hughes, T., van der Leeuw, S., Rodhe, H., Sörlin, S., Snyder, P. K., Costanza, R., Svedin, U., et al. (2009). A safe operating space for humanity. Nature, 461(7263), 472–475. https://doi.org/10.1038/461472a Rockström, J. (2019, September 7). Önsketänkande med grön tillväxt – vi måste agera. Svenska Dagbladet. https://www.svd.se/onsketankande-med-gron-tillvaxt--vi-maste-agera

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Rosling, H., Rosling, O., & Rönnlund, A. R. (2018). Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world--and why things are better than you think (1st ed.). Flatiron Books. Ruddiman, W. F. (2008). Earth’s climate: Past and future (2nd ed.). Freeman. Seielstad, G. A. (2012). Dawn of the antropocene. Humanity’s defining moment. American Geosscience Institute. Shellenberger, M. (2020). Apocalypse never: Why environmental alarmism hurts us all (1st ed.). Harper. Steffen, W., Broadgate, W., Deutsch, L., Gaffney, O., & Ludwig, C. (2015). The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The great acceleration. The Anthropocene Review, 2(1), 81–98. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/2053019614564785 Stoknes, P. E. (2019, mai 28). Reell grønn vekst er i dypøkologiens ånd [Text/html]. Harvest Magazine. https://www.harvestmagazine.no/pan/er-gronn-vekst-en-illusjon Stoknes, P. E., & Rockström, J. (2018). Redefining green growth within planetary boundaries. Energy Research & Social Science, 44, 41–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.04.030 Tennsjö, T. (2018, November 28). Så kan klimatkrisen leda fram till en global despoti. DN.SE. https://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/sa-kan-klimatkrisen-leda-fram-till-en-global-despoti/ World Bank. (n.d.). COVID-19 to add as many as 150 million extreme poor by 2021. World Bank. Downloaded 7. April 2021, from https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/10/ 07/covid-19-to-add-as-many-as-150-million-extreme-poor-by-2021

Index

A Aall Carlo, 43, 187, 193, 203 Acid precipitation, 35 Adaptation, 8, 183–185 Africa, 6, 13, 24, 82, 201 Aftenposten, 74, 105 Age of Enlightenment, 52, 57 Agriculture, 23, 25, 29, 32, 103, 106, 116, 117, 127, 151, 152, 154, 198 AIDS epidemic, 54 Allen Myles, 27, 28 Alternative für Deutschland, 13 Alternatives for Germany, 60 America, 13, 117, 178, 195 American continent, 117 Annex I countries, 33 Antarctica, 29, 118, 121 Anthropocene, 192, 194, 198, 199, 202 Anthropocentric, 51 Apocalypse, 196, 197 Apollo programme, 33 AR6, 28, 29, 141 Arctic, 6, 24, 129, 167 Arctic Ocean, 29 Aristotle, 70 Arndt Ernst Moritz, 50 Asia, 13, 24, 128 Atmosphere, 8, 21–25, 33, 34, 36, 40, 99, 115–121, 123–127, 165, 166, 168, 171, 184, 198 Attenborough David, 130 Australia, 143

Authoritarian, 4, 8, 11, 13–15, 41, 53, 57, 70–73, 76–84, 86, 130, 145, 152, 200 Authoritarian government, 66, 71, 80, 143, 155 Authoritarian regimes, 8, 11, 12, 70, 71, 80–82 B Bangladesh, 195 Barry John, 61, 76, 87 Base, The, 60 Beckerman Wilfred, 191 Beckman Ludvig, 156 Beck Ulrich, 127 Beeson Mark, 72, 87 Bergen, 74, 98 Bioenergy, 166, 180 Biofuel, 159, 160 Biological diversity, 15, 31, 51, 52, 75, 97, 102, 104, 109, 179, 200, 201 Birol Fatih, 140, 173 Bjerström Erika, 60, 62 Black carbon, 24, 167 Bolshevik Party, 152 Bolsonaro, 83 Bottom up strategy, 34 Boulding Kenneth, 55 Brazil, 13, 83 Brennan Jason, 18, 83, 84, 88 British government, 122, 173 British Royal Society, 126 Brox Ottar, 145, 152, 161, 162 Brundtland Commission, 33, 74, 155

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Naustdalslid, The Climate Threat. Crisis for Democracy?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34471-8

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208 Brundtland Gro Harlem, 73 Burnell Peter, 71, 87 C Cambodia, 196 Cambridge University, 122 Canada, 170 Capitalism, 14, 56, 83, 152, 177, 200 Capitalist dictatorship, 54 Capitalist system, 200 Capitol building, 60 Car-based society, 94, 100 Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), 169 Carbon capture, 16, 149, 167, 175 Carbon tax with rebate, 185 Carson Rachel, 53, 56 Caster Kathy, 76 CFC gases, 36–38, 109 Chernobyl, 182 China, 3, 23, 24, 30, 31, 55, 56, 81, 82, 106, 121, 122, 143, 195 China Electricity Council, 82 Chinese model, 80 CICERO, 9, 72, 74, 107 Circular economy, 165, 168, 178 Citizens’ Assembly, 67, 69 Climate activist, 4, 7–11, 13, 27, 32, 40, 49, 50, 56, 58, 65, 66, 69, 70, 82, 94, 96–98, 101, 102, 104, 107, 111, 115, 126, 142, 143, 151, 171, 173, 174, 176, 177, 179, 183, 186, 192, 196, 197, 201 Climate adaptation, 25, 77, 168, 178, 183–186 Climate Change Performance Index, 81 Climate Convention, 4, 5, 8, 33–36 Climate coup, 84, 85 Climate crisis, 4, 7, 10, 54, 55, 59, 66, 69, 72, 73, 77, 79, 80, 108, 110, 125, 140–144, 152, 154, 177 Climate cure 2030, 105, 106, 150 Climate deniers, 96, 102, 103, 105 Climate dictatorship, 3 Climate engineering, 115–117, 119, 122, 123, 126, 128–131 Climate fix, 115 Climate fixing, 8, 115–117, 119, 129 Climate meritocracy, 77, 78, 80 Climate models, 25, 26, 29, 75, 78, 108, 124, 184 Climate policy, 4, 7–9, 14–17, 21, 30, 31, 33, 34, 37–39, 41, 57, 66, 68, 70, 74,

Index 76, 78, 80, 81, 84, 85, 93–98, 100, 101, 103–105, 107–111, 115, 116, 120, 123–125, 127, 131, 139, 140, 143–149, 151–155, 157–160, 165–168, 170, 171, 173, 176, 178, 194 Climate Realists, 74, 75 Climate revolts, 93, 96, 97, 111, 143 Climate sceptics, 25, 28, 56, 74, 97, 110 Climate science, 8, 9, 12, 14–16, 22, 25, 28, 39, 68, 73–75, 77, 79, 96, 107, 108, 125, 129, 130, 143, 152, 156, 199 Climate science’s scenario, 107 Climate Summit in Cancun, 34 Climate thermostat, 126, 130 Club of Rome, 191, 192 CO2 handling and storage, 175 Coal, 14, 17, 22–24, 30, 35, 37, 65, 66, 81, 82, 102, 108, 116, 118, 140, 149, 150, 159, 167, 173, 174, 176, 180, 181, 201 Cold War, The, 119, 128 Collective action, 36, 158 Collective action dilemma, 31, 37, 149 Collective action problem, 30, 144, 149, 158, 159 Collective actors, 108 Columbus, 117 Committee for the Climate Crisis in the US Congress, 76 Congo, 197 Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution, 35 COP, 93 Copenhagen, 34, 36, 39, 166, 178 COP meetings, 5, 17, 35, 39, 107 Corona crisis, 22, 29, 35, 106, 107, 140–144, 154, 173, 176, 179, 197 Corona pandemic, 35, 141, 144, 196 Coronavirus, 106, 142 Corruption, 80 Cost/benefit analyses, 72 Crucius Patrick, 59 Crutzen Paul, 119, 120, 122, 123, 132

D Dagbladet, 74 Dahl Robert A., 18, 78, 79, 87 Darwin Charles, 50, 51, 56, 61, 71 Darwish Maria, 58, 62 Deadline thinking, 28 Deep ecological movement, 10, 50, 54

Index Deep ecological thinking, 52, 53, 65, 72, 191 Deep ecologists, 49, 55, 57, 65, 80, 194, 195, 197 Deep ecology, 14, 52, 54, 56–58, 65, 106, 171 Degrowth, 9, 10, 31, 65, 66, 154, 157, 171–173, 180, 181, 183, 186, 197, 202 Democratic Party, 178 Denmark, 182 Desertification, 6, 24 Despotic rule, 7, 11, 79 Developing countries, 33, 34, 38, 82, 166 Dictatorial regimes, 78 Dictatorship, 3, 11–13, 54, 116 Di Paola Marcello, 77 Discount rate, 78, 157 Distributive policies, 146 Doomsday prophecies, 9 Drawdown, 117, 165, 166 Drawdown project, 165 Drought, 6, 24, 29, 127, 129, 196 Dryzek John, 61, 73, 87, 203

E Earthquakes, 196 Earth System Models, 25 East Asia, 72 EAT campaign, 151 Echo chambers, 110 Ecocentric, 51, 57 Eco-dictatorship, 3, 49, 72, 139, 181 Ecofascism, 56, 58, 60, 65 Eco-fascist movement, 4 Ecological autocracy, 53 Ecological dictatorship, 54 Ecological socialism, 200 Ecological way of thinking, 49, 50, 52, 57 Economic growth, 6, 7, 9, 10, 23, 25, 26, 29, 40, 41, 53, 65, 66, 72, 77, 80, 94, 106, 108, 146, 148, 154, 157, 167, 171–174, 176, 179, 186, 191–193, 196, 197, 200, 201 Eco-regime, 79 Eco socialism, 200 Ecosystem, 6, 51, 55, 67, 72, 73, 121, 198 Eco-villages, 72 Education for girls, 166 Egypt, 107 Ehrlich Paul, 18, 54, 55, 61 Einstein Albert, 4

209 Elster Jon, 149, 158, 161, 162 Elvestuen Ola, 105 Emerson Ralph Waldo, 50 Emission-free energy, 38, 101, 140, 153, 175, 176, 179, 181, 186, 191, 201 Emission-free energy sources, 16, 168, 171, 175, 201 Energiwende, 102 Energy, 7, 16, 17, 22, 23, 25, 29, 31, 35, 37, 38, 40, 66, 77, 94–97, 101–103, 108, 121, 124, 131, 140, 144, 145, 148–150, 154, 159, 160, 166–176, 178–186, 193–197, 201, 202 Energy-smart buildings, 166 Eriksson Peter, 151 Ethical value judgments, 78 EU, 12, 141, 167, 169, 173, 176, 178, 179 Europe, 6, 7, 9, 13, 31, 53, 59, 60, 86, 94, 102, 104, 148, 149, 159, 160, 170, 173, 175, 177–179 European energy market, 102 European "Green Deal", 178 EU’s quota system, 102 EU´s Trading emission System (ETS), 169 Expert rule, 72, 73, 79 Extinction Rebellion, 6, 11, 39, 67–69, 71, 73, 96, 97, 140, 141, 145, 152, 155 Extreme poverty, 106, 173, 196, 197 F Famine, 9, 55, 196, 198 Figueres Christiana, 28, 42 Finland, 169 Fischer Frank, 72, 79, 87 Foreman David, 54, 55, 61 Forest, 22, 24, 35, 50, 57, 116, 117, 159, 166–168, 195, 198 Forza Nuova and Alternative Sociale, 60 Fossil energy sources, 23, 25, 140, 195 Fossil-free energy, 102, 170, 175 France, 7, 13, 32, 60, 93, 99, 100 Frants Erica, 86, 88 Fredrikson Per G., 80 Free rider problem, 158 Fukushima accident, 181 Fusion energy, 166 Future generations, 5, 11, 53, 67, 68, 108, 130, 143, 146, 149, 154–157, 174, 176 G Garden of Eden, 192, 197, 198

210 Gas, 21–23, 31, 34, 36–38, 65, 96, 102, 116, 149, 158, 159, 167, 170, 173–176, 180, 181 Gates Bill, 125, 131 Geoengineering, 8, 117, 118, 122, 123, 125–128, 130, 131 Geothermal energy, 140, 180 German Nazi Party, 58 Germany, 13, 50, 56, 57, 66, 84, 102, 143, 173, 180–182 Giddens Anthony, 57, 61, 62, 187, 188 Glasgow, 5, 16, 17, 35, 167 Gleditsch Nils Petter, 61, 82, 84, 88, 133 Global Alliance for Vaccines and Vaccination (GAVI), 168 Global carbon tax, 169 Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, 168 Globalisation, 31 Global poverty, 172, 200 Global temperature, 6, 9, 15, 22, 24, 26–28, 30, 34, 40, 49, 77, 79, 107, 115–120, 123–125, 127, 129, 131, 143, 158, 183 Global thermostat, 115, 118, 124, 127, 128, 130 Goffeng Espen, 151, 161 Golf Stream, 26 Gothenburg Protocol, 167 Government by guardians, 79 Grandparents Climate Action, The, 96 Grassroot democracy, 72 Great Britain, 118, 177 Greek democracy, 11 Green Brigade, The, 60 Green democracy, 73 Green growth, 65, 66, 171, 172, 192–194, 197, 199 Greenhouse gases, 4, 5, 21–23, 25, 26, 29, 30, 33, 35, 36, 40, 49, 52, 66, 67, 81, 85, 94, 96, 98, 106, 107, 116, 117, 120, 122, 123, 127, 129, 130, 141, 154, 157, 165, 167, 172, 177, 179, 180, 184, 193, 201 Greenland, 9, 26, 29, 118 Green New Deal (GND), 16, 27, 176–179, 180 Green parties, 57, 98, 99, 171 Green Party in Sweden, 151 Greenpeace, 68 Green roofs, 165 Green shift, 10, 149, 172, 173, 175, 176, 178, 180, 183, 184, 186, 197, 201

Index Grey growth, 172, 193 Grundmann Reiner, 19, 77, 87 Guardian, The, 6, 121, 142

H Haeckel Ernst, 51, 56, 60 Hallam Roger, 6, 17, 43, 67, 69, 86 Hansen James, 131, 171 Hardin Garrett, 43, 53, 61, 71, 161 Hartwell Paper, The, 167, 168, 185 Harvard University, 117 Hawken Paul, 131, 165, 186, 187 Heidegger Martin, 57 Heilbroner Robert, 53, 71 Hinkley Point nuclear power plant, 182 Hitler Adolf, 57, 60, 67, 99 Holberg, 201 Holden Barry, 79, 87 Holocene, 192, 194, 195, 197, 198 Houghton Sir John, 75 Hulme Mike, 42, 87, 132, 162 Humboldt Alexander von, 50 Hungary, 13, 86 Hurricane Katrina, 55 Hybrid climate, 127 Hydrogen-based energy, 140 Hydropower, 102, 148–150, 153, 180, 182

I Impact analyses, 104, 107 India, 23, 31, 121, 122, 183, 195 Industrial revolution, 22, 23, 116, 178, 194, 197, 199 Infant mortality, 172, 198 Intergovernmental Science- Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), 31, 102 International conflicts, 128 International cooperation, 83 International Energy Agency, 173, 175 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 5, 8, 9, 16, 21, 22, 25–30, 34, 67, 74–76, 78, 124, 141, 159, 167, 175, 177, 183, 184, 196 Iran, 71 Iron law of climate policy, 66, 173

J Jamieson Dale, 18, 43, 77, 87, 155, 162

Index K Karakatao volcano, 119 Katowice, 16, 35, 93, 105 Keeling Charles, 22 Keith David, 131–133 Keynesian investment policy, 173 Klages Ludwig, 56, 57, 61 Klassekampen, 6, 8, 15, 37, 38, 50, 60, 69 Klein Naomi, 27, 66, 177, 179 Kneuer Marianne, 80, 88 Kyoto Agreement, 5, 22, 34, 36, 83, 119, 139, 169 Kyoto Protocol, 33, 35, 36 Kyoto track, 139, 158 L Lancet, The, 181 Land use, 16, 23, 116, 117, 159, 166–168, 193 Le Monde Diplomatique, 93 Lem Steinar, 53 Lenin, 152 Limits to Growth, 191, 192 Lindblom Charles, 202, 203 London School of Economics, 166 Lovelock James, 17, 18, 43, 160 Lowi Theodor, 146, 147, 161 Lysaker Odin, 72, 73, 87 M Macklin Graham, 59, 62, 86 Macron Emmanuel, 93 Madame de Pompadour, 202 Madrid, 16, 35, 105, 106 Malm Andreas, 69 Malthus, Thomas, 50, 156, 194 Management by Objective, 5, 39, 40, 158, 160, 200 Mann Michel E., 26, 27, 42 Manshaus Philip, 59 Marine Le Pen, 60 Marxism, 199 Marxist variant of authoritarian rule, 70 Marx Karl, 71, 86, 199 Mathismoen Ole, 105 Mauna Loa, 22 McKinnon Catriona, 76, 87 Meritocracy, 70, 79 Methane, 21, 23, 30, 116 Mexico, 34 Mitigation, 184 Model experiments, 122, 124, 126

211 Model studies, 121, 123, 124 Mohn Klaus, 74 Montreal Protocol, 34, 36–38 Morgenbladet, 55 Mount Pinatubo, 120 Muddling through, 202 N Næss Arne, 13, 52–54, 56, 58, 65, 192 Næss Petter, 193 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 122 Natural disasters, 55, 127, 142, 196, 197 Nature and Youth, 142 Nature Panel, 31, 66, 102, 200 Nature services, 51 Nazism, 52, 56–58, 65, 67 Neo-Malthusian predictions, 10 Nettavisen, 81 Neumann John von, 118–120, 128, 132, 133 Neumayer Eric, 80, 81, 88 New Deal programme, 146, 179 New Public Management, 39 New Zealand, 59 Nobel Prize, 16, 26, 37, 78, 107, 116, 119, 145, 157, 158, 171 Nordhaus William, 19, 42, 43, 87, 113, 162, 186 Nordic Resistance Movement, 58 No regret measures, 30, 166 Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK), 6, 74, 99, 106, 151, 170, 182 Norwegian Environment Agency, 103 Norwegian Green Party, 102 Norwegian petroleum industry, 174 Norwegian Police Security Service, 59, 68 Not in My Back Yard, 32 NOx , 36, 37 Nuclear energy, 23, 140, 166, 181, 182, 186, 201 O Obama, 178 Ocasio-Cortez Alexandria, 177 Oil Fund, 174 One-child policy, 55, 172 1.5-degree report, 26, 107, 175 1.5 degrees, 8, 9, 15, 25–27, 29, 34, 35, 39, 40, 77, 79, 107, 115, 123, 143, 168, 186, 194 1.5-degree target, 85, 123, 129, 141, 153, 168, 174, 183

212 Ophuls William, 53, 61, 71, 85, 87, 88, 194, 203 Orthodox deep ecologists, 193 Orwell George, 69 Oslo, 24, 59, 74, 98, 99, 104, 149 Ostrom Elinor, 61, 145, 158, 161, 162 Øverenget Einar, 41, 61, 87, 160 Oxford principles, 126–128 Ozone hole, 34, 121 Ozone layer, 36, 37, 121, 127 Ozone problem, 36–38, 143

P Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNNL), 126 Palm oil, 160 Paris, 16, 26, 33–36, 38–40, 93, 94, 105, 115 Paris Agreement, 17, 28, 34, 35, 93, 103, 122 Paris summit, 8, 107, 167 Parson Ted, 126, 132 Participatory governance, 72 Payne Robert, 18 People’s action no to more road tolls, 97 Peoples revolt against climate hysteria, 104 Peru, 106 Peters Glenn, 9, 43, 107 Pettifor Ann, 177, 179, 187 Philippines, 120 Physical climate, 15 Piecemeal social engineering, 200 Pielke Roger Jr., 66, 86, 87, 132, 173, 186, 187 Pierrehumbert Raymond, 124 Plague disasters, 198 Plan B, 8, 115, 119, 129 Plan C, 129 Plan D, 129 Plato, 53, 70, 71, 79, 199 Plato’s political philosophy, 53 Poland, 13, 35, 86, 93 Political parties, 12, 39, 97, 98 Pol Pot, 196 Popper Karl, 87, 199, 200 Population Bomb, The, 54, 55 Poverty, 15, 29, 41, 55, 157, 168, 171, 176, 195 Povitkina Marina, 80, 88 Precautionary principle, 10, 11, 130 Pre-industrial society, 200 Pre-industrial times, 22, 27, 115, 120, 121 President Kennedy, 119

Index Principle of scientific consensus, 75 R Rainforest, 6, 23, 160 Randers Jørgen, 61, 88 Rapeseed oil, 160 Rassemblement National, 13, 60 Rational decision-making, 72 Recession, 171–173, 176, 179, 196 Recluses Élisée, 51 Redistributive policies, 146 Red meat, 103, 108, 109, 150 Regime change, 139 Reinert Erik, 174, 187 Renewable energy, 31, 32, 97, 101–103, 140, 147–150, 153, 154, 158–160, 167, 173, 175, 180, 181, 183, 201 Ringen Stein, 18, 80, 84, 88 Rio de Janeiro, 4, 33, 36 Risk society, 127 Rittel Horst, 32, 37, 43, 160 Road toll protests, 143 Road tolls, 7, 40, 97–100, 104, 110 Rockström Johan, 192, 194, 197, 198, 203 Rödder Simone, 19, 77, 87 Rokkan Stein, 12, 18 Roman Empire, 49 Ronald Reagan, 143 Rose Sunniva, 182 Runciman David, 18, 111, 113, 161, 162 Russia, 11, 13, 122, 152, 181 Russian invasion of Ukraine, 102, 173, 179 S Sætra Hartvig, 53, 54, 61, 88 Salt power, 180 Scenarios, 6, 8–11, 15, 24–26, 28–30, 78, 84, 96, 97, 120, 123, 124, 126, 129, 130, 174, 184, 196, 202 Schellenberger Michael, 196, 197 Schelling Thomas C., 116, 123, 125, 131, 132 Scientific Marxism, 152 Sea level rise, 9, 24, 29 Sea Sheperd, 55, 68 Second World War, 79, 83, 94, 118 Sharm el-Sheik, 5, 16 Shayegh Soheil, 115, 131 Shearman David, 43, 70–72, 77, 86, 87, 152, 155, 162 Sheikh Ahmad Zaki Yamani, 17 Silent Spring, 53, 56

Index Simulations, 126 Skjeldal Gudmund, 129 Smith Joseph Wayne, 70 Social Darwinism, 56, 60 Social dilemma, 41, 145, 147 Socialism, 56 Socio-economic system, 72, 178 Sofia Protocol, 36 Solar energy, 81, 121, 140, 165, 166, 174, 182, 183, 201 South-East Asia, 121 Soviet Union, 13, 34, 82, 119 Staudenmaier Peter, 57, 60–62 Stavanger, 54, 97, 98 Stern Nicholas, 78, 127, 162 Stigen Inger, 146 Stoknes Per Espen, 171–173, 192, 193 Stordalen Gunhild, 109, 113, 151 Stratosphere, 118–121 Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering, 118 Sulphur dioxide, 120 Sundtoft Kristine, 38 Sun screening, 115, 117 Supreme office of the biosphere, 71, 155 Svalbard, 24 Svenska Dagbladet, 194 Sverdrup Bjørn Otto, 82, 84, 88 Sweden, 58, 84, 103, 169, 192 Swedish Defence Research Agency, 59 Switzerland, 169, 170 Swyngedouw Erik, 14, 18

T Tarrant Brenton, 59 Technocracy, 72 Tennsjö Torbjörn, 7, 8, 11, 84, 85, 88, 152, 160, 162, 191, 202 Theory of evolution, 56, 71 Thoreau Henry David, 50 Thorium, 183 350.org, 40 Thunberg Greta, 5, 6, 8, 9, 25, 66, 68, 73, 107, 109, 113, 152 Tidal energy, 180 Tipping point, 10, 23, 26, 30, 40, 125 Top down policy, 34 Totalitarian, 8, 11, 14, 15, 41, 76, 80, 82, 83, 200, 202 Tragedy of the commons, 53 Tree of knowledge, The, 79, 198 Tremmel Jörg, 155, 162

213 Trump Donald, 13 Tsarist Russia, 152 Two-degree target, 123, 183

U Ukraine, 13, 169, 173, 179 Ulvang Vegard, 129 UNCCC, 160 UNESCO, 166 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 4, 33 Ungar Shelly, 143 United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, 35 United States, 143, 177 University of Exeter, 76 University of Stavanger, 74 UN’s environmental panel, 193 USA, 13, 60, 83, 86, 106, 119, 122, 126, 177–180 USA TODAY, 32, 178

V Veganism, 151 Vegetarianism, 151 Venezuela, 86 Vetlesen Arne Johan, 6–8, 15, 50, 61, 67, 86 Vienna Convention, 36 Vietnam War, 119

W War, 7, 9, 13, 15, 16, 24, 25, 55, 57, 67, 73, 79, 94, 110, 111, 128, 141, 169, 173, 179, 195, 198 Watson Paul, 55 Wave power, 140, 180 Webber Melvin, 32, 37, 43, 160 Welfare policy, 146 Western Norway Research Institute, 66 White House, 122 Wicked problems, 32, 37, 38, 40, 151, 168, 185 Wilderness Society, The, 54 Wilson James Q., 18, 147, 161 Wind energy, 140, 166, 174 Wind farms, 101–103, 144, 154 Wind power, 31, 32, 40, 77, 101–103, 106, 110, 140, 144, 147–150, 153, 154, 165, 172, 175, 179–183 Wind turbines, 31, 96, 101, 105, 106, 144, 148, 150, 180, 193, 201

214 World Bank, 106, 196 World Commission for the Environment and Development, 155 World Commission on Environment and Development, 33, 73 World Meteorological Organization (WMO), 34 World Wars, 67, 94, 146, 148 Worst case scenario, 9, 11

Index Wyller Thomas Chr., 54, 61

Y Yellow vests, The, 7, 32, 93, 95, 99, 100

Z Zimmermann Michael, The, 57, 62