Appendix 4. My climate engagement
In this story, I have also received many questions about my private climate commitment, so I also want to clarify that. I have a Master’s degree in Energy and Environmental Engineering and have worked with energy, environmental and climate issues for almost twenty-five years. I have worked on a variety of energy and climate-related analyzes and investigations, many at an international or global level. I have written many different reports, but the problem with reports is that very few people have the time and energy to read them.
Therefore, a few years ago I made a decision to try to communicate the climate issue more clearly, because the transition is too slow in relation to nature’s own capacity for recovery [1], while many people tend not to want to understand. At my previous job, I created a workshop to increase climate competence at the company. I have since facilitated the workshop in various forums, and I can still hold it (reworked) if interested (side job reported and approved by my former boss at the agency). I’m basically a pretty modest person, and standing up in front of others and honestly talking about the climate crisis was out of my comfort zone, and extremely difficult for me.
When I was going to give the workshop the first time, I was destroying me, as there was so much heavy facts that I needed to to convey. One of my dear colleagues was pregnant.
It is painful to explain:
* the time aspect, and that the heating is accelerating.
* how the strong warming that we are now experiencing started (during the industrial age), and that we in Sweden are historically responsible for very high emissions per capita in a global perspective, and we have continued to emit a lot, per capita. (For example; whoever considers it ‘normal’ to fly, must remember that only about 2-4% of the world’s population travels annually. About 85% of the world’s population has never sat in an airplane at all. [2])
* that the emissions for which we are responsible accumulate in the atomosphere, i.e. they remain there and destroy the functionality of our ecosystems, because the emissions overall are now enormous. Mother Earth is sick, she has a fever, and she can’t convert nearly as much carbon dioxide as before.
But, it is hopeful to explain that:
* it is we in the rich part of the world, and people close to us, who have the great potential for emission reductions. * positive behavioral changes require no investment, no start-up time, and have an immediate effect. Since we live in the rich part of the world, we have on a personal level a fantastic opportunity to act on this.
* when climate policy fails to deliver, we ordinary people have the opportunity to help.
It is true that time has run out for a very very long time. But it’s never too late to save what can be saved. And especially a mother like me, would like us to try. Together.
The workshop is based on a role-play, where we play an international climate conference, where we can use an internationally recognized simulator to check the actual impact of different control instruments and climate measures. Because of course it is so incredibly frustrating that, despite knowing so much about the driving forces behind global warming, we still find it so incredibly difficult to agree on how to counteract it. The workshop was somewhat based on the image below, a situation that I myself have experienced at several international conferences I have been to:
I saw it somewhat as my professional duty to try to inform about the dangers linked to the climate crisis. Having worked a lot internationally, I was told that I have important experiences and a special understanding of global issues, and that is an important driving force if we want to move towards a safer society.
I also decided to try to talk to people close to me about the risks of the climate crisis in a clearer way. Nobody likes that. I try anyway.
I wanted to devote myself more to the energy and climate issue in my free time, so I looked a bit at the Rebel mothers, Greenpeace, Klimataktion and also a bit about getting involved politically. I am a natural scientist with no real political experience, so my political stay was very short; I didn’t feel like I could contribute that much.
At Klimataktion, we started a small climate writers’ group that I am still part of, although I am not otherwise active in the organization. We try to write submissions and explain science to politicians and other decision makers.
At Greenpeace, I became what is called a Greenspeaker, giving talks on various issues that we are asked to speak about. We have had lectures about, for example, the sea, the meat industry and also about civil disobedience. We do not call for civil disobedience, on the contrary, we explain how civil disobedience works, and what is the driving force behind people doing it. We have, among other things, lectured for the Police Academy as part of their training of new police officers, and at various universities.
For the Rebel moms, before I had to end my service at the Energy Agency, I was involved a few times in calm, licensed Rebel mom actions, where we mostly walked with placards or sat in a circle and sang about the climate crisis to create awareness. The Rebel Moms are more of a people’s movement, so there are no memberships. When I went through my first security screening interview, I wasn’t that involved in the Rebel Mothers in particular, but as I said, I was broadly involved in the climate, and didn’t get any follow-up questions on that. With the support I have received from the entire climate movement, but especially the Rebel mothers in my ‘Anna story’, the commitment has grown. I and many with me have found a context where you are not constantly questioned. It feels nice.
In addition, in my life I have financially supported organizations such as Rädda Barnen, SOS children’s villages, Amnesty, Civil Right Defenders, UNHCR, Nature Conservation Society, WWF… etc. I actually don’t remember very well, it could have been something else too. I’ve been keeping track of my own emissions for several years now, and also try to inspire others to live in a way so that together we generate reasonable emissions. [3] A simple thing that I can advise others to organize is a so-called ‘walking bag’. We are a bunch of girls with similar body shapes who have a bag that goes around between us. You put in things that are clean and nice but that you are tired of, and then every time the box comes back you can pick what you like. Easy way to get new nice clothes for free.
I have also had other involvement, e.g. in school associations, various sports clubs, etc. On social media, I have clicked on quite a lot of different things that I feel are good.
Foot notes
[1] Described, for example, here: The Climate Policy Council’s report 2019
[2] The global scale, distribution and growth of aviation: Implications for climate change – ScienceDirect
[3] For those who are interested in calculating their own emissions (just do it!!), I can for example recommend the app GoLow which won an award for being accurate and very simple (but there are other climate calculators). If you dare to calculate your own emissions; – remember that you don’t have to share the result with anyone, but for it to work, you have to be completely honest with yourself in that calculation.