These days I increasingly think any engagement with 'activism' needs to begin with one simple question - 'What course of action should I undertake to really tangibly impact the cause I care about?'
In most cases, I would be somewhat surprised if the truthful answer to this question was 'I should pay through the nose to attend a climate conference'.
Pal, your voice is such a crucial one in the movement right now, and your line about becoming experts about talking about climate is a difficult, but essential one to hear. Also as a neurodiverse girly I'm absolutely loving the audio format and it really delivers the impact when I can listen. Well done.
While I agree to some of your points, I wonder if you are directing your ire to the right cause. You seems to equal this specific conference with the World Economic Forum in Davos, the COPs or something like that. The conference you criticize, "Klimaomstillingskonferanse", is a partly national, partly regional, climate conference mostly targeting municipal officials, officials in state agencies and other professionals working with climate change related issues in the private sectors and NGOs, including civil protection and natural hazard prevention, mostly in Western Norway. There are almost no researchers outside Sogndal attending that hasn't been invited to speak. And there is also some local students attending. I don't think this audience is spending a lot of time at conferences in general, many of them might be the sole employee in their organization working on climate issues. This conference might be the place where they can meet other colleagues working on this issue, find inspiration to challenge their own organization to do more on climate or even become more of a radical activist. No one is claiming that such a conference is anything near an adequate response to the climate crisis. But you seems to indicate that if you are not willing to go to jail, your effort is worthless. You write that "conferences like the one I am talking about in the article are part of the problem. They create the illusion of progress while actually serving as a substitute for meaningful change - we become experts at simply talking about the problem." A logical consequence of this statement is that we also should fire every climate change professional in the public and private sector, stop funding of climate research and spend everything on civil disobedience, as neither the work of climate change professionals nor research has been able to solve the climate crisis. That would actually been a message that could get you a piece in Aftenposten or any major outlet. But you decided to attack municipal planners, NGO-officials and students in Sogndal.
These days I increasingly think any engagement with 'activism' needs to begin with one simple question - 'What course of action should I undertake to really tangibly impact the cause I care about?'
In most cases, I would be somewhat surprised if the truthful answer to this question was 'I should pay through the nose to attend a climate conference'.
Yeah thats exactly the conversation I wanna open up here - just a bit more reflection over what is genuinely effective action to take.
Pal, your voice is such a crucial one in the movement right now, and your line about becoming experts about talking about climate is a difficult, but essential one to hear. Also as a neurodiverse girly I'm absolutely loving the audio format and it really delivers the impact when I can listen. Well done.
Thanks I appreciate that so much!! Hahah trying my best audiobook voice 🤣🤣🤣
Let’s start in our neighborhood :)
While I agree to some of your points, I wonder if you are directing your ire to the right cause. You seems to equal this specific conference with the World Economic Forum in Davos, the COPs or something like that. The conference you criticize, "Klimaomstillingskonferanse", is a partly national, partly regional, climate conference mostly targeting municipal officials, officials in state agencies and other professionals working with climate change related issues in the private sectors and NGOs, including civil protection and natural hazard prevention, mostly in Western Norway. There are almost no researchers outside Sogndal attending that hasn't been invited to speak. And there is also some local students attending. I don't think this audience is spending a lot of time at conferences in general, many of them might be the sole employee in their organization working on climate issues. This conference might be the place where they can meet other colleagues working on this issue, find inspiration to challenge their own organization to do more on climate or even become more of a radical activist. No one is claiming that such a conference is anything near an adequate response to the climate crisis. But you seems to indicate that if you are not willing to go to jail, your effort is worthless. You write that "conferences like the one I am talking about in the article are part of the problem. They create the illusion of progress while actually serving as a substitute for meaningful change - we become experts at simply talking about the problem." A logical consequence of this statement is that we also should fire every climate change professional in the public and private sector, stop funding of climate research and spend everything on civil disobedience, as neither the work of climate change professionals nor research has been able to solve the climate crisis. That would actually been a message that could get you a piece in Aftenposten or any major outlet. But you decided to attack municipal planners, NGO-officials and students in Sogndal.