The future is a lost language

"Göran Greider nyårsspanar against the apocalypse"

"This is a kulturartikel which is a part of Aftonbladet's opinionsjournalistik."

"The day Greta Thunberg fills thirty years everything can already be too late. It is not many years away. China's glaciers supplying billions of people with drinking water but is now melting quickly. Sea level rises and wave after wave of climate refugees will leave. Fires ravage cities. Hurricanes haunt the coasts. The sixth massutdöendet of species is accelerating as humans, this darwinian demon, spreads out. Sudden tipping points can occur when the biosphere warms up and sends us out in the worlds that no computer models can predict. "

"at the same time suggest nothing to the fossil fuel civilization seriously is on the way back. Do not say it all, practically the only thing that it is not stridits about in all the broken regeringsbildningsförsök is the climate? A deadly doctrine called neoliberalism is still more important than klimatomställning."

"nwhen 2018 now rolls away, it is perfectly clear: A new concern has come more and more. 2018 was the year when we saw a new mass phenomenon born: Ordinary people who suddenly stand silent and wordless in the face the climate threats they see picked up. I have seen otherwise voluble business leaders, nurses and even politicians – in all the cases when they are far away from the microphones – nearly losing her ability to speak when the for a moment genomfars of the apocalypse. In our minds flicker more often now blurred pictures of grandchildren and sönderbrända landscape of the past. Many start to think in the new time span: generations, not just years. Centuries, not mere decades."

"I'm not saying that everyone has reacted so. There are people who don't care. There are even people who have the ”hobby” to fly to other parts of the world to visit as a tourist. There are rich elites that are sure that they are comfortable will survive every Collapsing and Nobelprisbelönta economists who believe that we can take it easy and wait with actions until societies become even richer."

"the nEtt problem is that no strong metaphors, no language exists for the future, which in the worst case, waiting for when the climate gets. The future is now a lost language. Words such as ”charging point” or ”ebike” can in any way console us. And hear what is hidden in a word like ”klimatsatsning”: A expansionistiskt thinking of the kind that caused the problems from the beginning. It is the reason for her muteness gives birth to the phenomenon that Greta Thunberg: A voice that speaks without loyalties, without reservations, without tillväxtsamhällets all the practical objections. She is all our revelation, therefore, that we, ourselves, are helpless and basically wordless. This stunning girl is dystopia and utopia in one and the same person."

"And so, in the other end of the spectrum: The yellow vests. Ordinary people have a genius. New symbols invented by the man happen to have at home in the entryway. The yellow vest is the language that will when the popular classes – les classes populaires on the wonderful French – long vow of silence was suddenly broken. These hundreds of thousands of protesters in yellow vests have one thing in common with Greta Thunberg: The lack of loyalty with the system, they don't care about what the finance ministers say. They want justice."

"nLångt up in the Valleys I have by bussfönster and car windows seen single yellow vests smattrat from trucks and hung in the gardens. What is this? Answer: A pre-political language that breaks the impotency. The yellow vests are the doctrinal marknadsliberalismens and storstadseliternas antithesis. They break apart the ”we” that so often exists in the climate debate: It is the poor who do not have a few flights to set to save the climate, and not even able to come to work or leave at pre-school when no public transport is available. The yellow vests are pointing straight at the power issue in our capitalist societies: Social equality is a prerequisite for klimatomställningen."

"the distance we are waiting for do not pass the reichstag, not klimattoppmötena, not partiledningarna. The coming years can only activism to change something. And remember – activism is the actual apocalypse: The Greek word means to take away the hides so that we can see and make."

"Greta Thunberg in a yellow vest is a language of the future."