What is Greta Tunberg afraid

The text continues the joint project of colta.ru with the official Sweden website in Russian ru.sweden.se - “For example, Sweden” .

Greta Tunberg is a Swedish girl, she is 16 years old, but you won’t give her more than 14. A little over a year ago, Greta, instead of school, went to the Swedish parliament with an appeal to stop warming. That is, not just want to do everything better, but right now, right now, leave all other things and begin to save the world.

“If you know that the world is rolling into tartarara, then what to hesitate, you must act,” Greta says in all his speeches. - I will be still alive when the consequences of climate change will become noticeable to everyone.

Initially, the disturbance of Greta was caused by Sweden's position. It would seem that the country at advanced climatic battles - passes to electric cars and reduces emissions from 2 . But Greta does not agree.

“They (politicians. - Ed. ) Said that it makes no sense to invest in reducing the issue of the issue from 2 from Sweden, because we are already“ pioneers ”. Instead, let's “help” other countries to reduce their emissions. But Sweden is not a leader, ”wrote Greta.

Sweden: So what's the problem?

Until now, everyone was sure of the opposite. To begin with, we speculate about why Sweden still considers himself a leader. First of all, in 1967, the Swedes were the first in the world to create an agency for environmental protection, and this can really be proud of.

The numbers are also on the side of Sweden. According to the statistics of the World Bank, the total emission from 2 countries amounted to 62.6 million tons in 2017, and this is nothing compared to the five countries in emissions from 2. Sweden is only 0.2% of world emissions. China throws out 10.6, but not a million, but a billion tons with 2, the USA - 5.7 billion, the EU - 3.4, India - 2.4, Russia - 1.7.

Suppose, aggregate emissions are not too good an indicator. Let's see how the emissions from 2 in the calculation per person are distributed. In this case, the championship goes to Qatar with an indicator of 45.6 tons per capita. UAE - 25.2 tons, Russia - 11.5, Norway - 9.27, and Sweden - only 4.6. It is clear why it happens this way: countries with the largest indicators live at the expense of fossil fuel, and it is the main “supplier” of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

However, there is another indicator - a carbon trace. It is he who haunts Greeta Tunberg.

In the mid-90s, the Canadian environmentalist (this is a new term that distinguishes a group of people concerned with the environment of the environment), William Rijaz proposed a metaphor for an ecological trace for his master's work in energy.

Later, the concept of carbon trace has grown from this metaphor. It means the amount of CO 2 and other emissions of greenhouse gases produced by a person, household, nation, industry and any other subject for whom you want to calculate - wherever they are physically located.

A carbon trace stretches after a person. After all, developed states do not produce his cars, clothes, children's toys and other goods, but prefer to do this in developing countries that do not care about the environment. For the production of these goods, dirty fossil energy sources are used. That is, buying Made in C Hina in Moscow or Stockholm, the buyer becomes involved in emissions from 2 in China.

In addition, this product is taken for thousands of kilometers in cars or seiners, and these are again emissions from 2 and an additional increase to a carbon trace.

Or flights on airplanes, especially in Europe, where the flight can cost 10-15 euros. What is really behind this cheapness? Emissions from 2, which are also on the conscience of residents of well -developed countries - they fly the most in the world.

Calculation of a carbon trace can be carried out endlessly. According to Global Carbon Project , the carbon trace of the EU is 6.8 tons per person, the USA - 16.4, and China - 7.4. The average indicator for the world is five tons per person.

To calculate the carbon trace, a lot of data and effort is required, so rarely what countries can afford it. Global non -profit organizations make general calculations. However, Sweden believes. It turned out that the carbon trace of the Swedes is 10 tons from 2 per person.

And this despite the fact that, according to the calculations of the Swedish scientists themselves, the carbon mark of the resident of the planet Earth should not exceed two or three tons from 2 per year so that the temperature does not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“Sweden and Swedes are very good in many things, and we have advanced greatly in the replacement of our energy sources with more clean ones, although we still have to do much. We have advanced technologies, knowledge and understanding of issues of sustainable development, but we are silent about the consumption of objects that are produced in an unstable way (with the help of “dirty” energy. - Ed. ), ” - explains the general director of the Swedish branch of WWF (World Wildlife Fund), Khokan Virten.

Probably, there was a boiling point of Greta Tunberg, and I think that it coincides with mine.

The art of not notice the disaster

“I decided not to fly on airplanes anymore, and let's take the directors to the festival by trains,” I write to my colleague in the “green” documentary cinema EcoCup .

“Of course you can, but understand: these measures will not help.” Again the middle class. Well, 3-5% in Russia, even if in Sweden - 60%, but there will be no interest on the scale of mankind. We go with the strokes, we use carscherring, share food, let's not fly on airplanes, but this is a drop in the sea for climate. Russia continues to open deposits, and Trump is going to extract coal again. Come on, of course, we’ll take up self-flagellation, but it is unlikely that this will decide something, ”the program director reasoned me, who watched five thousand films about the environment.

What does growth with 2 mean, children in the Swedish school know for sure. As Greta found out at eight years old. The teacher told the children in her class that additional emissions from 2 from human activity are shaken by the climatic system of the Earth. Superior gases accumulate in the atmosphere and accelerate global warming. Scientists have calculated that the likelihood that humanity will keep warming within 1.5 degrees is about 70%. In this case, somewhere it will become land, somewhere the humidity will increase, but humanity will quickly cope with this. If the temperature grows by three or four degrees, then densely populated Asian, Arabic and African countries will experience water problems, vast coastal territories will be flooded, the ecosystem will begin to change with unpredictable consequences. The prospects scare anyone, not like an eight -year -old girl. However, a new morning comes, where everyone is alive, Volvo stands outside the window, and in the hands of Apple .

Greta recalls that humanity is trying to talk about GDP growth, although there are no more resources for this. People cannot maintain the same volumes of consumption, restrictions are needed.

It is difficult to disagree with this. We roughly represent our monthly income and do not think that we can afford five cars and a personal yacht. The financiers urge us not to take extra loans, and collectors mercilessly require expired debts. The problem with natural resources is that it is impossible to refinance or forgive such a debt. But the human brain cannot accommodate the global resources of the planet into its mind the size of a wallet, and we do not intend to be afraid of the wrath of future generations that will not have enough resources.

It is believed that the generation of 1946-1964 received at its disposal all the resources of the planet. The production technologies were on take -off, it seemed to draw it unlimited. Now it turned out that the resources are not renewed as quickly as people are used to spending them. In addition, humanity is unable to even remove garbage from the surface of the earth, which remains after consumption, not only to remove extra greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Future generations will be able to spend no more than 1/6 of the fact that they spent their great -grandfathers. And then if they want to survive.

The intergovernmental group of climate change experts (MGEIK) has released five reports on warming since 1990. With each new report, an array of knowledge and accuracy of forecasts grew. The entire climate is “packed” in a dozen models, supercomputers expect them and give out results. The models are imperfect, the influence of oceans and melting permafrost is poorly studied, but nevertheless the conclusion always remains this: humanity is to blame for the speed of climate change, and if nothing is done, the consequences will be disastrous.

“A similar process was with agreements on an ozone hole. When it turned out that the layer disappeared over Antarctica and, in the future, humanity was facing a radiation that would threaten not only the penguins, everyone then quickly began to negotiate. Also, everything was not fully studied: scientists gathered, put forward hypotheses, the rest built them into their theories. We agreed quite quickly, and there is hope that by 2050 a thin layer of ozone over Antarctica will appear, ”says Climatologist Andrei Kiselev, who took part in the scientific substantiation of the Vienna Convention on the protection of the ozone layer adopted in 1985.

But with global warming, this is not so. So far, there is a feeling that countries are only busy with how to invent a way to count, that they are doing well. Russia does not want to lose the main article of income - the sale of fossils, so we are talking about forests that absorb from 2, no matter how much we burn coal. China and India prefer to consider the reduction with 2 compared to possible pollution. That is, they could pollute, but use cleaner technologies, so well done. The Swedes do not want to abandon the benefits of civilization, so they are proud of the total low emission.

International climate negotiations have been going on for 20 years, the obligations of the countries are voluntary, and the climate is heard from each iron, but only in 2018 the volume of emissions from 2 into the atmosphere began to grow again.

And there are also climatic skeptics.

- Have you noticed the difference in the discussion of the climate when you arrived from Sweden to the United States? - the American TV presenter Trevor Noah asks Greta in his day show. A week ago, Greta crossed the Atlantic on a yacht so as not to leave a carbon mark from the aircraft, and now actively calls for the Americans to act.

- I noticed. Here people are debatable, there is a change in the climate or not, and where I come from, this is recognized as a fact, ”Greta answered, and the hall laughed and applauded.

Maybe there is a special person who shows a smiley - and the hall laughs, although in fact, when people with the largest carbon following the world doubt that they are the cause of the disaster, this is rather regret. I don’t know how it is in China, but in Russia skeptics are also plentiful. And they have arguments, because in the calculations of climatologists there is still a 5% probability that a person did not cause climate change. There is another argument: humanity is still too small in the scale of the planet to cause such damage.

But a small value is a relative thing. If the probability of aircraft falling was 3%, that is, 3 out of 100 aircraft fell, then no one would fly to them, so the contribution of humanity to the climate change should not be underestimated: our 3% thoroughly prompted warming.

It can be assumed that about such considerations of Greta and went to parliament, because it is impossible to talk about climate change and think that the situation will change. In 2018, there were just elections in Sweden, and although in election debate the issues of ecology were paid no less attention than the acute issues of migration, these two topics were not related in the general political Swedish discourse. If I were in the place of the Greeta, I would have thought that after 50 years millions of climatic migrants will come running to us-people who have no access to water, and with such a stream, neither Sweden nor to anyone else to cope.

Greta and the Crusade of Children

Greta is an ideal heroine for history, and the world now loves to read stories, not multi -page climate state reports. She has an prohibitive goal - to stop global warming, she has an ailment - Asperger's syndrome. It has its weakness, because it allows you to speculate on its rationality, and in it its strength. This syndrome provokes “sticking” on one question. Your thoughts are spinning around a specific problem, and you are not able to be distracted.

New York Magazine , Time , CNN , BBC , VOX and hundreds of other publications wrote the story of Greta because it cannot be written. The world was offered a reality show where a little girl saves the planet. The whole world reads the fairy tale of the Selma Lagerlöf about Nielsa, who saved the city from rats; If the boy could conduct his accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, then he would have no less fans than readers from the book. In a sense, Tunberg is a child who, due to insurmountable circumstances, is forced to save humanity.

But Greta, remaining a loner, does not act alone. In September last year, she announced the strike of Fridays for Future - “Friday for the Future”. The strike suggested a refusal to study for one day to show adults that you need to do something immediately. Adults give themselves too many concessions and do not consider time, Tunberg is sure.

“Some believe that I should be at school. Some believe that I have to study, become a scientist in the field of climate and so “solve” the climatic crisis. But the climatic crisis should already be resolved. ”

On September 8, 2018, Greta declared the intention to go further on her Instagram and called on other schoolchildren to go to local parliaments on Fridays. For the first time, she used the hashtag #FridaysForFuture , or #FFF .

“United days of actions were before. There was the largest march in history in New York in 2014, which came, for example, DiCaprio. 300,000 people took part in it. The marches took place during international climatic negotiations, but they were confined to events and had no permanent date. The proposal of Greta to go out on Fridays made it possible to designate it, ”said Svetlana Romanenko, director of the International Ecological NPO 350. Org for Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia.

A year later, FFF began to take effective measures to take effective measures to combat climate change. The increase in activity is associated with the beginning of the obligations of countries in 2020 under the Paris Agreement. That is, countries should understand what they can do for the climate, and take on obligations to reduce from 2. 1.5 million people in the world participate in FFF .

3127 school strikes are registered on the FFF map, of which 127 in Sweden. Some go regularly, some happen once. In April, in 16 countries, parents spoke in support of children's strikes. And at the universities of students, teachers began to support. They join the protests and do not appoint control for Friday.

- There are climatic funds, national and global, which should spend money on adaptation and prevention of climate change. But according to the last report, it turned out that only 21-27% of these funds go to the declared goals. Where is the rest? - says Svetlana Romanenko.

She adds that preventing climate change and adaptation will cost 2.5% of the global GDP. Experts thought for a long time how to explain what kind of size it was. In the end, it was calculated that 2.5% of GDP-this means that all of humanity ceases to buy something for 20 years. Which is unlikely.

Even if we sharply stop all the emissions, the climatic system will return to normal only after 700 years. Of course, these are models, and, perhaps, not 700, but 500 or 300, but we have an impact on the ocean, and this is 70% of the Earth’s surface, and “digest” excess from 2 it will still be very, very long - this is a fact.

Meanwhile, the global march is scheduled for Friday, September 20, on the eve of the work of the UN climate summit in New York. Greta arrived in the United States for his sake, and he must collect hundreds of thousands of participants and exceed the march of 2014 by number. At the same time, thousands of strikes and processions for the climate in 117 countries of the world were declared.

Greta was nominated for the Swedish parliamentarians (along with the Norwegian) at the Nobel Prize of the world. She was called the “most important Swede of 2019”, according to the survey of the sociological Institute of Initio , conducted at the initiative of Aftonbladet . The Minister of Climate and the Environment, the Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden Isabella Lövin on her Facebook wrote to Greta: “Listen to young people is our moral obligation. We have not inherited the planet from our parents, we borrow it from our children. ”

But how did Sweden change after Greta began its strikes?

An unexpected consequence was a rather radical movement for refusing flights on aircraft. There is an initiative to Flygfritt (“Freedom from flights”) when people refuse to fly for a year. There is an anonymous group where activists condemn the stars who fly. The group is called Angslösa Influence , translated - “unconsciously influencing”, that is, people who do not know what they do when they fly on airplanes. The less radical options to which the nation are listening to more, suggest a rejection of air trains where you can do without them: for example, on trips around the country or Europe.

One way or another, according to the Swedish railway workers, the volume of transportation over the past year grew by 8%. They associate such an effect with Greta.

And there is already an application for calculating the individual carbon trace of Svalna . В Швеции им активно пользуются. Кстати, она вышло на рынок через месяц после первых протестов Греты, хотя, возможно, это случайность.

За год с начала забастовок Швеция не перевернула мир, но зато теперь мир знает, как в действии выглядит затертый речитатив: давайте научим детей, и они смогут что-то изменить. Все-таки не случайно, что лидером нового движения стала именно маленькая шведка. Это прямой результат многолетнего просвещения нации. Шведы научили детей, шведские дети научили мир, осталось дождаться финала: сможем ли мы спасти наш дом.

Автор — директор Международного фестиваля «зеленого» документального кино Ecocup.

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