Welcome to the year 2050.

Climate police on the streets. Wearing helmets and rebel uniforms, they suppress protesters who marched under a string of flags at the Long March.

They are protesting against the right to drive their old fossil-fueled cars, against new wind farms, and against sorting the damned waste. It became common, and part of the Resistance, to burn their waste at home on the plot. It became difficult to control. The police must constantly move into the residential areas of cities.

In some places, the authorities just had to give up. The flames burn almost continuously. The demonstration is led by Sylvie Listauge, the former leader of the Progress Party – now renamed the Freedom Party – but is handcuffed and led to screams and shouts.

It was not the intention of the authoritarian climate state to begin imprisoning its opponents. After a series of demonstrations over the years, with violent elements emerging, and with more and more rubbish burning in the streets, arrests are now commonplace. Censorship laws are on the way. Climate State has its first prisoners of conscience.

Prisoner of conscience – Without conscience, it sounds dismissively sarcastic of climate dictatorship supporters on social media.

These are not Future dystopia We are used to reading when the topic is climate. Sea-level rise and societal collapse are often due to climate change itself, and are the ingredients. Economist Jürgen Randers (77), a pioneer in the Norwegian climate movement, nonetheless makes a case for planting alternative dystopias.

In Klassecampen, on Saturday, he once again declared himself a supporter of an authoritarian state, in the name of the fight for the climate.

Since Randers co-published The Limits to Growth in 1972, which later sold 30 million copies, he has repeated the message that growth will eventually lead to collapse. Solving the problem would require higher taxes, more regulation, bans, and subsidies, and Randers has abandoned the belief that it would be possible to secure a political majority for this. The population thinks the very short term. He believes that the market does not work because the changes are not profitable from the investor’s perspective.

Thus, the solution to Randers is the authoritarian state.

The question is just: Why?

Randers is a supporter of Chinese authoritarian action and the five-year plans. China is developing a lot of renewable energy. It can also be said that it is the result of having enormous economic room for maneuver and industrial capacity, as a result of authoritarianism. It is also tempting to ask the million persecuted Uyghurs, and the people of Hong Kong who have lost their democracy, if they want to join the applause.

The typical authoritarian state that Randers envisions simply does not exist.

The authoritarian fluctuations in other major countries produce the opposite result. Trump in the US, Bolsonaro in Brazil, examples of how authoritarian leaders have fought against Climate measures, not for.

However, the bigger mystery is: Why travel to authoritarian countries on the other side of the world in search of successful climate policy, when we have it here on our doorstep?

The world’s most successful climate policy is short-term, and it is being developed in the European Union – a group of the world’s most developed democracies.

Together, these countries have been able to achieve their targets for reducing emissions by 2020. Together, the democracies in Brussels are striving towards new goals. The European Union is now finalizing the plant to be “ready for 55” – meaning a 55 percent reduction in emissions by 2030.

Jürgen Randers will probably do that I think this comment depicts his caricatured thoughts. His concrete proposal for Norway is to create a senate that will provide guidelines for everything related to the climate.

Randers only forgets that liberal democracy has already developed mechanisms similar to these: constitutions, and human rights, to which Norway has adhered.

The so-called “environmental section” of the constitution, Section 112, was the starting point for the climate-related lawsuit filed with the Supreme Court in 2020. It did not end in favor, but set a new precedent for climate consequences mapping requirements in connection with oil developments. The case has also been appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, where it is given high priority.

Filing a climate lawsuit in an authoritarian country is, of course, unthinkable. Such states simply have no legal certainty.

It may seem strange He cares a lot about what one environmental pioneer thinks. It’s also unfortunate that Randers’ principles about the limits of the planet’s endurance are important. The tradition of ideas he helped start is in many ways the basis for the development of a radical climate policy aimed at zero emissions and nature conservation, as is the case in the European Union.

When climate action however has been too slow, many people are losing patience with good reason. Acts of civil disobedience have become part of the daily news picture. Activists stick themselves to the fair in Storting, tie themselves to a tennis net during the French Open, or sit on the road on the main access road to Trondheim in the middle of rush hour. Civil disobedience is a project. These people have not necessarily given up on democracy, but it is a warning.

Randers uses his weight to offer an authoritarian openness. It can mislead good powers. Following an anti-democratic streak is a sure recipe for political extremism and marginalization. Just ask the old regretful AK (ml).

always politics conflict of interests. Democratic institutions are built to resolve conflict for the interest in a peaceful manner, so that everyone can settle with the outcome – even the one who lost.

Anyone who wants to replace this process with something authoritarian should be prepared to impose politics by force instead. The idea of ​​climate police soon knocked on the door.

Whoever wants to reject democracy, and wears armor in a totalitarian climate battle, does not believe in a better future. Instead, it ensures that the future will be unfree, and therefore miserable – no matter how the emissions go.