To the climate rebellion!

The Norwegian Environmental Protection Association supports the climate demonstration and we think it is fantastic that young people are so engaged in the environment. However, we would like to draw attention to the fact that climate measures have all too often ended up with large industry receiving subsidies for activities that are very harmful to the environment, and in reality do not contribute to improving the climate at all.

For example, the construction of wind power in Norway is described as a "climate measure", and subsidized with "green certificates", without it contributing to lower CO2 emissions. A wind turbine will never in its lifetime be able to earn all the CO2 emissions it causes, when production is taken into account. The climate quotas in the EU mean that CO2 emissions will only change emission locations. Zurich and Munchen Stadtwerke take ownership of wind turbines that are placed in Norway, and destroy the unique, untouched nature we have. They can then label the electricity they sell as "green", while electricity to Norwegian customers is recorded as nuclear power and coal power. This has nothing to do with the environment; quite the contrary, as there is always between 10 and 20% of energy lost during the transport to Europe.

The export cables themselves have been called "climate cables", to mislead people into thinking they contribute to a better climate. So they do not, in addition to the fact that the export of Norwegian-produced power makes the price of electricity many times more expensive for Norwegians, which also puts many jobs at risk.

Another example is how electric cars actually emit more CO2 than petrol cars, because the batteries require so much energy to produce. There is also a question of how the electricity the cars are charged with is actually produced – large parts of it will come from coal power. The metals for wind turbines and electric car batteries are excavated in mines abroad, where workers work in slave-like conditions. In the Congo, children as young as 4 work digging for cobalt. Cobalt is toxic, and the children are exposed to a fatal lung disease, heavy lifting, and the risk of dying when tunnels in the mines collapse. The UN has estimated that 80 children have died in the mines in the Congo each year, and now that Britain is going to invest in getting the entire car fleet electrified, there are expected to be many more.

Both climate and environment go hand in hand. All sustainable measures must involve less consumption, but now unfortunately the opposite is happening. This is what we must turn around. If the politicians were serious about their climate measures, public transport would be better developed and cheaper than cars. Instead, the price is set so that it is often a bit cheaper with the car anyway, despite sky-high toll costs.

Good environmental measures involve organic farming, because good soil holds CO2 better - this is not the focus of today's environmental debate, and the result is only more and more pollution of the sea, soil and food.

We hope you will have such issues on your banners when you demonstrate for a better climate on earth. By all means, let's avoid that the politicians can get away with higher taxes for most people, and favoring an ever more powerful multinational industry.

 

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