Johan Rockström & Anders Dunker / The invaluable safe zone

Johan Rockström is the leading scientist behind the Planetary Boundaries framework, which has had an extraordinary impact on policies and international debates, and which forms an integral part of curriculums for professional climate- and environmental courses in schools and universities around the world. He is Professor in Earth System science at the University of Potsdam, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, co-founder of the Stockholm Resilience Center and chief scientist at Conservation International. Rockström’s research was also the topic of a 2022 Netflix documentary called Breaking Boundaries, based on his book with the same title, coauthored with Owen Gaffney. Among Rockström’s many collaborations, an important milestone is the new assessment of the Club of Rome Earth for All, published in 2022, co-authored with Sandrine Dixon-Declève, Jørgen Randers, Per-Espen Stoknes and others. He serves as one of the chief scientific advisers to the UN, and among the numerous initiatives he is involved in are Planetary Health, Planetary Science Advisary board of COP 30 and Global Commons Alliance.

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Arne Johan Vetlesen / Living with disappointment in the face of environmental crisis:

RESILIENCE, RESISTANCE, AND DENIAL

By Arne Johan Vetlesen / Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oslo.

For Thomas Hylland Eriksen, 1962-2024.

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“DRILL, BABY, DRILL”

Recent years have seen the emergence of a correlation that has taken many by surprise: the more visible the consequences of climate change, the greater the popular support for political parties that promise to “drill, baby, drill”. Donald Trump’s successful bid for a second term as U.S. President may well be the most prominent case in point, but it is part of a broader trend that includes my own country, Norway. The message seems to be that the more indisputable the warnings of climate science turn out to be before our eyes, meaning here and now, not elsewhere and in the future, the more stubbornly is the present trajectory, that of fossil fuels based economic growth, held on to.

    To point out the correlation between two phenomena is not to explain anything; it is to invite questions about why they occur, either simultaneously or in a sequence, questions about cause and effect. What is the correlation I mentioned essentially about?

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Understanding Our Crises: A Call for Collective Reflection

What is happening to us and our precious world? This is the open-ended, but urgent question that many have been asking themselves in 2024, a year of multiple crises, ranging from extinction and climate disasters to continued poverty, inequality, and brutal wars.

In the face of these predicaments we urge all authors to write about people, because people are always thinking and talking about people, and if we still believe in democracy, in the age of mass communication, only people can help us out of the current impasse? Strong community belonging separating “us” from “them” remains a fact and an obstacle, as demonstrated in the US elections of 2024.  Can humans in the next decade be intertwined in this historic aim of coming together? Through kindness? Revolution? Or will a yet-unknown form of solidarity provide a new basis for democracy? 

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