So it’s time for a general election again here in Sweden as is traditional every 4 years. On September 11th we’re heading out to cast our votes and both me and my wife definitely will. My son still has to sit out this and next election.
But I really have a problem with this election. Europe is suffering it’s worst heatwave ever and is drying up fast. There’s water shortages, rivers are so dry that boats can hardly transport freight and fish are dying by the tons, people are losing their homes and livelihoods and it’s all kinds of chaos caused by global warming. And you’d think that even after ignoring Greta protesting outside of parliament for over 4 years that surely this would wake politicians up? Nope. And why would it since the media isn’t holding them accountable. And worse yet, the voters aren’t holding them accountable.
Jimmie put it best during the “Aftonbladet” debate last night when he ‘attacked’ our environmental party by saying – “you only want to make things worse for everyone!”. And that’s exactly the problem. Elections used to be about people asking themselves “what party align best with what I want?” and vote for that. And nobody wants to make things worse for themselves. Nobody wants to give up their summer vacations by the mediterranean, take the bike instead of their car, go vegetarian and generally stop buying new stuff and focus on recycling. But in my opinion the time for “what I want” is over – now it’s critical for everyone to think “what does the planet want?”.
And it’s clear over the past 3 years that it certainly doesn’t want us! First it gave us the wildfires in Australia, then covid, then monkeypox and now a heatwave from hell.
So I wish that for once the voters would think more long term and more globally. Because yes, in the short term not going on vacation in Greece may suck but at least there’s a chance there will be a habitable Greece in 50 years!
As for who I’m going to vote for? Well I also always ask myself “what party align best with what I want?”. And I want a positive future for my son and the planet. And again there’s only one party that is taking any kind of attempts at doing anything about it so again I’m voting for our environmental party. I wish there was at least one more party that would at least try so I can look for other things that align with what I want but … nope!
Sorry but saying that “what Sweden does doesn’t matter and won’t affect anything” is a poor excuse for not doing anything (read “The Guardian” article here). And building nuclear powerplants won’t solve nothing since they won’t be operational for at least 12 years and by then the waters in the seas will be too hot to cool them (read analysis here, only in Swedish I’m afraid). And that’s about it. That’s all the options right there. So again I quote one of my all time favorite movies – “damn you for forcing me into this position!” (Ed Harris as General Hummel in “The Rock”).
But the way things are going we’re going to end up with team “do nothing since we’re so small what does it really matter” & “build nuclear powerplants”. So that’ll be interesting and I really do hope it doesn’t matter. But I wish I could say “we did our best” to our son but it really doesn’t feel like we did. Even going flexitarian, voting green every time, driving electric car and solar panels on the house, it’s not enough.