ANALYSIS: Politicians are being pushed from several directions

The politicians who will be participating in the UN summit on the climate are being pushed from several directions. On the one hand of a rapidly growing global people movement, founded by Greta Thunberg. But against Greta's climate movement there is at least as powerful public opinion that views climate policy as the elite's conspiracy against the people.

Right-wing nationalists protest every environmental decision, such as raising gasoline taxes.

Politicians know that if they make the decisions that climate scientists demand, they will most likely be voted off in the next election.

This week's climate summit in New York lacks the mandate to make a decision, a meeting where around 60 of the world's politicians will talk about their new ideas how they intend to tackle the climate issue. The record-breaking interest in the UN meeting is indicative of how the galloping climate crisis is becoming increasingly worrying. For example, 300 newspapers and TV stations around the world, including SVT, have joined forces in the initiative.

"Covering Climate Now" and promised to publish news about the climate seven days in a row ahead of the upcoming meeting.

In addition to the summit there will also be a burst of research reports and proposals from environmental organizations.

Many of the reports can be summarized in one sentence; "The situation is worse than we thought and the climate crisis is accelerating faster than we thought." The challenges are enormous and nothing indicates that we will meet the two-degree target, that is, to keep global warming below two degrees. The warming that takes place now is the result of the emissions that occurred in the 1980s. Since then, the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has only increased. It will be worse before hopefully it can get better. The world has ten years to halve emissions. For three years in a row, they have continued to rise instead.

But two of the reports differ from the crowd. There, a quick and possible way forward is to reduce emissions.

The first is a report from the United Nations Environment Agency UNEP's report. It notes that G20 countries account for 80 percent of global emissions. UNEP makes concrete proposals on what the countries in question can do. China may end with coal power, for example. Or if you instead calculate companies' emissions, a report from the Stockholm Resilience Center shows how 100 global large companies together account for 70 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The researchers note that this concentration of power presents an opportunity. The multinational companies in agriculture, forestry, fishing, cement, mining and fossil energy sources have the opportunity to change the course humanity has set, beyond two degrees of heating the planet.

But in order for either the G-20 countries or the 100 companies to end up with oil and coal, frameworks and rules are required. And that is currently the major dilemma of climate policy. Some of the heads of state and government invited to speak at the UN summit at the climate summit will promise to stop building coal-fired power stations and stop subsidizing oil and coal. But if the world is not to be warmed over two degrees, a tripling of the efforts now decided under UNEP is required.

Politicians have so far failed to explain and motivate how the way out of the fossil society can be done in a socially and economically fair way. When their decisions fail in the wallet, they are punished by the voters.

This has led to several political setbacks in the climate area. The Swedish Environment Party wants to continue raising the air tax but receives no hearing from the government. Liberal Justin Trudeau of Canada may lose government power in the upcoming October 21 election because of the climate tax he introduced. French President Emanuel Macron received a national yellow-west rebellion against him when he tried to raise the gasoline price and was forced to back down.

Yet it may be that we are witnessing a historic shift right now. A critical mass of 25 percent of the population can suffice to create a change in society as a whole, according to sociologists from the University of Pennsylvania using mathematical models. Convinced citizens can work for a long time without getting a breakthrough but then all of a sudden it happens, history is full of such examples. Interviewed by author Naomi Klein, Greta Thunberg notes that the hopefulness of her person and aspberger diagnosis is just a sign that the climate deniers' arguments are pushing: “I point and say it's burning! They look at me and ask what I'm really wearing. ”

Important, climate-skeptical powers such as US Donald Trump and Brazil's Javier Bolsonaro are missing at the New York climate summit. In Canada, right-wing nationalist politician Maxime Bernier has been forced to apologize for wondering how the whole world can listen to a mentally unstable girl.

Next Friday there will be new climate demonstrations all over the world, this time it is the adults who are planning to strike or take time off from work.

But the protesters' simple message that politicians must start listening to scientists is not the only answer. The researchers set out what needs to be done but not how it should be done.

For example, they do not describe how Germany should manage to close down its coal industry without widening the social divisions in eastern Germany. Politicians must figure this out.

On the summit are also companies that promise new emission reductions. But here too, the politicians have a dilemma. Politicians must win business confidence in order to invest in new, expensive fossil-free technology. The companies are not run for ideological reasons but want to be able to win market shares with new, green technology. Companies in the EU, for example, must be convinced that if they invest in fossil-free, they will not be out-competed by cheaper, climate-friendly products from China.

The researchers agree on a measure; the most effective for the climate would be a global tax on carbon dioxide but it is considered politically impossible. That, and everything else that is the huge dilemma of politics right now, will be talked about very little during the New York Summit.