UN summit raises voices about climate

This week, the UN climate summit COP24 opened in Katowice, Poland. Something that has started an intense environmental debate in the Swedish media. While many emphasize the importance of acting quickly, others focus on where the responsibility should lie.

"The situation is urgent," writes Jytte Guteland, negotiator in the European Parliament's delegation to COP24 in Aftonbladet. She is supported by, among others, WWF and the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation in a debate article on Svt Opinion. They write that we must take the chance to influence those who govern already now. Expressen's leaders also agree that time is short and that we can not sit back now that the climate summit in Katowice is underway. Instead, the EU and Sweden must invest more in the climate to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Dagens Nyheter's editorial board agrees and believes that the EU must make it more expensive to release. They also warn that the US's earlier departure from the Paris Agreement paves the way for more large countries to refuse to give in to climate negotiations.

At the same time, the Swedish Student Manifesto is released, which aims to make employers take more responsibility. "We feel that many of the companies we come in contact with like to call themselves sustainable, without really showing that they are prepared to change their operations to meet the climate goals in the Paris Agreement," write the initiators of the manifesto published in Dagens Nyheter.

EU parliamentarian Linnéa Engström wants us to challenge the male norms that are linked to climate emissions. "The car and the steak are areas where the transition to climate-smart alternatives can go quickly," she writes in ETC and believes that many prevailing norms about masculinity are linked to cars and carnivores - therefore work with gender equality also has a role in climate change.