Do You Feel Safe?
- ugnebudriunaite
- Jun 15
- 3 min read
Insecurity, climate collapse, and what your sense of unease might be trying to tell you
Do you feel safe?
It’s a big question. It’s what Jenny Tabermann asked me at a Nordic Council of Ministers panel on an uncharacteristically warm April Tuesday in Tampere. And it made me think.
First, it made me think of the two young activists I know who have been hospitalised with ill mental health, because they were deemed a danger to themselves. And then, it made me think further back, to my teenage self, hiding under my bed, wishing that the world was a less dark place and hating myself for not knowing what to do about it.
Young, informed, and scared to death
88% of us under-30s in the Nordics are “very” or “extremely” concerned about climate change, way higher than every older age group. Just 5% of us are “not worried at all”. We see it as one of the major threats to our lives and our futures - and that isn’t a pathological assumption. We are correct.
The fabric of the world around us is creaking towards collapse. The World Meteorological Organisation reports that for the first time, the 10 hottest years on record all occurred in the last decade. Species are going extinct at a rate only ever seen before in mass extinction events, like the most recent one that saw the end of the dinosaurs. And yet, global carbon emissions continue to rise.
What does that mean for us here in the Nordics?
In October last year, 42 climate scientists sent an open letter to the Nordic Council of Ministers, urging them to act on a disturbing development in the currents of the North Atlantic. “A string of scientific studies in the past few years suggests that this risk has so far been greatly underestimated”, they wrote. The current that brings warm water north to our region is showing warning signs, already, of slowing.
The collapse of the AMOC would be a severe climate catastrophe, resulting in major cooling in the Arctic region and warming of the surrounding regions. It would also lead to unprecedented extreme weather. “Adaptation to such severe climate catastrophe is not a viable option”, the signatories emphasise.
We are talking about a risk of Tampere having an average temperature of 0 degrees in June. Permafrost. Within the lifetime of my grandchildren. Irreversibly.
That’s the thing: when we say we are afraid for our safety, we aren’t wrong.
When you take into account consumption-based emissions, the Nordic and Baltic Sea region also has some of the highest resource use (per person) in the world. We also have some of the most intense CO2 (per person) emissions rates in the world. The emissions generated to produce stuff like our phones and clothes wipe out the progress we are making to transition to a low-carbon society.
Meanwhile, our so-called “leaders” are driving us head-first deeper into this crisis.
And yet global carbon emissions have continued to rise, which will bring even worse impacts. The Swedish government has just scrapped the Ministry for the Environment. Both the Finnish and the Swedish governments are allowing our carbon-sinking old-growth forests to be destroyed, often against the will of local indigenous stewards.
Sure, there’s some progress - Denmark, Sweden, and Greenland recently joined the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, pledging to end exploration for new oil and gas and wind down production of already-existing infrastructure - that’s good. But Norway’s Equinor is continuing to aggressively expand oil and gas production whilst its investors laugh their way to the bank.
So the solution to our safety isn’t (just) mental health care: it’s serious climate action
Because when other young people in ReGeneration 2030 turn to me and say they feel like something really bad is happening, and they feel like none of our leaders are doing anything about it, they are not wrong. We are reacting to knowledge about what is happening to our future, and we need avenues to express this fear, and most importantly, changes to make us safer.
It’s time we pull the emergency brake.
Read the ReGeneration 2030 Position Paper outlining the biggest changes we need to see in the Nordic and Baltic Sea region here
And sign up to ReGeneration Week 2025 to discuss the challenge of Safety Beyond Borders with 100 other youth, and take our demands directly to power holders here
Author: Keira Dignan, Secretary-General of ReGeneration 2030
ReGeneration 2030 is a democratic and youth-led organisation, mobilising youth climate activists and movements from the Nordic and Baltic Sea region. Want to join us? Fill out a volunteer application form here.
Comments