It\’s Getting Hot In Here

A month of intense preparations, coalition-building, establishing new contacts, involving new activists from several different countries, and solving logistic problems culminated yesterday in a Manifestation Against Climate Change in Lund (Scania, Sweden), where about 150 people gathered under the grey sky on a windy Stortorget square. It was quite a big number of participants for this university city, especially considering the “red day” in the calendar (a religious holiday, when the most shops are closed and so there’re much less shoppers strolling in the city center than on a usual weekend) and despite the cold, windy and rainy weather.

But it was something which happened almost one year ago in Montréal that created momentum to continuously inspire me throughout the year, including these latest efforts to organize Climate Manifestation in Lund, which became one of the three cities in Sweden where this November 4^th event was organized (two others being the biggest Swedish cities of Stockholm and Gothenburg). In order to make this manifestation a success, we had to build a coalition of several very different organizations united in one concern: to turn the public and a new government’s attention towards the catastrophic climate changes threatening all life on our planet. The most active in this coalition (which saw such unlikely allies as rival political parties from both left and right of the political spectrum, apolitical graduate students, and young anarchists) were the students’ environmental organization “Hållbart Universitet”, the students’ fraction of the Swedish Green Party “Gröna Studenter” in Lund, the environmental committee of the student union “Smålands Nation”, and, of course, my wonderful classmates from the LUMES programme. We were also lucky to get a support from the municipality of Lund, which is the most progressive municipal government in Sweden when it comes to the climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. The fact, that one of the municipality’s officials was a Hållbart Universitet’s chairman several years ago, played its positive role too.

We set up a number of interactive “stations” where everyone could get more information on renewable sources of electricity, energy-saving tips, everyday solutions to combat the climate change, as well as taste cookies and cakes and take a couple of souvenirs like bike stickers and such… Meanwhile, the TV and newspaper reporters were busy recording the informative and inspirational speeches from representatives of the Lund University, municipality and the biggest environmental NGO in Sweden, SNF. The manifestation concluded in an hour and a half with a “bike music concert” (which went much better than I expected, it was more like real music than a random noise, mind you!), but even after that people didn’t hurry to leave the square – partially thanks to the sun which decided to appear from the clouds and to the “free hugs” action, which caused a lot of enthusiasm in a freezing crowd. All in all, it’s been a big success for all of us, so we could finally relax and celebrate it properly!

The very same evening some of us returned to the square to light candles (which supposedly saved some energy, if compared to the “baseline” of all of us sitting in our rooms with the lights on) to meditate on what’s going on with our precious planet and how many people across it were united today in their sincere desire to step from the destructive way of the modern society’s development onto a lighter and more sustainable one… I was feeling exhausted, but also very happy and calm: all the crazy time of our preparations has finally paid off big time.

The next day, having slept until noon, I went out to buy a fresh newspaper. In a biggest regional paper Sydsvenskan there was a report about the Campaign Against Climate Change on the second page with a photo from the demo in London, and a big article about our very own manifestation in the middle of Lund’s section.