It was the summer of 2010 and I was in Stockholm with family, the rain was pounding down creating near flood situations in many parts of Sweden. A few days previously, all the Swedish newspaper had been full of a certain Julian Assange who had just launched something called Wikileaks. And the year before, I had started my environmental journey which culminated around the now infamous UNFCCC COP 15 conference, which started off my minor obsession with the environmental movement. In October I would write my first blog on environmental issues and in April 2011 I would actively join Greenpeace.
During those few drizzly days in Stockholm,we didn’t venture out much and instead spent time playing indoor board games, eating good food and chatting. One of the topics of conversation was an Arctic photo exhibition we’d seen in one of Stockholm’s squares. My dad in particular was incensed about what he called ‘the insanity’ of drilling for every last drop for oil in the Arctic. He said his hopes were that it would be stopped and that we would come up with viable solutions to stop us emptying the planet of its resources. At this point, he was very much the person in the know on the issue, as he had been throughout my life up to that point, and I was still at the stage of orientating myself around the world's environmental problems.
This was the beginning many conversations to come on this issue, in fact most times we saw each other we would discuss it in great detail and with great passion. Through time, I became the person in the know through my involvement with Greenpeace in particular, and before long I was able to give him interesting details about our campaigners eg. Cairn Energy’s plans to drill off the Greenlandic coast. He was excited every time I told him that Greenpeace had performed another action in the Arctic as it was an organisation he had the utmost respect for and was very proud that I was a part of.
My dad passed away on the 28th of August, after a cancer he had fought hard for nearly five years suddenly attacked with such strength that it could not be defeated. He was 62 years old.
As a lawyer my dad had a strong interest in human rights and he fought many cases fighting for the most vulnerable in our society. As I sit here, I think back at how he would have reacted to the latest developments with Russia having illegally seized the Greenpeace ship the Arctic Sunrise and activists being detained without a charge; to say it mildly he would have been outraged and would have leveraged any support for the campaign he could muster.
Aside from the huge emotional loss of not having him here anymore, a loss which still seems unreal, I regret that he did not live to learn that we would protect the Arctic from industrialization, that we would halt climate change and the destruction of our environment, and fully transition to renewable energy (just like those hundreds of wind turbines we have in my parents region in Denmark, which is also leading region for renewable energy, about which he always enjoyed informing me of the latest developments).
But I do know that my dad knew I would continue fighting the Arctic fight for us both, as it was an issue that was so high on both our agendas, so that’s exactly what I will do. And each time we achieve another hard fought victory in the campaign, which we will continue to do, I will be sure to share it with him, as I always did.
Comments