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“There is a rodent gnawing from the surface of the earth. The human race will not survive. “
It is not a Nobel laureate in literature who expresses himself so poetically, but Pehr G Gyllenhammar, 85 years old. In an interview with DN’s Kristina Hedberg, the former Volvo boss talks about his vision for the future. He’s not proud of the world he hands over to his four-year-old daughter Barrett, but says he doesn’t have a bad conscience for selling too many cars. “me did enough. The belief that the climate would change and the need for clean cars has been a common thread in my life, ”he says. At the United Nations Environment Conference in 1972, PG Gyllenhammar spoke as a representative of the polluting automotive industry: “We are part of the problem, but also part of the solution.” Yet Volvo’s massive SUVs are still rolling the streets, making it increasingly difficult to meet the transport sector’s climate targets.
With what technology should these problems be addressed? And who decides? In her new book “Inventing the world,” author and DN contributor Katrine Marçal talks about how fundamental ideas about masculinity and femininity have shaped the emergence of modern society. As a good example, Marçal takes the story of the suitcase on wheels. Although the wheel was invented 5,000 years ago, it wasn’t until the 1970s that wheels were put on suitcases. Why? Because women were not prioritized as consumers and because a real man would carry his own bags.
In the eyes of many men, a real car should still say ‘hum’ and smell exhaust fumes
The example can be manifold. If the needs and experiences of women had been taken into account, the history of human inventions (and thus of society as a whole) would have been different. Already at the beginning of the 20th century, for example, a large number of electric cars circulated on the streets of Europe and the United States, but they were perceived as vehicles “for women”, causing the gasoline car to take over. Only with Elon Musk’s electric car, Tesla, did the idiotic stamp of electric cars disappear, but therefore not large SUVs. In the eyes of many men, a real car should still say “hum” and smell exhaust fumes.
The gender dimension is also very present in our vision of the climate crisis. Katrine Marçal exemplifies how we often describe the planet we live on with the metaphor “Mother Earth”. What exactly is a “mother” in a patriarchal society? she asks herself. Well, someone who is expected to give everything without ever complaining, someone who has no needs of his own and lives entirely for others. “Our idea of the mother is simply an idea of a woman who cares for us and loves us no matter how we behave,” writes Marçal.
That is why we look at photographs of the earth from space and are fascinated by “Mother Earth” where she hangs like a perfectly round beauty in the darkness of the universe. Pure objectification. We are moved by the vulnerability of the planet when it hangs exposed in space, but not when the Amazon rainforests are about to become savanna.
We are moved by the vulnerability of the planet when it hangs exposed in space, but not when the rainforests of the Amazon are about to burn in the savannah.
Many of today Climatic and environmental problems have arisen as a result of a strong and mechanized masculinity that takes the right to dominate a weak and “degenerate” nature. This image is also full of meaning. Katrine Marçal exemplifies that work in the American coal mining industry is a fairly insignificant part of the American economy, but that the powerful coal miner has an even greater symbolic role in Donald Trump’s demagogy. More recently, the president praised Pennsylvania’s steel and fracking industry as the opposite of the soft and flabby ways of Democrat Joe Biden.
It is also a well-known and well-established fact that men deny climate change to a much greater degree than women. “Obviously, many men feel threatened on a very basic level, not by climate change, but by the movement that wants to stop it,” writes Katrine Marçal in her book. In research, people speak of “Petroma masculinity” to describe the connection between masculinity and dislike for anything that goes against fossil culture and lifestyle.
Of course there is nothing which says that the fetish of male fossils must last forever. It is only seven years ago that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson scoffed at wind power in the spirit that it was weak as an overcooked stud. This week, he proudly promised green electricity from wind power to all British households within ten years.
Dealing with the climate crisis is often described as a contradiction between new technologies and changes in lifestyle, when the truth is that we need both new inventions. Y major changes in the way we live and think.
It’s only been seven years since British Prime Minister Boris Johnson scoffed at wind power in the spirit that it was as weak as overcooked asparagus.
Here, Katrine Marçal makes a particularly acute point: “Often, behavior change can be the invention itself, or the invention first requires behavior change, or the invention comes from behavior change,” she writes. Therefore, we must first be able to imagine another way of being to have the idea of the product that will allow it to be that other way. Probably, writes Marçal, in the future we will laugh at the current difficulties in getting many men to adopt a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, in the same way that today we shake our heads at how unthinkable it was for men to pack a suitcase .
After reading Katrine Marçal’s book further clarifies the image of the old automaker Pehr G Gyllenhammar, who, like a gentleman, bends his knees before the wounded body of Mother Earth. You are not alone. In fact, it is our entire male culture that cries with him next to the adored object. For a long time we have wanted to own the earth, admire it from a distance and be cared for by it. But not until now, when it is about to disappear, have we been interested in knowing it in depth.
“Dig a tunnel, build a bridge,” PG Gyllenhammar could say in his day when obstacles were piling up. That time is up. Now is the time to build a real relationship.
Read more chronicles of Björn Wiman
