Yesterday I read an article about climate friendly food. The woman who was interviewed listed several ’sins’ with regard to food and suggested that we choose our sins – red wine and meat or a trip to Vietnam, in order to cut down on CO2 emissions.

What struck me in this small input in the huge field of the climate debate was the focus on guilt – and the sense of guilt creeping into my mind as so many times before when I read about the climate change. My reaction was twofold. On the one hand the feeling of guilt is somehow positive; since before guilt comes reflection. In that respect we could rename guilt to the rising awareness of the consumer. On the other hand I could not help feeling lonely and unimportant, and actually a bit angry as well. So, I stop eating beef – but what about the big companies - the Danish shipping company, Maersk, for instance - who emits as much carbon dioxide as the Danish population all together?

What we need is a political will. A will to change policies. I believe that it is the core of the issue. And what do I mean by changing policies? I think that it is important to cut down the CO2 emissions, however, I believe that it is even more important to discuss how we adapt to climate changes. People have always been very good at adapting to the context they live in, and to changes in that context. We need to draw on this ability and to implement policies that support the adaptation. Stop eating food produced far away from where we live may be one of these adaptations (and I believe it is a good one), but then we need policies that make it possible for local farmers to sell their products cheaper or at least not more expensive than products coming from Israel or Spain or Australia.

A consequence of climate change, whether it is human-made or not, is that parts of the world’s population will have to move. There is already climate refugees and the number will grow rapidly. Again, we need policies that are able to deal with this “redistribution” of people around the world. It is possible that this would change the perception of the nation-state and make us think of the world in more global terms. (On the dark side of the moon is cultural conflict and economic and political crisis…)

“If we could only redistribute the water” said Jørgen Steen Nielsen, journalist at the Danish newspaper Information. What he indicated was that areas that are dry now will become desert areas in the future, and areas experiencing heavy rain will have severe floodings. I think that his idea goes for more than water. If we could only redistribute food we would experience that it is not that there is not enough food in the world – but the way we have organised the world politically make some people die of starvation and other people die from obesity. We have to start using political instruments in a way that makes it possible to deal with the problems of our time in a more fair and inclusive way.

Global warming is, of course, about nature and climate and the environment, but it is just as much about politics and strategics and power.