This summer my son learned about the climate crisis

After a summer of extreme weather and natural disasters, we need a cultural shift to take the climate crisis seriously. Perhaps the biologist Rowan Hooper's captivating new book "Togetherness" can show the way for the next generation, writes Martin Gelin. An excerpt from Dagens Nyheter, 2026-09-20 20:54 Original source of the article: https://www.dn.se/kultur/martin-gelin-den-har-sommaren-fick-min-son-lara-sig-om-klimatkrisen/ Martin Gelin: This summer my son learned about the climate crisis Find more from DN if logged in You know you can create a free account on DN? As a logged-in user you can access several smart features. - Follow your interests - Newsletter My four-year-old son remains happily unaware of the names of the world's despots. But this summer he learned about the climate crisis. It was impossible to avoid. The fields that were so green last summer were now yellow and dried up. It was so hot and dry everywhere, all the time, and he wondered why. I tried to make it understandable by applying Johan Rockström's research on planetary boundaries to the Iron Man's armor. It can withstand some hits, but eventually the cracks become so many that there is a short circuit in the entire system. My son's generation will have no other option than to try to remedy the damage that previous generations have inflicted on the planet. In France, parents generally do not believe in keeping the worst truths away from children. In the museums in Paris, it is not uncommon for five-year-olds to receive brutally honest analyses of artworks depicting Dante's vision of hell. We may not become really French, but I still think it is good to start talking to children as an adult relatively early. My son's generation will have no other option than to try to remedy the damage that previous generations have inflicted on the planet. The summer debates about extreme weather have not matched the proportions of what is at stake at all. People get lost in arguments about local details. Politicians are barely answering when they ignore the research. A Swedish Riksdag party, which not long ago stood for humanitarian ideals, went to the polls to imprison climate activists. Not as a secret plan behind the scenes – it was their strategy for mobilization. We need a cultural and philosophical shift. The view of nature and our relationship to it must change. Whether our planet will remain habitable for a while is not enough with fine-tuning in policy and some nicer data visualizations at conferences. We need a cultural and philosophical shift. The view of nature and our relationship to it must change. The British biologist and science journalist Rowan Hooper's new book "Togetherness. Symbiosis and the hidden story of life's greatest collaborations" is a step in that direction. Already from the first page, Hooper draws us into a green jungle of plants and organisms that depend on each other. With poetic richness, Hooper describes how lichens, corals, mosses, fungi, trees, insects, and orchids cooperate and develop symbiotic relationships. When Darwin published "On the origin of species," he was shaped by prevailing trends and norms. He adapted the story to some extent to a brutal societal climate, where economic and political power was concentrated in a few and colonialism was at its peak, as the British empire encompassed a fifth of the world's population. This affected the book's reception and influence. It is as you know, the reader who writes the book, and in Darwin's case, this meant that many reduced the book's sophisticated and nuanced research to simplified slogans about the right of the strong. It was the philosopher Herbert Spencer, not Darwin, who articulated the phrase "survival of the fittest," but Darwin added it to the book's fifth, revised edition. This phrase in turn inspired ideas about the obviousness of exploiting the planet's natural resources and the populations of other countries. Hooper shows here the researchers and writers who have emphasized nature's symbiotic relationships, from Rachel Carson and Lynn Margulis to Ursula K. Le Guin and Suzanne Simard, the professor of forest ecology who inspired Richard Powers' modern classic "The Overstory". Especially Margulis's hypotheses were long dismissed by male researchers as typical feminine wish-thinking, a romanticized idea of nature. Now they are accepted. Hooper and Paravel both remind us that we will need both art and science to achieve a societal shift in the fight against the climate crisis. In the reading, the associations constantly move from research to art – the perspective shifts seamlessly from the microscopic to the planetary. It reminds me of one of the summer's strongest film experiences, Verena Paravel's radical nature documentary "Delta," which I watched on Luma in Arles one day when it was 42 degrees warm outside. There the director pushes the boundaries of how we can portray and experience nature, making us feel directly involved in it. Hooper and Paravel both remind us that we will need both art and science to achieve a societal shift in the fight against the climate crisis. When I met Johan Rockström last year, he was talking about how the climate crisis today is also an information crisis. He has therefore launched a new initiative to strengthen communication about climate and planetary boundaries, based on the insight that "science alone cannot save us," as Rockström expresses it. The fate of the planet will be decided by "our communication and how we act based on it," he says. The challenge is therefore no less than to create a new public sphere, where the seriousness of the climate crisis receives central space. This task is partly architectural – we need an entirely new digital infrastructure for research and journalism to actually reach, and not just be drowned in misleading nonsense, distractions, and propaganda. Read more: Erika Bjerström: The climate crisis is worsening, but the media is growing quieter