Carsten Jensen
If you think you can live the way you have always lived, you are wrong.
If you think your kids will have a life like yours, you are wrong.
If you think politicians have a bigger horizon than the next election, you are wrong.
If you think that the problems you don’t solve today will solve themselves tomorrow, you are wrong.
If you think there’s someone who will save the world for you, you are wrong.
If you think there’s still plenty of time, you are wrong.
If you believe that the world doesn’t need to be saved, you are wrong.
If you think that the thawing tundra in Siberia won’t affect you, you are wrong.
If you think that the billions living in the global south can live daily with temperatures of fifty degrees heat, you are wrong.
If you think they are not coming here, you are wrong.
If you think that the melting ice sheets will do nothing worse than give you warm summer seas to swim in, you are wrong.
If you think that your nation is its very own planet, and doesn’t share its fate with others, you are wrong.
If you think the Earth is dumb and passive, and doesn’t speak to you daily, you are wrong.
If you think nature doesn’t have a language and that you will never have to learn it, you are wrong.
If you believe that humanity has subdued the natural world and that it isn’t far stronger than us, you are wrong.
If you think you are the king of the world when you look in the mirror, you are wrong.
If you think that the disappearance of insects won’t turn empires to rubble, you are wrong.
If you think humans can’t live like rats, you’re wrong.
If you think the planet’s patience is infinite because it has endured the presence of your species for a few hundred thousand years, you are wrong.
If you think the billions of wild animals tortured by droughts and floods and flames don’t have a message for you, you are wrong.
If you think that breeding and slaughtering imprisoned animals to feed your appetite for meat isn’t a moral issue, you are wrong.
If you think you can hide from the future, you are wrong.
If you think that people in power aren’t capable of blindly leading you into doom, you are wrong.
If you think that armed border guards and machine guns and refugee processing centers in Rwanda can protect you from rising seas and rising temperatures, you are wrong.
If you think the society you live in isn’t breaking nature’s most fundamental laws, you are wrong.
If you think that today’s climate policy failures won’t bring about the disasters of tomorrow, you are wrong.
If you believe that this generation’s actions won’t have an impact on life on the planet for thousands of years to come, you are wrong.
If you think that you could never become a boat refugee, you are wrong.
If you think it’s illegal to block a bridge and briefly stop the choking traffic to call attention to the planetary crisis, you are wrong.
We stand here because we love all life on earth, and that’s why we will stand here again and again.
And if you think you can stop us, you are wrong.
Carsten Jensen is one of Denmark’s most celebrated literary voices, and the prize-winning author of many books, including I Have Seen the World Begin, The First Stone and We, The Drowned.