A war in Europe and polarised societies have set the world on fire and shaken democracies. As individuals, we have a whole new security situation to relate to. Malin Ekman, a US foreign correspondent, also reflects on the role the media have played in these new developments.

There was a time when many risks in our corner of the world felt so hypothetical, and many discussions so abstract, that it was easy to ask oneself: “When is something going to happen?”

That time has now passed. When Putin invaded Ukraine, we were confronted with the world’s destructive uncertainty, as if world history cracked down on us, taken our temperature, and heralded a ruthless, unstoppable future where nuclear threats could no longer be dismissed and where gas pipes could be blown up.

A ticking bomb

The last time I felt like that was on 9/11. I was 14 years old and on a family holiday in Phuket, my first trip outside Europe. We were staying in a basic apartment hotel. Mum turned on the TV set in the living room. Images of the planes colliding with the twin towers were shown over and over. I remember thinking that Thailand felt reassuringly distant, even though it seemed as if the whole world had been compressed into a ticking bomb.

That same feeling returned this spring.

My friend and colleague Per Bjurman from Aftonbladet says he intends to stand on his balcony on the 48th floor when the missiles come. If it happens, he says, we should be glad if we die; no one will survive such an apocalypse. He knows exactly how many minutes it takes for a nuclear warhead to reach Manhattan from Russia (30) and the destructive impact of a modern nuclear weapon (100 times greater than that of the Hiroshima bomb).

This says something not only about the neurotic nature of our friendship but also about the uncertainty the world is struggling to get accustomed to. It was Per who told me about the invasion. I was heading for Orlando on a plane with a lousy internet connection when I received his message: “Oh no, Russia’s attacking Kyiv now!”

It had seemed so unlikely only a few hours earlier. Friends back home sent messages to the effect of thank goodness Trump isn’t president when this happens, at least; there’s no telling how things would turn out then. In the United States I heard acquaintances and interview subjects say that if Trump had still been president, Putin might not have dared to invade.

Both are pushing America first

While both analyses have their merits, it’s important to remember that the geopolitical differences between Trump and Biden are relatively small. Both are pushing the “America first” message.

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan, initiated by Trump and implemented by Biden, demonstrated how seriously the US took that slogan. Afghans clung to aircraft wings out of fear of being left behind in a country where, every day, people were being stripped of the rights that had slowly being secured for them under US control. Everyone was asking themselves: “Is this what American foreign policy looks like?”

The war in Ukraine complicated the answer to this question. The US was not ready to intervene at the cost of a third world war, but nor was it prepared to stand by and leave a country being invaded by a world power to its own fate. It sent weapons and imposed sanctions and formed a united front with the other Western nations.

But even though it was unprecedented, some important perspectives were lost in the way the incident was reported.

The months come and go, and for those of us who don’t have to live under constant physical threat, the fear is cyclical. One move by Putin, and the sense of security is ripped away. One threat of nuclear weapons – be it direct or indirect – and the fear returns. The geopolitical situation is so alarming and at the same time so fascinating that it’s almost easy to forget the domestic political polarisation here in the US. That, too, is prompting legitimate fears about what type of world will emerge; a polarisation which in many ways is leaving its mark all over the world and is evoking fear and concern for where our world is headed.

The storming of the Capitol is a low watermark in contemporary US history. But even though it was unprecedented, some important perspectives were lost in the way the incident was reported, political parallels that help explain why it could happen.

Comparisons with the claims made by Hillary Clinton and parts of the Democratic Party establishment that Trump’s 2016 election win was illegitimate are often dismissed as unfair, but they are important for understanding the political dynamics at play.

Effecting faith in democracy

Hillary Clinton conceded the election without urging her supporters to storm the Congress and stop Trump, though she did dismiss her opponent as an “illegitimate president” and claimed “he knows” that he stole the election.

The accusations were put forward in more sophisticated ways and without directly or indirectly agitating violence, but still they have as much significance for the American people’s faith in their democracy as they do for the populist right wing’s argument of a corrupt elite throwing stones from glass houses.

It didn’t help that parts of the years-long reporting on Trump’s alleged collusion with the Kremlin – which won The New York Times and The Washington Post a joint Pulitzer Prize – proved to be based on idle rumour and false information. Or that Hillary Clinton helped fund the report from which much of that information came. This passed relatively unnoticed, but revelations about the news media’s shortcomings are important for understanding the resentment towards them and how they feed polarisation.

Many didn’t report

The social media platforms also play a key role. After allowing the spread of disinformation in the 2016 US presidential election, Facebook assumed an almost self-flagellating role in the 2020 election. In response to a request from the Biden campaign, it decided to actively suppress the story about the documents found on Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s laptop; information which I had managed to have corroborated by a Facebook employee.

Several reputable media with high credibility in established circles chose not to report the story on the grounds that the information could not be verified. Others chose to dismiss it as disinformation; a precaution that wasn’t taken in the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on Russia.

It’s harder to discuss the undermining of trust to which we in the media – sometimes routinely – contribute.

As journalists, we have a responsibility to reflect on our own role in these developments. It’s easy to talk about the undermining of trust which Donald Trump inflicts on democracy by disqualifying election results, but it’s harder to discuss the undermining of trust to which we in the media – sometimes routinely – contribute. The tendency to demonise and alienate rather than to understand and examine is also a price we pay for democracy, because it plays a part in dividing and agitating people.

A crass political game

In a panel discussion I recently participated in at the Swedish consulate in New York, a woman in the audience asked me: “How is it possible that so many elected Republicans seem to be ignoring the storming of the Capitol, as if they couldn’t care less?” It’s a relevant question.

As well as having to do with crass political games – even Republicans who detest Trump need to have the support of his electoral base – the answer has to do with the resentment at how the storming was portrayed and in what proportion compared to other news items.

For those who seem to ignore the storming, it’s almost as bad or even worse that Democrats turned a blind eye when, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, a radical left vandalised cities, tore down barricades and set fire to police vehicles. They even occupied entire blocks and forced the police out of their own buildings.

More at stake

Still answering that woman’s question: The hate for the other side runs so deep that we forgive our own side’s mistakes. It’s human nature and, at the same time, a form of combat psychology, a dynamic similar to that found in global conflicts. The drama playing out in the world is putting more at stake; the question is no longer: “When is something going to happen?”

For my own part, I find it hard to imagine that I won’t relive the claustrophobic fear I experienced in Phuket and on that plane to Orlando, the one that comes with the feeling that the world is spinning out of control. As an individual, that’s a private matter

I have to deal with myself. As a journalist, it’s something bigger. Our responsibility is to communicate what we see with curiosity and consequential neutrality, and to help our audience understand the world as it is rather than repeat how it is usually presented.

While climate goals seem all the more hard to reach, experts say we need concrete narratives to show us what a sustainable future might look like. We need stories that explain what roles we as individuals can play – meet Ester in Stockholm 2050.

It’s the 1st of July 2050 and the sun is rising. Sunlight is slowly filtering through the reflective glass exterior, causing Ester to rub the sleep from her eyes. She asks her digital assistant for a cup of coffee before even getting out of bed, and hears the machine obligingly whir into action in the kitchen. We call our person of the future Ester. She is a fictional character who for research purposes is placed in a time and scenario where humans once again live sustainably and in tune with nature.

In Ester’s world the amount of global emissions has been halving every decade since 2020. Reports are published of sustainable food chains, improved water quality and balanced ecosystems. And the planet is far from exceeding the 1.5-degree global temperature by 2100.

But that century is still a long way off. The sunny day has begun, and draws attention to what lies outside the solar panel-clad windows. The timers in the kitchen tick away. The roof panels and the integrated solar panels that cover the facades and windows are all performing at full capacity.

“Should I work from home today or drive my electric bike or car to work?” Ester asks herself.

She decides to drive her small electric car, charged with self-generated electricity, to her hybrid office in the urban circle close by. Moving around the city is fast and easy because the traffic has been replaced by the new autonomous buses that provide a seamless shuttle service.

Everything within 15 minutes distance

In Ester’s city, no transport stretch takes longer than 15 minutes. Once known as decentralisation, this development is now regarded as commonplace. Little has been demolished to give the urban districts a chance to flourish; instead the catchword has been adaptation, and crops are now being cultivated on the rooftops side by side with solar panels.

“The 15-minute city” – isn’t that what they called it? Ester seems to recall reading about the model that was launched by Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, even before the Covid-19 pandemic. But the fact that she has everything she needs within a 15-minute walk or bike ride is far from a matter of course.

Car with solar panels

Ester’s car has solar panels on its roof, and the car body serves as a battery. Sometimes the car sends power to the grid, other times it uses the power to top up the battery, functioning like a communicating vessel. The car is connected to the grid and can drive autonomously in the most energy-efficient and climate-smart way, but on this particular day Ester prefers to drive herself and take an alternative route because she has the time and the weather is so nice.

She enjoys the greenery. Large squares and asphalted surfaces have been replaced with rain parks and cloudburst ponds that can handle sudden precipitation events, while trees, bushes and other vegetation regulate the temperature. Tree crowns offer shade, water tables work together in a canal-like system, and fields and bushes are full of sounds of buzzing and chirping like never before.

Whatever is new has been created from reuse, and circular systems mean that very few resources now go to waste.

She laughs when she thinks about the manicured lawns of the past; so rigid, time-consuming and water-intensive.

In the small urban core where houses and small office complexes are concentrated, old buildings have been renovated and modernised. Whatever is new has been created from reuse, and circular systems mean that very few resources now go to waste.

Items can be borrowed

Basement storage spaces are full of batteries and communally owned items that can be borrowed, such as tools and various types of electric bikes. There’s also a small car pool for driving distances that are too long nonetheless. Courtyards and storage facilities have been specially adapted to accommodate hydrogen storage, among other things, and on this particular day they’re all full of self-produced green energy. The turbines in the wind farm in the distance are standing still, but what does that matter on a day like this?

Ester listens to the silence of the city post-electrification. The air is high and clear despite the 25-degree temperature. The wide walking and cycling paths make it easy for her to quickly move between her home and the shops, recreational areas, cultural events, gym and office, so she rarely needs her little car in her everyday life, but she likes to know she can just take off whenever she wants to.

Many small cores

When it comes to food shopping, Ester can use a transport bike with an electric motor or have it delivered to her home by a bike delivery rider or an electric truck that doesn’t need to drive so far when a large urban core is replaced by many smaller ones.
Ester dreams of taking the train to Paris for her holiday. The journey only takes a few hours now, and she has heard that Europe is greener and more beautiful than it has been for decades.

But right now Ester is planning a picnic with friends in a local park. She turns up the volume of the music in the car while a news broadcast tells listeners what it used to be like, specifically in the 2020s when almost 50% of young people said they didn’t want to have children on account of the climate crisis, and about when young people’s concerns about global warming, ice melting and severe weather events destroyed their dreams.

It’s a new era now.

Even if we don’t know what the future will be like and Ester is just a fictional figure, this story is an attempt to describe the best outcome of the sustainable development goals which the world’s leaders adopted in 2015 and which mean meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. Ester’s life may be idealistic, but it’s also a kind of vision, even though several of the planet’s limits have already been crossed.

We need narratives that make sustainability more concrete.

Now let’s return to our own time to meet Alexandra Nikoleris, associate senior lecturer, environmental and energy systems studies at Lund University, who has studied transition narratives, among other things. She believes that visions like the one about Ester have great value. “We need narratives that make sustainability more concrete so that we can write ourselves into narratives like these,” says Alexandra and adds: “A lot of research shows that most people today take climate change seriously and want something to be done about it but don’t know what, or what role they should play.”

That fact that we live in a narrative doesn’t have to mean that we can’t change it. The power of change lies in the narratives we choose to activate, believes author Mary Alice Arthur, who calls herself a story activist.

Another believer in the power of storytelling is Christiana Figueres, the lead architect of the Paris Agreement who now runs an organisation called Global Optimism. In her book, titled The future we choose: Surviving the climate crisis, she writes a story similar to the one about Ester, and in her most recent article she likens Europe’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels to a smoking lung cancer patient who starts up his own tobacco plantation rather than quit smoking.

The pace of transition is too slow

To reduce the cognitive dissonance, the inner conflict between what we know and how we act; that is where these stories fulfil a purpose. But she also realises that many will push back if the narratives are expected to result in restrictions on our freedom of speech.

“That’s why collective narratives often work best. That people share their experiences on trains and when cycling together, for example,” she says.
In an ideal world, Sweden’s vision is to become the world’s first fossil-free welfare nation, but a lot still needs to be done to achieve its climate goals and realise this vision.

The overall aim is to achieve net zero emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by the year 2045 and thereafter negative emissions. To have a chance to experience at least some of what Ester can enjoy after 2050, there needs to be an annual reduction in emissions of 6-10%.

“The pace of climate transition remains too slow, and current policy is insufficient for achieving the climate goals,” writes the Swedish Climate Policy Council in its 2021 report.

At slightly lower rate

But wait a minute – Sweden’s domestic emissions amounted to 46.3 million tonnes CO2 equivalents in 2020, representing a record reduction of 8.9% compared with 2019, which is well inside the government’s stipulated reduction range. The decreasing emission levels depend on lower generation of emissions from industry, domestic transport and electricity and district heating sectors, though, according to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, they also result from less activity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Emission reductions in any one year do not diminish the greenhouse effect, either; the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere simply increases temporarily at a slightly lower rate than it otherwise would have. It is not until net emissions reach zero or are negative that the conditions will be in place to stop global warming. And to reach that point, global emissions would need halve every decade from 2020 in order to reach net zero by the middle of the century, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The real world isn’t even close to Ester’s. There is no point in time when all the problems disappear, but despite the problems there are some possible solutions, a sustainable development, that is highlighted by the IPCC and the global sustainable development goals, among others things, such as:

• Replace fossil fuels with renewable energy and carbon capture and storage.
• Protect and expand the biosphere. Restore wetlands, forests and transition to sustainable regenerative agriculture and forestry practices.
• Transition from a linear to a circular economy. Complete the cycle. Reduce wastage and waste. Reuse and sharing economies.
• More equitable distribution of resources, energy and environmental space.

In a changed world like Ester’s, you can imagine that it’s easier to do the right thing. Ester knows that you can’t buy your way to happiness, just as no one would be happy if they just wore broadcloth and ate porridge all day.

According to researchers, the transition must result in maintained or improved quality of life if a sustainable lifestyle is to appeal to enough people and remain as sustainable over time. Other stories and realities must of course be taken into account, such as those of indigenous peoples and other groups of people and of places that are severely impacted by the exploitation or extraction of natural resources. A resilient future that can handle disruptions and still be further developed involves ecological, social and economic sustainability.

After the summer of 2022, when Europe was on fire, when temperature records were broken one after the other and when drought spread across almost half the EU – what are we supposed to think? And is this a result of the climate crisis?

Researchers, meteorologists and the media have long insisted that an individual weather event could not be linked to climate change, and sceptical voices have insisted that weather always varies.

Strong evidence of human influence

But in recent years a new research field has emerged: extreme event attribution. Using vast amounts of data, researchers can with greater certainty attribute individual weather events to global warming, or to put it another way, they can say how much a weather event can be attributed to human-induced climate change and how much to natural variations. And when it comes to extreme rain and heat waves, there is strong evidence to indicate that they are caused by human influence. The European Commission, acknowledging the seriousness of the situation, last year adopted a new strategy for adapting to climate change, since the impacts were already noticeable and adaptation to a warmer climate therefore had to happen sooner and be more comprehensive.

Resilience must be enhanced, and according to the IPCC, that is best achieved by countries meeting the emission targets they have set, but enhancing the resilience of cities and societies comes neither easily nor cheaply. The insurance industry in a number of countries has begun murmuring that while its business is to protect against disasters, it will be a totally different situation if the unexpected becomes the expected. “We cannot insure what we already know will occur,” says Staffan Moberg, a lawyer from the industry organisation Insurance Sweden and an expert in climate-related damage.

Now back to the future. Ester doesn’t think about commonplace things like sustainability and adaptation. She knows that the climate threat was considerable during the first decades of the 2000s, but it’s something she no longer gives much thought to because she’s busy enough living her own life. One day at a time. One step at a time. She runs her fingers through her hair, pulls down her sunglasses and hurries off.

For one year, Sumeet Singh Patpatia has been Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at Schibsted. After collecting data one thing is clear – there is a lot of unleashed potential that could spur on innovation.

In a rapidly accelerating world, where markets, trends, customer behaviours and needs constantly evolve, companies must evolve as well. In addition to this, we face challenges of enormous complexity and scale – the climate crisis, energy costs, an uncertain macro-economic outlook and a war in Europe. Never has the need for different perspectives and inclusion been more urgent. With a greater range of diversity in the room comes a wider range of perspectives, ways of thinking, understanding behaviours – and greater responsibility.

Inclusion is about the ability to unleash the potential of all kinds of people, to make everyone thrive, feel seen and translate that to better products and services. And to have the right team in place to spot the relevant, changing needs. By broadening the range of diversity in our teams, the possibility to innovate and innovate even better increases.

Understanding how we can improve

That’s why we, for a year now, have been working on a plan to make Schibsted an even more diverse and inclusive place to work, a place where everyone should have a sense of belonging. We already do a lot, and in many ways, we are a diverse and meaningful home for more than 6,000 brave and adventurous employees. But it has also been crucial to really understand how we can improve. During the last year, we have been traveling around and meeting employees in every corner of the company to do some extensive data analysis.

We have conducted more than 100 internal interviews, three deep studies in three different organisations, and integrated the DIB-aspects in our internal survey. Our findings show that the majority of our employees find that we have an inclusive culture. But when 89% say we have a culture that is free from bullying, harassment and discrimination, you also need to consider that some still disagree.

And when in another survey, 9% find the environment evasive and passive and 3% say it’s segregating, you also need to acknowledge that people belonging to a majority feel more included than people belonging to minority groups.

Hidden diversity expertise

It’s sometimes easy to be satisfied with big numbers – but in order to really find out what is needed, you have to dig deeper. For instance, we also found out that there is a lot of hidden diversity expertise that is rarely or never taken into account. Such as people who have lived abroad, or perhaps people who are married to someone with a different culture experience.

No doubt, people do see the need for diversity and inclusion, and its connection to improved product development – and that curiosity is a key behaviour to support this. Our next step is to go from data to action, and to translate those perspectives into tangible value. We have also established local DIB groups in Finn, Blocket, Lendo, Aftenposten and our data and tech department already, and more will come.

And we have a DIB strategy in place – these are some of the actions we are focusing on now:

• Developing inclusive employee life cycle processes, starting off with creating an inclusive recruitment process playbook.
• Introduce programs and trainings to develop culture and competence within DIB.
• Implement a DIB maturity index – to really understand our state much deeper.
• Get insights about and understand customers that we don’t reach today.

But most important is to build competence throughout the organisation. In the end the responsibility to include all rests on both colleagues and leaders.
Because as humans, we exclude people consciously and unconsciously all the time. And being excluded is painful. It actually impacts our brain in the same manner as physical pain. Whether we weren´t selected in the football team as kids, never invited to the prom, or we find out that our friends, who we thought were close, got married and didn’t invite us. Whatever it is doesn’t matter – it all hurts.

When we feel excluded we limit ourselves

People around us may go to work and feel excluded every day. Having a feeling that they need to fit in to a specific culture, where you must park your unique perspectives in order to thrive. Perhaps not daring to share ideas in the product development room, lifting perspectives in the team meeting or always feeling misunderstood, because the context you are in doesn’t understand your angle.

We know that when we feel excluded, we limit ourselves. We might be afraid of opening up or sharing our perspectives or ideas. So, creating a culture in which everyone dares to share boils down to the responsibility of the leader and the colleagues. For colleagues, it is about our ability to invite and include perspectives (competence) of our colleagues with different experiences when we write or develop products. For leaders, it is about their ability to understand the full potential of everyone and making sure those perspectives are visible and that you as a leader listen to them.

Our vision in Schibsted is to develop the best workplace, a place where you can be you. And that is our main tool to empower all kinds of people in their daily lives. To make that happen, we need to keep on investigating, learning and following a clear plan.

Watch Sumeet present at the Future Report launch event