In November 2015, a revised Norwegian Red List for Species was launched. The list contained more than 4 000 species, and Norwegian newspapers presented it to the public by using some of these species as examples. In a recently published article, entitled “Miss Hare struggles”, Marit Ruge Bjærke close-reads two newspaper articles in which the mountain hare is used as an example, to explore the ways in which cultural meanings, temporalities and spatial scales emerge in the biodiversity discourse. The article shows how biodiversity loss was presented as a local or national issue framed within the global story of climate change, and concludes that both the choice of specific species as examples and the understandings of temporal and spatial scales that are conveyed with the help of these examples, affect how biodiversity loss is understood.

Can grain crops be increased? The issue was heatedly debated in 18th Century Denmark-Norway, both for patriotic and economic reasons. In a newly published article by Anne Eriksen examines how the historian Gerhard Schøning (1722–80) handled this issue. His answered the question affirmatively. Chopping down much of the forests that covered Norway would change the climate radically for the better, he argued. As a consequence of the warmer weather, the fertility of the soil would improve. Climate interested a number of 18th century writers. It was not only a part of geotheory, but also included in theories about the history of society, law and culture as well as in medical thought.

Schøning’s argument was nearly entirely built on examples from Greek and Roman history, cited to demonstrate that since classical times, this kind of changes had already taken place in other parts of Europe. The rhetoric of exemplarity relied on a quantity as well as on the uncontested exemplarity of classical literature itself. The cases he cites are numerous (serial) instantiations of the same general mechanism: The effect of human interventions in nature. Yet at the same time they are models to follow, even if it will take some effort. Norway will never be as warm and fertile as southern countries, but Schøning exhorts his compatriots to “take courage and start!” History consisted of examples to learn from and models to follow.

What happens when we term our geological epoch ‘anthropocene’, indicating that humans are always at the center of the story? With her encounter with a sea urchin and the concept of ‘chthulucene’ as starting points, Marit Ruge Bjærke asks how we can think about technology and climate change without the notion of a coming apocalypse. The essay (in Norwegian) is part of the “Norwegian Writers’ Climate Campaign”.

Does nature have intrinsic value in Norwegian environmental politics? Or has the economical language of ecosystem services removed the possibility of expressing values not connected with nature as a service provider for humans? In the latest edition of Nytt norsk tidsskrift and in a shorter, popular artilce in Morgenbladet, postdoctoral researcher Marit Ruge Bjærke demonstrates that there has been major changes in how the Norwegian government and environmental management has expressed value in nature during the last 10 to 15 years.

The articles are in Norwegian.