We are blind to the tragedies of the horizon

I have always been politically engaged, and have also worked full time in politics. That's a huge responsibility, because political decisions today can potentially be the difference between a good and a bad future. To my great frustration, the long-term effects of measures receive scant attention. Politicians rarely look past the next election.

The political debate in Norway is good in the areas it deals with, but the most important topics are often forgotten. Issues that divide the right and the left, such as taxes, privatization, immigration and centralization, gain meters of space. So do major current events. But as soon as the pandemic and other crises are over, and the reports that we were too ill-prepared are put in a drawer, the government can safely return to how everything was before.

Not Prepared for the Pandemic

The corona pandemic cost the world millions of lives and thousands of billions in costs, but could have been stopped, according to many experts. The first Corona Commission wrote that: “The authorities knew that a pandemic was the national crisis that was most likely and that would have the most negative consequences. Yet they were not prepared when the widespread and severe COVID-19 pandemic arrived.” This is a serious criticism and should be a strong argument for investing more in emergency preparedness today.

In the face of electricity crisis, rising mortgage rates and low krona exchange rate, few policymakers are nevertheless putting the concern about future virus mutations and emerging pathogens high. With elections every two years, our institutions reward shortsightedness. Then it will be easy to resort to measures with immediate results, such as sharp cuts in FHI budgets, as the government has done in 2023.

“The Tragedy of Horizon”

In September 2015, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, gave a speech that has become historic. He spoke of the “tragedy of the horizon,” a phenomenon in which the cost of something lies so far forward in time that today's policy makers have no incentives to address it. This will allow future generations to bear the consequences. Climate change is one such phenomenon, but far from the only one. Pandemics, risks from new technologies and antibiotic resistance are other examples. To twist Mark Carney's words: the horizon is full of possible tragedies.

About ten thousand generations have lived their lives on Earth, and for all these, natural pandemics have been a threat. If we include the Spanish disease of 1918, in the last hundred years there have been four pandemics that have killed about 80 million people in total. We should assume that new pandemics will occur again in our lifetime - at least if we do not invest heavily in prevention.

While technological advances in medicine make us less vulnerable to pandemics, technological advances have also created new threats — and of a magnitude we have never experienced before. Although ten thousand generations have lived so far, only a handful of these have lived in the era of nuclear and biological weapons -- weapons that could potentially wipe us out.

In recent decades, producing extremely dangerous viruses in laboratories has become both easier, cheaper and more accessible. This can be abused by terrorists or countries at war. Potentially, the next pandemic could be contagious like covid-19, but with mortality like ebola. That would be a disaster, and makes me gravely concerned. This gives our generation a special responsibility and an even greater reason to invest in preparedness.

Future Agent

Over the past ten years, I've spent a lot of my time talking about how we Norwegians have a moral responsibility to help the world's poor. I find that many private individuals listen and give more. But despite Norway's extraordinary petroleum revenues due to the war in Ukraine, Norwegian state aid has declined, adjusted for inflation. And still we give the most to those in need in Norway, and secondly Ukraine - those who are both geographically and culturally closer to us.

Just as the invisible victims of war in Yemen and Ethiopia are easy to neglect, it is easy for politicians to neglect future generations. We should change that. We should expand our moral circle not only geographically, but also in time.

Children, for natural reasons, cannot participate in current political processes, even though many decisions affect them. For this reason, in 1981 Norway was the first in the world to create a Children's Ombudsman, which will work for the interests of children. Why don't we also have a proxy for future generations? Among the voiceless groups in Norway, they are by far the largest.

An investment in the future

On behalf of both current and future generations, I am concerned because we cannot allow ourselves to make the same mistake all over again. Climate change is already here, and will get worse. The corona pandemic may be over, but new pandemics will come. Both require large investments today, with no short-term political gains but of enormous importance in the long term. We know prevention is cheaper than repair, but it requires brave and long-term policymakers.

I worry that the next tragedy on the horizon, a new pandemic or something else, will be worse than what we've seen so far. I would be glad if I was wrong. The question is whether we are smart enough to learn from our mistakes, and to invest in the future before it is too late.

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