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Number of holiday homes in Norway is 440,443, according to Statistics Norway. The cabins have become more and larger, and 6,000-7,000 new cabins are added, every year. In recent years, Fr.itids buildings accounted for around a quarter of the annual demolition of nature.

The cottage dream grew under the corona. In February 2020, 100,000 Norwegians plan to buy a cottage in Norway within three years. By September, the number had risen to 173,000, according to Finansavisen.

In the news documentary The cabin paradox ask Avisa Valdres: “Has the Norwegian cottage dream become nature’s nightmare?” The editors asked: How much does the cabins pollute? Where does the money from the cabin construction end up? Does the municipality have control? What is the price of nature? And how can the cottage dream become more sustainable?

The biggest jabs of wilderness in Norway is taken by cottage builders. Not by monster masts or windmills, Aftenposten points out in a comment about Eidfjord Resort, a mountain village that now travels in the national wild reindeer area.

Like the Nation has documented: It is city people who have built wealth on galloping housing prices who now have millions of kroner to invest in the cottage dream.

The Zeros Climate Foundation Former manager Marius Holm tells Avisa Valdres that large apartment buildings are more environmentally friendly than building many cabins scattered in non-invasive areas. Professor of sustainable development Carlo Aall believes stopping construction and sharing the cabins we already have is the way to go. Aall points out that most cabin owners only use the cabin 50-60 days a year, which he himself included.

Climate and sustainability are connected. That does not mean we can not harvest from nature. But what we expand, where we expand and how we expand matters.

During the climate summit in Glasgow, which starts on Sunday, the world’s country will be the only one to cut CO2, which will slow down global temperature rise to below 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Ideally, the target should have been 1.5 degrees.

Too little, too sent? Yes, but the right direction, points out Cicero researcher Steffen Kallbekken in the climate podcast COP 26: What is at stake? After the summit in Copenhagen in 1999, the world headed for a temperature increase of 3–4 degrees. After Paris in 2015, the estimate was “just under 3 degrees”.

All climate cuts count. Then the cottage dream can actually be important.

The goal in Glasgow is that the world country must commit to plans that together will lead to a temperature increase of 2.5 degrees. “It is still not good, but much better than 1999, when 4 degrees could be possible,” says Cicero researcher Kallbekken.

Everything is connected with everything, said Gro Harlem Brundtland. All countries must cut emissions, in all sectors. We do not save the climate without also saving nature.