ENVIRONMENT

We Should Use Nature Without Harming Nature

We dispose of nature together, and we have a common responsibility to preserve nature for future generations

We can use nature to have a life with better quality of life and content, better health, and positive feelings and thoughts.

This is something that we ourselves have control over. We can decide for ourselves how we want to think about nature, how we want to position ourselves in relation to nature, how we want to take advantage of the opportunities that nature gives us.

It’s very simple, actually! Everything is at hand from nature’s side; it’s just a matter of dealing with nature and providing for oneself — using the possibilities that are there.

In Odda, a small industrial town in western Norway, the question of building a gondola lift to Rossnos has grown to become a major symbolic issue for people far beyond municipal boundaries. Some local active people have decided that they will try to build a gondola lift from the center of Odda and up to Rossnos. This is an iconic mountain for a large part of the people in Odda and for people elsewhere who know Odda. For many, Rossnos himself is the symbol of the stable, the lasting, the safe.

The mountain Rossnos is 1407 m high, and many who live in Odda and in the Hardanger region have in all years used the mountain to go on a really demanding mountain hike. For those who go on such trips, it has a lot to say that we set ourselves a high goal and then we try to reach that goal on foot, by walking the heavy trip up the steep hill — impressive 1400 altitude meters! How likely is it that Rossnos will be an attractive summit destination if there is a gondola lift that carries tourists up there?

This summit trip allows us to test our own limits, and we can test our ability and willingness to persevere, and our ability to follow up our own intentions to reach a goal. By going on such trips, we challenge and develop ourselves physically and mentally. We train the body, improve physical fitness and increase our physical capacity.

We become stronger physically, and we also get better mentally by taking on challenges such as climbing a high mountain peak. When you, after the struggle, stand up there and look down on the city, you can breathe a sigh of relief, let your gaze rest on this small industrial community Odda, deep in a fjord in Hardanger, in western Norway.

Everyone is aware that one of the arguments of those who are trying to build a track for Rossnos is that the gondola lift should make the mountain accessible to everyone. But the question is — why should this mountain be made accessible to everyone by building a gondola lift that leads to destructive interventions?

Nature is for everyone, but we can not therefore demand that a gondola lift be built up to all peaks because we want to be transported up there and experience the view.

Nature is for everyone. Narrow interest groups cannot decide what nature should be used for or how it should be used. A group of people can not decide that the mountain Rossnos will be built with a gondola lift when there is a great deal of disagreement about the matter

The meaning of nature is to use nature without harming nature, and to adapt the use so that future generations also have the opportunity to use nature.

Some of us can go fast and far, others go shorter and others are dependent on helpers and motorized aids. Even those who cannot walk on their own two feet can get out into nature. There are good hiking trails and roads, there are lakes and fjords, and everyone can get out into nature in their own way, ie a way that is adapted to the possibilities the individual has.

It will never be right to destroy the mountain Rossnos and build a gondola lift there just because some people want to make money on this mountain.