Elvar Sandberg

The catering tent smelled like overcooked fish, and the conversations around me were the same tired loops I’d heard a hundred times before. War, migrants, inflation, energy. They talked like it was all inevitable, like a storm you just had to ride out. I was holding a paper cup of lukewarm coffee, not really part of the group but close enough to listen. When I finally spoke, it was more out of frustration than anything else.

“What about the climate?” I asked, trying to keep my tone even. “I mean, isn’t that the biggest problem?”

The table went quiet for a moment, but not in a way that felt promising. Then one of the older crew members—someone who had probably done this job longer than I’d been alive—chuckled and said, “Ah, you’re young. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

I’m sixteen. Old enough to memorize historical treaties, follow global politics, and know that glaciers don’t wait for pension reforms. But apparently not old enough for my opinions to matter. I wanted to say something sharp, something that would make them stop and think. Instead, I just clamped my mouth shut and stared into my coffee.

The rest of the lunch break passed in a blur of voices I barely heard. I kept replaying that comment in my head. Young. Too young. As if being younger meant I didn’t see what was happening around me—or worse, that I wasn’t allowed to care.

On the tram home, I watched the city slide by, all glass buildings and muted skies. Oslo, Norway, is beautiful, but it feels like a mask sometimes. People here are so proud of their electric cars and recycling habits, like that’s enough to save us. They don’t want to talk about the bigger changes—the hard ones—that actually matter.

I keep thinking about where it’s all headed. Not just the climate, but the way people like to dismiss anything that doesn’t fit neatly into their worldview. What happens when we run out of excuses? When the storms come harder, the summers burn hotter, and there’s no one left to say, “You’ll understand when you’re older”?