Oslo, July 30 (AFP/APP):As teenagers in Norway, Andreas Bjelland Eriksen and his younger cousin Vebjorn Bjelland Berg survived a mass shooting together — a trauma that united them.
Fourteen years on, they now find themselves divided by climate politics: Eriksen is the environment minister in the oil-rich country, while Berg is one of his biggest activist critics.
A militant with the Extinction Rebellion climate group, Berg has vowed to start a hunger strike on Wednesday to press the pro-oil, centre-left government to abandon drilling for the sake of the planet.
The protest will put his cousin on the spot as Norway prepares for a general election on September 8 in which its crucial oil industry will be a key campaign issue.
Berg, 29, and his 33-year-old cousin were at a youth camp on the island of Utoya on July 22, 2011 when far-right sympathiser Anders Behring Breivik went on a gun rampage that killed 69 people.
Breivik also set off a bomb near government headquarters in Oslo that killed another eight.
“It is clear that going through something like that… yes, it marks a relationship,” Berg told AFP in an interview.
But it will not deflect him from his campaign against a Labour government that wants to develop the valuable oil industry further.
“This industry has made us an extremely rich country,” Berg said.
“The problem is the price — potentially the deaths of millions of people because of the ravages caused by this oil and this gas,” he added.
“It is not worth us continuing to make ourselves even richer at this price.”
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