In order to avoid any sort of confusion, let me preface this blog post with a statement:
Yes, global warming is a very real thing, and it's very heavily influenced and accelerated by human activity, and it's going to cause a huge amount of very bad problems for the entire world in the long run (perhaps even sooner than we want to admit), and if we don't do anything about it, we are completely fucked. There is no conspiracy among the scientific community related to this. It's completely idiotic to think so; it's impossible on so many levels. All the conspiracy theories out there related to this do the same thing as all such conspiracy theories do: They cherry-pick tidbits of information and remove them from their wider context, and manipulate them and put them together deceptively to give an incorrect picture of what's happening.
Now that that has been made clear, to the question at hand: Should Finland in particular do something about global warming, and how much?
Given my preface, it might seem that the obvious answer should be "of course it should! As much as possible and as soon as possible!" But it's not that simple.
Finnish politics is in a state of semi-hysteria about climate change and ways to combat it, and I think very reasonable arguments have been presented that everybody should calm down a bit. And not by climate change denialists, mind you.
The thing is, on a world-wide scale Finland is a minuscule contributor to the total amount of CO2 and pollution in general. Not only is this a small country with a relatively small industry (compared to many other countries), but there are quite strict environmental laws in place here, which lessens the pollution of even the existing industry. Some estimates state that Finland contributes less than 0.1% of the man-made CO2 and other pollutants of the total world-wide production. Even if Finland were to stop all pollution right now, all of it, it would have essentially no effect on the total amount of pollutants generated world-wide.
In fact, I think a good argument is made that if Finland were to reduce and hinder its own industry in order to reduce emissions, that would not just hurt Finland's economy, but it would actually increase world-wide emissions overall, so the net effect would actually be worse!
How so? Because Finland stopping the production and manufacturing of products is not going to diminish the demand for those products. Which in turn means that if Finland doesn't manufacture those products that are demanded, some other country will. Quite probably a country that cares less about environmentalism and has less strict laws related to it.
In other words, Finland reducing its industry would only shift that production somewhere else, and that somewhere else might not be as environment-conscious as Finland is, which in the end will just increase the amount of emissions overall, not decrease them. And as a side-effect, Finnish economy would suffer, hurting all of its citizens. Thus it's better to keep the industry here, where there are at least semi-decent environmental laws, than have it moved somewhere else where there aren't (like China, for instance.)
I think there is a point in this argument. An environmental policy that's too strict would just hurt Finnish economy while, ironically, increasing the total amount of emissions and pollution in the world.
Yes, global warming is a very real thing, and it's very heavily influenced and accelerated by human activity, and it's going to cause a huge amount of very bad problems for the entire world in the long run (perhaps even sooner than we want to admit), and if we don't do anything about it, we are completely fucked. There is no conspiracy among the scientific community related to this. It's completely idiotic to think so; it's impossible on so many levels. All the conspiracy theories out there related to this do the same thing as all such conspiracy theories do: They cherry-pick tidbits of information and remove them from their wider context, and manipulate them and put them together deceptively to give an incorrect picture of what's happening.
Now that that has been made clear, to the question at hand: Should Finland in particular do something about global warming, and how much?
Given my preface, it might seem that the obvious answer should be "of course it should! As much as possible and as soon as possible!" But it's not that simple.
Finnish politics is in a state of semi-hysteria about climate change and ways to combat it, and I think very reasonable arguments have been presented that everybody should calm down a bit. And not by climate change denialists, mind you.
The thing is, on a world-wide scale Finland is a minuscule contributor to the total amount of CO2 and pollution in general. Not only is this a small country with a relatively small industry (compared to many other countries), but there are quite strict environmental laws in place here, which lessens the pollution of even the existing industry. Some estimates state that Finland contributes less than 0.1% of the man-made CO2 and other pollutants of the total world-wide production. Even if Finland were to stop all pollution right now, all of it, it would have essentially no effect on the total amount of pollutants generated world-wide.
In fact, I think a good argument is made that if Finland were to reduce and hinder its own industry in order to reduce emissions, that would not just hurt Finland's economy, but it would actually increase world-wide emissions overall, so the net effect would actually be worse!
How so? Because Finland stopping the production and manufacturing of products is not going to diminish the demand for those products. Which in turn means that if Finland doesn't manufacture those products that are demanded, some other country will. Quite probably a country that cares less about environmentalism and has less strict laws related to it.
In other words, Finland reducing its industry would only shift that production somewhere else, and that somewhere else might not be as environment-conscious as Finland is, which in the end will just increase the amount of emissions overall, not decrease them. And as a side-effect, Finnish economy would suffer, hurting all of its citizens. Thus it's better to keep the industry here, where there are at least semi-decent environmental laws, than have it moved somewhere else where there aren't (like China, for instance.)
I think there is a point in this argument. An environmental policy that's too strict would just hurt Finnish economy while, ironically, increasing the total amount of emissions and pollution in the world.
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