Finnish parties agreed on actions against the climatic change

The political parties agreed on the goals of the Finnish climate policy. Only True Finns were not included, as according to their view the price would be too high to ordinary people and there would be a risk of losing the workplaces in the Finnish industry. 

According to the agreement, Finland aims to have greenhouse gases of EU to be reduced even more than planned thus far. In order to do so, Finland tries to get EU to cut its emissions by at least 55% from the level of 1990 until year 2030. The current target is 40%.

In addition, the parties are willing to make Finland a forerunner of the Union. According to minister Kai Mykkänen (Conservative party) Finnish forests and soils should absorb more carbon than the country releases so, that we will become not only carbon neutral, but even negative. The plan is to start a widescale forestation, reduce peatland emissions and develop carbon absorption in agricultural lands.

The forestation question is interesting - especially the word widescale - taken the fact that Finland already is the most forested country in Europe. There is also a danger that our preserved forests would be extensively attacked by insects - as has happened in British Columbia - and turn to vast carbon sources instead of being sinks as today.

Otherwise the targets seem reasonable or even sensible. Except that a while ago I noticed an article in the Nature Climatic Change stating that the global means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would increase huger risks of the developing world considerably more than the climatic change alone. But of course, that does not hold for Finland - at least not right now.

In the current position - when the guidelines of the Finnish climate policy have been decided for the next few decades - there are good reasons to hope that the True Finns are nor right on the Finnish industry´s prerequisites for operation, but also all other EU countries will follow - and not only them, but also other countries throughout the globe. And that the opportunities of cleantech will provide new jobs to people released from the old industry, which will inevitably disappear if the planned actions are actualized. 

If not, Finland will face an unforeseen reduction in economy and standard of living. That would be a pity, because - after all - our actions to prevent the climatic warming will have only a minimal global effect provided that our share of global greenhouse gas emission is only slightly above 0.1 percent.

The original though in Finnish:
Suomalaispuolueet päättivät ilmastonmuutoksen torjuntakeinoista