Sometimes, when reading the news about accelerating inflation, food shortages, expensive petrol, energy and materials, the war in Ukraine, it can seem like a nightmare to wake up from and return to "normal".
Bad news for all of us.
We will never go back to the time we have lived in, where everything was cheap and stuff was made in cheap importing countries and loaded half free on ships and brought west. Where lumber was half free and electricity was a few cents a kilowatt hour. We're not going back to that time because we're out of resources. They are not enough for everyone equally so that everything is cheap for every person in the world. (e.g. the battery minerals in electric cars will only last for one generation. How sustainable is it?). As resources dwindle, their price rises and the eioota is distributed. We are entering an era in which all previously known policies are being called into question.
Why should Finland do anything when others won't?
You still hear, and at an ever-increasing rate, when your own backyard is being knocked on the door by rising costs, that why should we care about carbon mitigation, carbon sinks or resources when even the big countries don't. But in the future these big ones, China, India, Pakistan, are going to demand back the resources that we have bought from them half free. At the same time every country, state, human being, will look for a new reason why I or my country is useful in the new world of scarce resources? In that world, it is a resource-savvy, resource-recycling, resource-innovative Finland that people buy services from and see as useful. The old skills and way of life will not survive in the new world.
The second thing is resources. And selling resources. But when the scarcity of resources (minerals, fossil fuels, food) is at stake, the sale of resources has its limits. and in the worst case, resources are exported by arms, as happened in Ukraine.
How then?
As we move through this wrenching transition to a new way of living, eventually understanding will emerge and a balance with the Earth's resources will be inevitable. A circular economy and responsible lifestyle - side by side with nature, is the only way to a sustainable economy.
Minna
