Sadakat Kadri | Autumn in Finland · LRB 28 October 2022
Meteorology was on my mind when I arrived in Helsinki last month. Vladimir Putin had just warned the world again that he was ready to “use all available weapons systems” in Ukraine. “This is not a bluff,” he said said. “Those who use nuclear blackmail against us should know that the Wind Rose can turn around.” If that’s what he meant this time, I’d checked the weather chart. The isobars were almost convincing. The mushroom cloud could certainly have drifted towards Finland from the south, but if it had, the fallout would have irradiated the Kremlin as well.
The destructive effects of global warming are often overlooked, and Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometer border with Russia, has good reason to focus on the nearby political instability. However, its governing coalition does not ignore climate change. Prime Minister Sanna Marin recently strengthened coping strategy he has right said is “among the most ambitious in the world”. In order to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035, fifteen years ahead of the Paris climate agreement goal, peat and coal will be steadily replaced by biofuels and wind. The Greens (who run three major ministries) have championed atomic energy as “sustainable”. Five reactors already produce more than a third of Finland’s electricity.
Disorders are acute, all the same. On the streets of central Helsinki, Ukrainian refugees and bettors from Russia can be heard daily, but oil and gas imports have stopped going to the west – and, as usual, the possibilities for fuel have decreased even more as Finland plans to build a sixth nuclear reactor. The Kremlin’s aid was rejected in May. The Finns are heading towards winter without a strategic asset, sustainable or otherwise. As they prepare for the dark months ahead, they face more than just power outages. Pellets for heating the country’s three million saunas are running out.
The urban forests of northern Helsinki looked almost on fire under the low September sun. According to Juha Aalto weather InstituteHowever, the loss of forests is accelerating, biological diversity is decreasing, and in 2021, for the first time, land released more carbon dioxide than it absorbed. The global warming oddity is known as “Arctic Confirmation” at the same time raising average temperatures disproportionately quickly. As the permafrost melts and the methane evaporates, Finland’s short-lived summers become longer and the winters become muddier. Aalto’s colleague Jari Haapala confirmed the information with anecdotal evidence, an article quoting a British tabloid The Sun‘. “Tourists from your country fly to Lapland at Christmas,” he laughed, “then complain that they are in Krapland.”
The shocking predictions did not come as much of a surprise, and meteorologists made a more promising prediction: Russian aggression would accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels and increase investment in renewable energy. However, they did not want to emphasize the positive. When I asked if Finland could still repair the damage of its seasons, Haapala laughed again. “We have a lot of optimists,” he said. “It’s just that none of them are scientists.” A country responsible for 0.12 percent of greenhouse gas emissions cannot solve the global climate emergency alone.
The extent of the crisis was revealed when our conversation turned to Helsinki’s growing flood risk. Finland spent the last ice age under two kilometer thick glaciers, and its bedrock has been compressed ever since. It continues to rise by several millimeters annually, which is expected to moderate sea level rise for a few more centuries. Good news – but it puts climate change adaptation strategies into perspective.
Geologists aren’t the only ones thinking about those timelines. Near and about 437 meters below the country’s largest nuclear power plant, engineers dynamited through granite and gneiss to build a tunnel complex known as “Onkalo” (The Cavity). It is to store thousands of tonnes of deadly radioactive waste, including spent plutonium – and when the space runs out, in about a century, the doors are to be closed and kept closed for 100,000 years. It’s certainly ambitious (Tutankhamun’s tomb remained closed for less than 30 of that time) and may even be sustainable; who knows? But again, that’s only a tiny fraction of what the planet needs. There are more than four hundred reactors in the world, and the inland waste could poison millions if it ended up in groundwater, but Onkalo is the only repository designed to last more than decades.
The weather on my bike ride back from the Meteorological Institute could hardly have been better. Helsinki’s boulevards were bordered by bright sunshine and deep shadows, and it was mild enough to sit outside a cafe with a coffee and a cinnamon bun. I have vacationed in Helsinki since childhood (my mother is Finnish) and the pit stop inspires nostalgia – but also fear. It was depressing to hear that the country’s frozen winters and fleeting summers are slipping away. I can’t listen to Sibelius and admire Alvar Aalto’s bright architecture, not to mention chatting with a moody Finn, without imagining the swing back and forth between the midnight sun and the midday darkness. Seasons matter – and the heat felt impossible.
The emergency caused by environmental pollution has been given a name solastalgia. In particular, concern about climate change is causing concern worldwide. Ten in the country study out of ten thousand young adults published Lancet Planetary Health Last year, three-quarters of 16-25 year olds interviewed said that “the future is scary”. Their desperation has political consequences. It promotes fearful, not enlightening, narratives that are as likely to breed guilt or denial as constructive thinking. It can inhibit collective action rather than encourage it.
In Finland, however, solastalgia, or environmental anxiety, has energized the electorate rather than crippled them. Not only do polls show widespread commitment to environmental issues; they consistently report high trust in government. And while it is not optimism, it reflects pragmatism. Finnish participants Lancet Planetary Health those polled weren’t quite sure—43 percent agreed with the statement that “mankind is doomed,” but overall they feared the future less than anyone else. Finns, to say the old joke, don’t care much whether the glass is half full or half empty, as long as there’s another round.
It’s not easy to develop happy ways to talk about climate change, but there are worse places than that Tove Jansson. The creator of the Moomins was fascinated by the change of seasons and the forces of nature. Midwinter in Moominland and Moomin summer madness are storms, floods, eruptions and earthquakes. And the threat takes almost final proportions Comet in Moominlanda doomsday story with a breakup that I first read when I was seven. As the cosmic fireball climbs towards Moomin Valley, the heroes of the book travel to a distant observatory to see what’s going on. The sky shimmers and the sea vaporizes, the trees suffocate, the tornado spins and the grasshoppers destroy the land. The animals of the forest flee like refugees, the intellectuals are oblivious to the danger, and the astronomer who calculated the approximate second of the collision is puzzled when asked what will happen next.
Released right after World War II Comet in Moominland was written in a country that was close to destruction, and reflects Auden’s observation that “there are good books for grown-ups only… but there are no good Books which are intended only children.’ The apocalypse has of course been averted. The comet roars past leaving nothing worse than a flattened cake in its wake. But the takeaway is not the inevitability of happy endings or even the possibility of a happy escape. Disharmony is dangerous and the risks of unhappiness must be faced – simply to protect the little things that make life worthwhile.
On my last day in Helsinki, I went to a park on a hillside in the southern tip of the capital to watch the sun slide under the Baltic Sea. Just a moment, mine environmental anxiety decreased. The prevailing winds were not worrisome but pleasant. Maples and birches shone on the protracted dusky granite slope, barely moved for two billion years. Gulls and geese gathered in swaying chevrons that soon headed south. The seasons seemed to be right. Autumn was coming.
This song is a part LRB’s collaboration with the World Weather Network.