Ecoblogi – A Blog by Daniel Elkama

Wednesday 25.9. a Swedish environmental activist group Återställ Våtmarker, together with Elokapina/Extinction Rebellion Finland, smeared the columns of the Parliament building with red water-soluble plant-based paint in Helsinki to highlight the destruction of the environment by Arctic peatlands. So the columns were smeared with paint, which could be washed off almost immediately. In a democracy and according to law and justice, demonstrations and civil disobedience are allowed. However, you can get a fine for civil disobedience. Any punishment greater than this is excessive and unjust. As far as I know, we don’t live in North Korea or Hungary. Today, however, the government has taken Finland in the direction of Hungary.

On social media and elsewhere, right-wing conservatives, including many politicians, have called Extinction Rebellion criminals and terrorists, which is a completely ridiculous and absurd overreaction and political targeting and image manipulation, i.e. right-wing populist propaganda. Environmental or other activists are not criminals or terrorists. Putin used similar rhetoric when he called Finn Sini Saarela and Greenpeace activists criminals when they raised a banner opposing oil drilling on an oil rig in Russian territorial waters a decade ago.

The wise German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has proposed that a healthy democracy includes activism, demonstrations and civil disobedience. They have always belonged to liberal democracy. In the absence of these, the rule of law and democracy have been violated and attacked. There are no demonstrations or activism in North Korea and Russia. In Russia, you can get a 10-year prison sentence for criticizing the war in Ukraine. In many other countries that used to be very liberal, bad developments are visible from the point of view of civil society: e.g. In Britain, women who threw paint onto the armored glass of a painting without damaging the painting in any way were sentenced to two years in prison, which is completely unreasonable and against the sense of justice. This should be fined.

Återställ Våtmarker and Extinction Rebellion wanted to bring out a huge injustice with their campaign: the Finnish state company Neova, the former Valtion Polttolaitos,”State Combustion Plant”, is destroying the beautiful nature of northern Sweden with peat mining at the same time that the Finnish state receives over 400 MILLION euros of support from the EU to stop peat mining, i.e. 0.4 billion euros. This is real duplicity, arrogance and hypocrisy from Petteri Orpo’s government. Neova is also a sad example of image modification. Changing the company’s name to a beautiful and sonorous Latin is one way to clean up the green and modify the dirty and ruined image into a ”better” one. Talvivaara, or Terrafame, has also done this, for example, which destroyed numerous lakes at its mine in Kainuu 10 years ago.

What is peat mining like? Peat extraction destroys the entire peatland ecosystem, which is rich in biodiversity. All the plant and peat material of the peatlandl is removed and a sand pit remains. The swamp will be destroyed with all its birds and water voles. Peat mining is therefore a really ugly and harsh activity. The peat will never regenerate or grow in that swamp, and the sand pit will be landscaped. Those who clim that peat is a renewable natural resource are lying. Peat regeneration takes more than 7,000 years. This cannot be called renewal in such a time that one could talk about a renewable natural resource. The peatlands from which the peat has been taken will not be renewed even in 7000 years, and actually never again. A unique piece of nature will be lost forever.

The extraction of peat also causes inconvenience to the residents of the nearby area: the noise is enormous, dust rises to a height of tens of meters and this spreads kilometers away from the mine. Peat extraction also ruins the ecosystems of nearby lakes. Peat is the most polluting of fossil fuels.

So the activists had every right to be angry and they brought up a significant grievance.

The former Speaker of the Parliament Matti Vanhanen from the Center Party commented on what happened, that if MPs insist on respecting and appreciating Parliament, then MPs and ministers should also behave with dignity and in a way that inspires respect and appreciation. The current Finnish government does not deserve any kind of respect for cutting off the poor and sick in its greed and for allowing the racism and hatred of the far right Finns Party and for breaking promises about education and climate work. Finland is actually breaking our own climate law at the moment.

Daniel Elkama