We are heading for disaster and there is no turning back. 2023 was the hottest year on record, smashing all previous records with its heatwaves. The reality of the climate crisis is being experienced around the world right now in the form of hurricanes, wildfires, floods, heatwaves, droughts, and food and water shortages. We are heading towards three degrees of warming and a planet unfit for human life.

The risks increase with every fraction of a degree of warming. Research shows that already with crossing the 1.5°C threshold, it has become very likely to exceed tipping points that will shake the climate system.

Crossing tipping points is particularly dangerous because once we pass them, the climate is out of human control: if a continental ice sheet breaks up and starts sliding into the sea, there is nothing we can do to stop it. We have a global emergency on our hands.

While the world burns, the Finnish government is spending close to €4 billion a year on environmentally harmful subsidies. For every bucket of water our government throws on the fire, it throws three buckets of oil – plus a wheelbarrow full of wood from ancient forests.

Such destructive, reckless, and ineffective policies are unacceptable.

Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s government programme paints a grandiose picture of Finland’s climate policy leaving a huge mark on the world. But its footprint is not green but a pitch-black mark of destruction. With our planet on fire and environmental action a matter of life and death, the Finnish government is literally throwing more fuel on the flames by cutting fuel taxes and chopping carbon sinks into firewood.

The government is blatantly violating not only international agreements, such as the Paris Climate Agreement, but also Finland’s own climate law. The law obliges the government to continuously monitor and update its climate plans. Finland’s goal is to be carbon neutral by 2035 and carbon negative thereafter, but the government’s policy is completely at odds with these goals.

Finland, a “model country for progressive climate policy” – what a farce!

Orpo’s government pursues a short-sighted, populist debt policy, bows to capital and violates human rights in a racist manner. The societies of the Global South³ and indigenous peoples suffer the most from the consequences of our emissions.

More debt is taken on and more is taken from dispossessed people to increase the dividend pot of the owners and investors of companies that want to make billions – with no regard for environmental degradation or morality. Is this really necessary to balance the economy?

Enough is enough! It is high time for the Finnish Government to assume its responsibilities by adopting an ambitious environmental policy and honouring the commitments made in the Paris Agreement. The rich economies must abandon the idea of GDP as the main measure of the economy and move towards safeguarding people’s needs and well-being. The economy must be returned to being a tool, not a goal.

The Finnish government has deliberately chosen to financially support activities that erode the foundations of our living environments and discourage investment in a cleaner future.

Shocking figures reveal that at least € 4 billion a year is delivered into environmentally abusive hands. This is more than the amount paid out in housing or unemployment benefits in our country.

This toxic rain of money consists of tax breaks and direct subsidies that wreak havoc on our environment by promoting air travel, traffic jams and intensive forestry. In addition, a large proportion of state subsidies goes to an agricultural support system that discriminates against small farmers and favours environmentally damaging practices, rather than towards the major changes needed for the ecological transition.

Recorded environmentally harmful subsidies vs. Basic social protection components, € million

But these billions are just the tip of the iceberg. Many environmentally harmful subsidies are not clearly accounted for. This allows the government to conveniently hide the true scale of this disastrous redistribution of money.

Nor is it possible to clearly measure much of the destruction caused by environmentally harmful subsidies: how to put a price tag on, say, the species extinctions caused by the felling of old-growth forests or the irreversible destruction of swamps by mining.

Elokapina refuses to stand by while Finland’s nature is being destroyed on an unimaginable scale by absurd policies. Environmentally harmful subsidies must be stopped!

Finland must create new foundations for a good life, because not only is our way of life unsustainable, but it is also based on silent oppression. The environmental harm resulting from these subsidies causes the most suffering to those who have been oppressed for centuries by our colonial market system.

We also propose to involve a citizens’ assembly in deciding how the funds released from harmful subsidies should be spent. Only by expanding democracy can we together change Finland’s course towards fairer future and save our homes.

Finland’s climate and environmental policy is currently a policy of destruction – instead of seeking to stop destruction, it promotes destruction and covers the truth with empty promises.

Let us not close our eyes: coffee does not grow in Paulig’s factory in Vuosaari. Finland is part of a global market system created through colonialism, where the rich countries’ wealth is based on impoverishing poor countries.

Poverty is maintained by a trading system controlled by the undemocratic World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. This system has created a mechanism that allows the shameless exploitation of natural resources to continue unabated.

The countries of the Global South pay around $200 billion a year in interest on loans⁴, while the wealthy West and big business take over the resources they need at a price of their own choosing in the name of the ‘green transition’.

It is estimated that per year, the global North takes from the South some 12 billion tonnes of material resources, 820 million hectares of land, more than 5 trillion kilowatt-hours of energy and more than 180 million person-years. This is worth more than $10 trillion at Northern prices – enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over. Development aid to the global South is about $200 billion, or 2% of the burden. In practice, this aid only pays the interest on the loans.

Meanwhile, the richest 1% own 43% of the world’s wealth and emit the same amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the poorest two-thirds of humanity.

We are calling for a just change, which requires cancelling the debts of the Global South and allocating debt-free climate finance to these societies. In addition, consumption-based emissions must immediately be included in Finland’s emission reduction targets. It is simply not right that emissions from consumption in Finland should be outsourced to others.

We are opposed to colonialism in all its forms. We demand transparency about the exploitation of natural resources in Sámi homeland – why has Finland still not ratified the ILO Convention 169⁵ on the rights of indigenous peoples?

We also demand that the link between the exploitation of natural resources and today’s wars be recognised. The colonialist and exploitative mindset has given birth to the whole fossil economy of today. The brutal settler colonialism in Palestine, for example, is about the exploitation of natural resources and the control of fossil fuel reserves. (Read more about the colonial greenwashing project and Finland’s involvement in the occupation here.)

A storm is coming – it’s inevitable. The rich countries and the fossil fuel industries they create are destroying the planet. Meanwhile, the rich elite are out to save only themselves. We are not going to let this happen.

We will not let the fossil fuel industry and its minions destroy everything we love. We will rise in rebellion for a more just world, and we invite everyone to join us. We must fight the ecocrisis and uphold environmental justice before everything else. The government must begin the immediate dismantling of all environmentally harmful subsidies.

We are setting our sights on those who make the decisions that heat up our climate. We call to account the institutions that distribute environmentally harmful subsidies, the politicians who avoid their responsibility and the companies that profit from promoting suffering. We act out of love. Our actions are non-violent and peaceful, and we take responsibility of them. But we are not afraid to act big and cause a disturbance.

We are organising demonstrations and actions all over Finland, culminating in mass protests in June. Hundreds and thousands will join the uprising and take to the streets with us to give those in power a Storm Warning. We are going to make history and set in motion a tidal wave after which nothing will be the same.

The storm will rise, but so will we. We can be remembered as the generations that destroyed everything or the generations that changed everything. With thousands of us in the streets, those in power will have no choice but to listen. We need every single one of you to join.

Be part of the wave of change that has the power to change the direction of the ongoing hurricane. Later is too late – the future of the planet is being determined now. Choose your side and join the rebellion! ⧖