Can We Cross The Finnish Line?

We at The Daily Kibitz spent the previous week in sun-kissed Southern California. Happy for us? After spending a couple of days at Disneyland for business (weird and kinda fun), we witnessed first hand the conditions that create the infamous California wildfires. While hiking up a Mt. Hollywood trail, we observed wide swaths of recent burns. Fires happen in this kind of terrain because of parched plant growth and dry hot air; when a combustion event happens, it travels fast.

Climate change is the primary culprit, creating long term drought patterns and shifting, strong Santa Ana winds that create classic cases of widespread wildfire catastrophe. Climate change also plays into the overpopulation factor of the region and the ongoing water management dilemma of People v. Crops.

The area was still reacting to President Trump's recent visit to the state. He had memorably toured the  awful Camp Fire site, twice referring to the incinerated town of Paradise, California as "Pleasure." After viewing the charred remains, he commented on how firefighters were working hard to retard the fire. He then remarked on how, as a technique, some firefighters were raking burning leaves on the ground away from trees. On a roll, Trump invented a recent conversation he had had with the Finnish president regarding Finland's lack of mega-wildfires. "They spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things and they don't have any problems," Trump observed. This lead to much ridicule after the Finn Prez denied ever saying anything like that.

Trump shouldn't have stopped with seeking Fire Fighting Tips. Considering how Finland leads the United States in many Quality Of Life categories, he really let an opportunity slip by. We should be getting Finnish tips on improving our Health Care (#6 vs. USA #29), Education (#6 vs. USA #24), and their premier Social Safety Net programs. Also, how they are world leaders with the all-important Happiness rating (#1 vs. USA #18).

Trump famously questioned why there aren't more Norwegians immigrating to America, instead of people from Shithole Countries. Why should they? Scandinavian countries in general rank at the top of any QOL listings. They are taxed much more than here, because, you know, Socialist. But... you get what you pay for. And their citizens seem to think it's just fine.

What is definitely NOT fine is the Trump Administration's stance toward Climate Change. This is the most important issue the world faces, bar none. Trump and the GOP are lockstep in their moves to deregulate and defenestrate environmental standards and policies that affect Business. For example, the new EPA head, a former coal industry lobbyist, announced plans to do away with CO2 emission rules. (To number similar instances of anti-Environment practices supported by Trump/GOP would be much too long, mind-numbing and enraging for our purposes here.)

It is very possible that Trump just doesn't care. Shocking, right? Like other business honchos, he prolly figures that the environment's collapse won't happen until after he is dead... so it just doesn't matter and in the meantime, let's maximize profits! Certainly, his dismissive reaction to the recently released (mandated) report from the EPA, the National Climate Assessment, which portrays a truly dire picture for our world, was Classic Trump. Subsequent follow-up studies are similarly damning. Take two minutes to peruse this powerful thread from the Washington Post environmental writer:

https://twitter.com/chriscmooney/status/1070715518963904514

Yep, Greenland ice melt has kicked into overdrive. Thanks, carbon emissions! Oh, and how is more CO2 affecting other accelerent factors to Climate Change, like methane gas release from thawing permafrost in Alaska, Canada and Siberia? As a "greenhouse gas" methane is 30 times more powerful than CO2. And a whole bunch is already seeping into the atmosphere, with a critical mass more poised to enter, thanks to rising atmospheric temps. Add methane to carbon to spike the atmosphere, which melts the ice, which causes more drastic changes in our world. Refugees by the millions abandoning uninhabitable lands. Widespread drought, crop failure, famine, insect infestation and disease. It's the planet's way of trying to shake off the thing that is hurting it, which is us.

"I don't believe it" just doesn't cut it. The current climate crisis is what our military has been planning for and warning about for years. It's what the Paris Accords are all about, with the US being the only nation to withdraw. It's what oil companies have known for decades, and sought to cover up.

According to the National Climate Assessment, we have a slender window of opportunity to seize the day. No more than a decade or so. After that, the tipping point becomes unstoppable. Meanwhile, our White House, its agencies and the GOP Senate are set to cement their retro-climate policies to 1950s standards, the age they see as When America Was Great. What we really need is to Make America Finnish.


On Thursday, Pete Shelley passed away at age 63. He was the frontman for Buzzcocks, my favorite band from the late 1970s. There were other bands that were more popular and carried greater cachet with pop culture opinion-makers. But Shelley never seemed concerned with being This Year's Model. Buzzcocks emerged with the Sex Pistols in the early British punk scene. But they weren't really Punk, except in their Do It Yourself attitude. Power Pop, oh yes. Shelley's songs were about things falling apart, the frustrations of the everyday, the constancy of romantic despair. Downers? Nope. They were witty and super-smart.  Shelley took his strong sense of poetics and harnessed punk's energy with terrific melodies. Here is a typical song that plays as well today as it did in 1979:

"Everybody's Happy Nowadays". Somewhere in an alternate universe, on Planet Earth X, where everything we always wanted exists, Shelley and Buzzcocks rule the airwaves. They ruled here, too, but too few knew of their realm.