It is December 13th, and the world is celebrating St. Lucy’s Day. For a tradition that originates from the Catholic Church, it is celebrated widely in the Nordic countries. Here in Finland, it is a tradition that is done the most in the Swedish-speaking community, but there are events related to this also in the Finnish-speaking schools and such. The message of the celebration is light in the dark, and thus the celebration includes a lot of candles and singing songs.
This year, the true light in the dark was something other than the candles of the celebrations. The UN climate conference decided to sign an agreement about the whole world giving up fossil fuels. I don’t know what this means in practice yet, as probably no one does, but what I know is that this kind of agreement has never been done before.
I am an optimistic person by nature. That means that even if I am not trying to be too naive, I try to think about the possibilities instead of the risks of things. Despite that, it often feels overwhelming to see how many problems we are facing with the climate. Not only do we have large technological issues to solve, but we also need to find the political force to enforce the changes necessary to put the decisions into action. It is a huge project that requires a lot of professionals to cooperate to succeed.
So far, it has not seemed too promising. Some steps to the better have been taken, but the crucial ones have not been dared to do. I am really hoping this agreement changes that course, and we can still hang on in hope to avoid the worst scenario that could happen.
In my personal life, I was very tired today. There has been so much to do this autumn, and there are still plenty of tasks left to do. The weather this afternoon suddenly became quite bad, so going outside felt heavy, but I still decided to go on a walk and handle some hardware store purchases at the same time. I also tried out the buckthorn berry glogg; it really tastes amazing! With the power of that, I hope tomorrow will be a more energized day.
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