Thread by @davidmacdougall

🧵Here's a fun thread for Monday! If you like #climatecrisis #ilmastonmuutos, travel, adventure, #Finland 🇫🇮, entitlement, colonialism and not a hint of irony then I guarantee you'll love this story! ⬇️

Meet the cast of a new Finnish reality TV show! Wait, not a TV show, it's just reality. These folks are (mostly) entrepreneurs who went on an expedition to 🇬🇱 #Greenland. How exciting! But why did they go to Greenland, you ask?🤔

Good question! They flew all the way to Greenland not just to kayak, hike & shoot guns y'all. They went to find out about the impact of climate change. The glaciers are melting folks & the only way to learn about it is TO GO THERE IMMEDIATELY!

Sorry, I should add, GO THERE IMMEDIATELY but make sure you take prime cuts of beef with you from a sponsor in Finland, all the way to Greenland. Because nothing says "carbon miles" like carrying gourmet meat to use for field rations when soy would have done the same thing.

🧮️Anyway. Back to our tale. Using an online calculator, I worked out 12 people on a return trip from Helsinki via, say, Copenhagen to Nuuk generates 19 tons of carbon emissions. And that's not including the gear for their expedition (won't somebody think of the polar bears?!)🐻‍❄️

The average Greenlander generates just 0.03 tons of carbon emissions each year. The Finnish entrepreneurs polluted the planet with as much CO2 emissions as 633 Greenlanders would produce in a year, just to find out more about climate change 🤦

🌳🌲Now maybe they offset all these carbon emissions (and the ones from their training trips to Finnish Lapland over the years) by planting trees or whatnot. But there's no mention of that in their press release or blogs (yes, they had a press release trumpeting their trip!)

But wait, there's more. There's actually more! You will die! Read on ⬇️

🏔While in Greenland, the entrepreneurs NAMED A MOUNTAIN! They called it Mt. Innovation.

There's absolutely nothing problematic about white folks going to other places & NAMING THINGS. The optics look 👍 on that stuff, from #Sápmi to Australia, just naming stuff. Right?

And while they were in Greenland finding out more about #climatecrisis, how exactly did they do that? Experiments? Gathering data? Maybe. But there's no mention of any of that in the press release or blogs. It seems they just walked around, kayaked, shot guns & named a mountain.

I'm sure they're all lovely people with the best of intentions but look at the optics on this stuff. Just stop and consider for a moment how it looks. And if you contributed to science, or offset all your carbon emissions, make that the headline.

But while I've got you here right at the end of the thread, why not read this story I wrote for @euronews about some young entrepreneurs from 🇬🇱 #Greenland who are, frankly, making a difference! Kiitos!
euronews.com/2022/03/22/the…

Update: One Finnish newspaper has so far written about this climate crisis expedition (it was a holiday, just say it was a holiday!) but it's very forgiving! is.fi/taloussanomat/…

One more update: Expedition leader (guru?) @Eratuli seems quite shocked that anyone would think poorly of their Greenland misadventure. They offset carbon emissions! (but only today, when there is negative buzz, at a much lower rate than I calculated)

mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/yrit…

At this point I think @Eratuli and her merry band of eco-entrepreneurs might be starting to ponder... "are we the baddies?"