Niklas Rosenberg

A year ago, me and my friends tried to move over several of our group chats to Signal, but all of those attempts failed. A year later, all our chats are back on WhatsApp. Signal simply wasn’t as convenient as WhatsApp and we never managed to get everyone onboard. Using WhatsApp was so habitual that we just couldn’t make the switch work.

It’s important to distinguish between carbon offsetting and carbon removal, because they offer two very different outcomes when it comes to reaching net zero. Considering the climate crisis we’re facing, it’s clearly not enough that businesses just pay others to avoid emissions in their place, because emissions still enter the atmosphere and remain there. If we want to reach net zero fast enough, carbon removal is needed.

Considering that Finland is often ranked high in global studies regarding internet usage and innovation, I would argue that Finland is extremely well positioned to tackle the challenges involved in e-voting. E-voting would not only be good for our democracy but it could also strengthen our image as a forerunner in digitalization and innovation on the global scene.

In the end this deal just makes perfect business sense for Microsoft. Gaming is a huge and profitable industry, in which Microsoft is already deeply involved in through Xbox, and they’re sitting on top of a $140 billion cash pile. Why not use half of that to buy a growing business that will generate lots of revenues and opportunities for many years to come?

Currently, as I see it, Finland is inflicting serious and potentially long-lasting damage to its society and economy through continued excessive restrictions. Sweden, with its more pragmatic approach, will undoubtedly emerge as the winner in the end.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has just published the 17th edition of the Global Risks Report and three of the most menacing threats identified are all environmental – which shows that the respondents have little faith in the world’s ability to contain climate change.

Obviously we need to do something about global warming if we want to prevent heatwaves and other weather extremes from becoming more and more frequent in every region across the globe. The best way to do it is to stop adding CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) to the air as soon as possible and develop new technologies for removing large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. I seriously hope that sufficient efforts for reaching carbon neutrality can be coordinated globally before a truly devastating and deadly heatwave occurs. That would be a terrible wake-up call.

Another data point that keeps popping up in climate science is the global atmospheric CO2 concentration, which currently is around 415 parts per million (ppm). The IPCC report that was published yesterday didn’t say anything new about the 450 ppm threshold and it remains to be seen if the upcoming deliverables from working groups II and III will have anything to say about it. Whether of not 450 ppm is the correct threshold number is, however, not the main point. The point is that there’s a clear link between global warming and atmospheric CO2 concentration.

Today an important new United Nations scientific report on climate change was published. It begins by concluding that there’s no doubt that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Nobody is surprised, but it clears the air (pun intended) to have it stated in black and white by the U.N. The report, specifically the Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), highlights a number of other interesting, and unfortunately mostly alarming issues, too.

The financial services sector is absolutely critical for enabling us to reach the targets set by the Paris Agreement. The simple truth is that money talks, and when FIs cease to fund or insure polluting businesses, major changes can be achieved. There’s widespread adoption and acceptance of TCFD recommendations among FIs and therefore it’s critical that the recommendations are regularly updated to reflect the dire climate situation we’re facing and the latest science. The upcoming guidance is a great leap forward, both in terms of clarity and ambition level, but fact of the matter is that they could’ve been even more ambitious.