Log Cabin in the Arctic

Day 6; 11/01/2019

How sustainable can eleven flights be?

Answer: It can’t and it isn’t.

Between our three flights en route to Inari, Finland we were forced to come to grips with the fact that in order to learn about being sustainable, we had in fact been extremely unsustainable and harmful to the environment.  The estimated gas emissions (done with very poor math) was about 1.04 metric tons.  Which meant that in our attempt to become better human beings and change our ways or the ways of others we had, in fact, played an enormous part in harming the environment during our ten-day course.  Through research, I found that the average US citizen’s carbon footprint was between 16-20 metric tons a year, making this ten-day trip around .05% of my annual carbon footprint.  In relation to driving a diesel car, this would mean you would be driving around 12,000 miles in order to emit the same amount of carbon emissions as my eleven flights took (again with very poor math, but it put the impact into perspective).  As a student studying abroad, this meant I would be taking more trips with more flights or train rides and greatly increasing my average carbon footprint.

Day six was a full day of traveling while traveling way way North into the Arctic Circle.  Besides for sitting on planes for hours, we were given the chance to practice our Finish and cooking skills as we scoured a local grocery store for food for the remaining days of our trip.  All I can say is that it was quite the experience.  Afterward, we made it back to our chalet in the woods to have a theory session.  The discussion was focused around epistemology, which is the theory of knowledge especially with regard to its methods, validity, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion.  Up until this point, much of our learning had been hands-on and quite obvious, while our time in Finland required us to truly think about what we had learned during the past five days.  Because of our personal epistemologies, everyone has different assumptions as to what “disrupting the environment” truly means, such as the debate on whether or not climate change is real (it’s real).

Day 7; 12/01/2019

Although you may think that a trip through the world’s most sustainable and environmentally aware region must be a nice and relaxing trip, it was in fact incredibly tiring.  By day seven, we had been on six flights and had at least sixteen hour days.  Our second day in Inari was our day to relax.  I slept in until about twelve in the afternoon made myself a nice breakfast, and proceeded to fill out the majority of my course book up until this point.  Later that night we hiked up to an aurora hut in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the Northern lights while also having a class session on social constructs and dichotomy.  We talked about social constructs as they related to the environment and to our environment.  Why do we consider nature, natural while our cities are not considered nature?  What is the line at which something becomes unnatural?  Beavers build structures and we consider them natural so why aren’t our homes natural?  Confused?  Imagine this conversation at ten at night.  However, it was interesting and made me think about things I hadn’t previously.  After class, a few of us stayed in the hut to have a low key “hangout” which vaguely resembled a night at DJs in Syracuse.  Unfortunately, due to overcast skies, we were not able to see the Aurora, but how many people can even say that they had the possibility?