In a debate on BBC World on Sunday the 18th May, Sweden’s Maud Olofsson continued to promulgate the myth of Sweden’s sustainability focus. Not inasmuch as what she said, but in what she did NOT say.
(for details follow http://www.bbcworld.com/Pages/ProgrammeFeature.aspx?id=196&FeatureID=753)

When asked about sustainability reporting she cited the Government’s mandated reporting (starting this year) from public companies as an example of the government’s investment in sustainable development. She also cited Sweden’s carbon dioxide taxes on petrol and diesel. From this year, about 38% of what the motorist pays for petrol goes to energy and carbon dioxide tax respectively.

Two good things on the face of it that should be putting Sweden on the rode to reduced fossil fuel dependency. Maud Olofsson even managed to add that although mandating sustainability reporting from public companies, the government mandates these companies are run at a profit. With a hint of pride in her voice she made it clear that Sweden could combine economic growth and responsible business.

Not quite true. What Maud omitted was, that in demanding profits from state companies they are putting profits before promoting sustainable development of Sweden. Two glaring examples: the state run airports authority, whilst touting its environmental program on one hand, is planning to increase air travel and thereby emissions over the next few years. Another example comes from the state owned railway. Finding it hard to keep profits up in the face of meagre investment in new tracks and rolling stock, they are now putting up their prices. The increases are expected to result in customers flying more and driving their cars more.

But what about the all those millions that come from carbon dioxide taxation? Last year, according to information published by The Swedish National Financial Management Authority, carbon dioxide tax amounted 25 billion kronor, about 5 billion dollars. Surely this money should be spent on promoting sustainable development? Unfortunately, the transparency demanded by the government on reporting from its companies is not carried over to reporting of their own activities. The same authority gives us no idea of where all that money goes in its reporting of spending.

To my knowledge there is no direct reporting of how this money is being used. The worst case scenario is that is being used to fund vehicle industry research, or even to build more roads.

One thing is sure, despite all ranting about sustainability reporting, hard facts about activities that are putting Sweden on the route to sustainability are hard to find. With one of the world’s highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions, and with Sweden being the country in Europe most dependent on the motor vehicle industry, how long will it take before the Swedes themselves wake up to the fact that for every day that passes, they are increasingly at risk that coming fossil fuel scarcity will cause more than just economic damage.

Stephen Hinton

According to today’s Swedish daily, Svenska Dagbladet, a new report from the Swedish Royal College of Technology, KTH, supports an earlier proposal that three national authorities receive grants of SEK 500 million (about 50 million Euros) per year over a period of years to get Swedes to cycle more instead of driving their cars. The report reflects the sad state of sustainable development in Sweden. Firstly it identifies that business as usual, even given a good dose of technology optimism will absolutely fail to meet goals. Secondly it is just another haphazard shot in the dark from the country that announced the goal to break oil dependency by 2015 and convinced many that Sweden was leading sustainable development only to deliver nothing since the announcement over two years ago except a poorly written final document published and circulated for comments.

The KTH Climate report, commissioned by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, states that Sweden will not reach its goals of an 85% reduction in Carbon Dioxide emissions by 2050 merely through increased use of renewable fuels and introduction of more efficient technology. This even taking into account breaking current trends of increased travel and road transport. What is needed, says the report, are behavioral changes.These include working from home, planning cities to increase the level of local service, increased use of rail transport, and holidaying locally.

Jonas Åkerman, one of the authors, sees increased cycle traffic as one area of major potential. The Swedish Road Administration, the Swedish Rail Administration and Nutek - the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth agree. Even the Swedish Government cites cycling as a preferred strategy to reach environmental goals.

A couple of reasons why all the albeit good intentioned and minutely calculated thinking appears so ludicrous: firstly, Sweden is a very cold country, the roads and cycle paths are slippery the whole of the winter season. Studded winter tyres or equivalent are mandatory on cars. Cycling in the snow and ice is dangerous and no fun except for the most hardened enthusiasts. Secondly, spending all that government money is really only going to pay wages for planning, information and advertising professionals and the building of cycle paths. All aimed at appealing to the good nature of folks to get on their bikes more.

All this appealing to good folks' nature with a 50 million Euro budget per year pales in comparison to the advertising budget Volvo targets towards Chinese and other workers – including in Volvo’s home country Sweden - to get them to abandon their bikes to drive a Volvo instead.

Can the Swedish approaches really be taken seriously? The largest Swedish export is motor vehicles, among them Saab and Volvo. Can they really expect, regardless of the amount of money they spend on persuasion, their own people to abandon their cars and cycle, going back to conditions of the early 50s? This at the same time as the economy is kept afloat by car sales to the very nations that are abandoning cycling? Can Sweden be seen as a nation leading sustainable development? Sadly, I think not. True innovation, bold political and social moves are needed for a nation to be seen as believable when they set targets and strategies for sustainable development. The question is, which one dares to be first?

Last week, the commission on oil dependency, tasked with charting Sweden’s way out of dependency, issued its report. The Swedish Parliament and public sector is to review the proposals for decision after the elections in September. Disappointingly, the report fails to address the heart of the issue - dependency and management of risk for societal collapse - instead it chooses to concentrate on technical solutions for energy supply. The commission’s failures illustrate the magnitude and breadth of the challenges facing the western world and the lack of capacity of the present political and scientific bodies to address it.

Many were overjoyed when Sweden announced its intentions to walk along the road to oil independence. And on the face of it, a list of suggestions for stimulating alternative energy sources is a useful result. However, the report’s fundamental flaw is that is does not address the risks involved in Sweden’s dependence on oil for the provision of a standard of living for its people. The report spends less than one page on this aspect. On the other hand, it does identify that of the four areas of operation, transport, agriculture, industry and housing it is only the transport and agriculture sector where no alternative is available. Independence, to the commission, is not the same as zero consumption. Independence means there are alternative, renewable sources available.

In fact, according to the report, Sweden is not actually at any risk from oil depletion. The authors take pains to point out that the reason for the commission’s work is to fulfill Sweden’s climate obligations. They state their belief that neither peaking of oil production nor spiraling oil prices presents any risk to the transport system and thereby hardship to the economy or the Swedish people.

Although not mentioned in the report, this is actually the view of the Swedish energy authority. Their recent report sees no risk in bottlenecks in refining capacity, political unrest, peaking of production or failure to find new reserves.

This means that the oil commission has not addressed the issue of how to manage oil dependency. They reduced the problem to “what to put in the fuel tank

http://cogs.avbp.net

Robert Waldrop’s paper presented at the recent Community Solution conference offered ideas on how to set up local food systems. Based on his paper this article explores how to use our COGS currency or a similar complementary currency system to speed development of the community. As Robert says, this is not a cookie cutter recipe, take what you need and leave the rest!

fig 1 Local Food System
As you see from the diagram a group gets together to invest legal tender to buy what is needed to produce food. The group invests their voluntary time in the system too. What comes out is food, both as raw material but also preserves and even shared cooking rosters in community kitchens or restaurant duties.