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Emission possible: Sweden the eco-powerhouse
Louise Williams, The Age (Australia)
The Howard Government has warned of economic disaster if carbon emissions are cut too drastically. But in Sweden, the opposite has occurred. Bold policies have turned a city into an eco-powerhouse. .
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IN THE cool forest region of southern Sweden, the city of Vaxjo has turned off the heating oil, even on the darkest, snowbound days of winter.
Coal, too, is gone and next on the fossil fuel hit list is petrol. In the underground car park of the local government offices, there are no private vehicles, just a communal green-car fleet. Staff who cycle or take the local biogas buses to work book ahead to drive – fuelling up on biogas or E85, a blend of 85 per cent renewable ethanol.
Petrol is still readily available to the public, but carbon emissions in Sweden are heavily taxed. Drivers pays about 80 cents a litre extra at the bowser.
Vaxjo is chasing a future free of fossil fuels, and it’s almost halfway there without having sacrificed lifestyle, comfort or economic growth.
When local politicians announced the phasing out in 1996, it was little more than a quaint curiosity. Oil prices were hovering around a manageable $US20 a barrel and global warming was still a hotly contested debate. Today, at least one international delegation a week mainly from China and Japan beats a path to Vaxjo to see how it’s done.
The Vaxjo model has been repeated all over Sweden, creating a network of “climate” municipalities. Sweden’s total emissions have long been falling and last year the Government announced its own ambitious national goal: to end oil dependency by 2020.
Today, Sweden’s annual greenhouse gas emissions are just over five tonnes per capita, compared with Australian and US levels in the high 20s and climbing. That’s before calculating Sweden’s forests, which serve as huge carbon sinks that could offset emissions by another 30 per cent. In Vaxjo, it’s 3.5 tonnes of carbon per capita, the lowest urban level in Europe.
Meanwhile, the heavily taxed Swedish economy has clawed its way up into the world’s top five, partly due to cutting-edge “clean tech”.
(17 June 2007)
Exxon attacks Greenpeace but says it wants to save the planet
Terry Macalister, The Guardian
ExxonMobil criticised Greenpeace, the Kyoto treaty and the European carbon trading system yesterday but insisted it was not a “climate change denier” and said it wanted to play a constructive role in countering global warming.
The world’s biggest non-state-owned oil group said its position on global warming had been repeatedly misunderstood and it had come to accept there should be a US federal – and preferably global – carbon tax through a cap-and-trade system.
Kenneth Cohen, vice-president of public affairs for Exxon, said: “Our company has been put in this bucket of not taking the climate issue seriously and that is flat wrong… Those who meet with us understand we are not a denier.
“We believed then and today that Kyoto is not the right approach… Our opposition to Kyoto has been seen as opposition to climate change and I regret that.” He said Exxon’s long-term aims were to respond to rising energy demand but also to planetary warming.
(15 June 2007)
Love that Exxon culture! Whether they are denying climate change or switching to a more reasonable position, they do it with macho panache. Never mind, they seem to be going in the right direction. I’m just waiting for them to assure us that they always believed in peak oil. And when they do, we should all be glad. -BA
Monbiot debates with Clive Hamilton
George Monbiot and Clive Hamilton, New Left Review
In which we battle over carbon targets, green tokenism and the economics of climate change.
The debate is published in full by the New Left Review.
George Monbiot’s response
(15 June 2007)
Yes Men Strike Oil: Civil Disobedients Make Modest Flesh-to-Fuel Proposal
Brandon Keim, Wired
“Without oil, at least four billion people would starve. This spiral of trouble would make the oil infrastructure utterly useless” — unless their bodies could be turned into fuel.
That was the satirical message delivered by two corporate ethics activists to the Gas and Oil Exposition 2007 in Calgary, Alberta. The activists, part of political trickster collective the Yes Men, used the Exposition to stage their latest theatre of corporate absurdity, with Exxon/Mobil and the Natural Petroleum Council playing the fools.
The prank, intended as a critique of the fossil fuel industry’s influence on energy policy, caused confusion and consternation on the final day of the Exposition, one of the industry’s largest gatherings.
The NPC, which is led by former Exxon-Mobil CEO Lee Raymond, advises the White House on gas and oil issues. They were expected to announce the findings of a Raymond-chaired study, commissioned by the Department of Energy, on joint US-Canadian energy policy.
Instead, attendees of the day’s $45.00 keynote luncheon were addressed by the Yes Men’s Andy Bichlbaum, who identified himself as an NPC representative named Shepard Wolff.
After noting that current energy policies will likely lead to “huge global calamities” and disrupt oil supplies, Wolff told the audience “that in the worst case scenario, the oil industry could “keep fuel flowing” by transforming the billions of people who die into oil,” said a Yes Men press release.
Yes Man Mike Bonnano, posing as an Exxon representative named Florian Osenberg, added that “With more fossil fuels comes a greater chance of disaster, but that meansy more feedstock for Vivoleum. Fuel will continue to flow for those of us left.”
The impostors led growingly suspicious attendees in lighting Vivoleum candles made, they said, from a former Exxon janitor who died from cleaning a toxic spill. When shown a mock video of the janitor professing his desire to be turned in death into candles, a conference organizer pulled Bonanno and Bichlbaum from the stage.
(14 June 2007)
More material at the Yes Men site. (not responding at the moment).
Contributor www.peakaware.com writes:
As an artist, I see this type of action as critical to the awakening of the both the oil industry and the masses. We must begin to explore these mind altering methods without reservation. There is no time to waste. As Chris Shaw recently wrote “Money measures the scope of dreams, but only energy can fulfill them.” We must define our dreams of a better future now!
