“Sweden has become Europe’s dunce in the fight against climate change,” laments François Gemenne

Every Saturday we decipher climate issues with François Gemenne, professor at HEC, president of the Scientific Council of the Foundation for Nature and Man and member of the IPCC. Saturday February 3: the fall of the Swedish model, particularly on ecology.

franceinfo: This week, François, you tell us about a collapse: that of Sweden.

François Gemenne: Remember, Jean-Rémi, it was not so long ago: we were constantly praising the Swedish model, and any political leader who aspired to high responsibilities had to make the pilgrimage to Stockholm. The Swedes had everything going for them: efficient businesses, an exceptional social security system, near equality between men’s and women’s salaries, and they were number 1 on ecology. It is the model country. Besides, if there had been a Nobel Prize for the best country, they could have awarded it to themselves.

It’s all over. And it’s not Sweden’s victory at Eurovision last year that will make up for it. Today, Sweden has become the dunce of Europe, especially in the fight against climate change. It is one of the very rare industrialized countries whose greenhouse gas emissions increased in 2023. And this will continue until 2030. From the country which practically invented the carbon tax and which hosted the very first UN summit on the environment in 1972, it is still quite unexpected.

How is it possible ? What happened ?

Sweden is going backwards almost everywhere, and in particular in its transport policy: end of the bonus for carpooling and the use of public transport, end of subsidies for wind power offshore and for the TGV, increase in subsidies for fossil fuels, end of tax credits for the purchase of electric cars, reduction in the share of biofuels, end of climate criteria in the award of public contracts, etc.

“Everything that has made climate policies successful in Sweden over the past 30 years has been abandoned.”

François Gemenne

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But why ? What motivates this?

A lot has changed in Sweden in recent years. The country’s political landscape has exploded, notably due to the emergence of an extreme right-wing group, the Sweden Democrats. The Swedish social system, which was designed for a very homogeneous population, failed to integrate the country’s significant immigration, and the country woke up to significant social tensions and geographic disparities, ghettos, which have in turn generated crime.

What does this have to do with the climate, you ask? Well when the new government was presented in October 2022, it had to count on the support of the Sweden Democrats, who do not formally participate in the government but support its policies. And they of course monetized their support, by asking for the abandonment of the objectives of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It was necessary to fight against inflation and strengthen purchasing power, and ecology was the adjustment variable.

“Climate policies have been the ideal scapegoat.”

François Gemenne

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This is what we could call “green-blaming”, to use a neologism designed by a new collective which launched last week, and which is called “Building ecology”.

What is “green-blaming”?

This is the tendency to build an ecological scarecrow, which would make ecology the scapegoat for everything that goes wrong. But any coincidence with a phenomenon observed elsewhere than in Sweden would obviously be purely fortuitous, Jean-Rémi, isn’t it…

François, can what is happening in Sweden have an influence here? Could this impact the European Green Deal, for example?

One might say that this is not decisive, of course – after all, in terms of population, Sweden is roughly the size of Belgium. But Sweden, historically, was the country that pushed European policies upwards in terms of the environment. It was the first country to have introduced a carbon tax, for example, in 1991. It was also the country which had reduced its greenhouse gas emissions the most in the European Union, with a drop of 33%. between 1990 and 2021, to achieve the lowest carbon footprint in Europe, around 5 tonnes per inhabitant.

What this means for us is that just because a country has started its transition does not mean it cannot go back. Swedish companies, from Volvo to H&M, may have protested, but it was not enough: one might believe that once the reduction in emissions began, it would inevitably and naturally increase, but Sweden shows us that this can stop suddenly. And this is obviously also the risk that hangs over our noses…