Fredrik Reinfeldt, the Swedish Prime Minister, said yesterday that his country, which takes over the EU presidency today, would present its own example of 50 per cent economic growth since 1990 combined with a 10 per cent cut in CO2 emissions to try to win over sceptics.
OK, good trick, how is it done?
Since 1991 Swedes have paid 20p per litre in carbon tax for petrol, which has helped to cut emissions by 20 per cent, partly by encouraging public transport systems to switch to biogas. “You need to get the right price signals. We introduced a CO2 tax nearly 20 years ago and it is the highest in the world,” Mr Reinfeldt said.
Excellent, so now we know.
Great, let\’s go do that then.
Ah, we already have. The fuel price escalator (fuel duty escalator to others) has added at least 23 p to the price of a litre since introduction in 1993 to meet our \”Rio committments\”.
Even more excellent then, we\’ve already done what we need to do.
I am sure they must be burning hell of a lot less coal as well.
Mind you, so are we.
Where’s the problem then? Where’s the disconnect between us paying more in tax and still being lashed with the whip of CO2 emissions.
“I am sure they must be burning hell of a lot less coal as well. ”
No, in fact Sweden hasn’t changed its coal burning very much, at least not if you only count what’s burned inside the country. They have however begun importing lots of coal generated energy from primarily Germany as they’ve been shutting down nuclear power in order to please environmentalists
So do the Swedes count the CO2 production that they expotered to Germnany?
exported !
50% growth in 19 years? 1.5^(1/19) = 1.0216. I don’t see why 2% annual growth is anything to boast about.