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Sweden, an Early Climate Leader, Is Retreating From Its Environmental Commitments, Part of an EU Trend
(insideclimatenews.org)
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2025
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Our commitments were made in an entirely different realpolitik environment, before the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Swedish gdp per capita has been stagnant for several years with significant real wage decline, particularly for low to lower mid-income households - an estimated 6.5-16.5% decline since pre pandemic levels in 2019, only starting to properly recover in the past year or so.
Simultaneously there's increasing healthcare costs tied to an aging population, massive needs to increase defence spending (1% of GDP in 2019, 2.4% currently, 5% goal) as well as significant and increasing societal economic losses from crime.
Something has had to budge and this is, unfortunately, one of those things. Work continues albeit at a lower priority.
Make no mistake. Sweden is still and will continue to be leagues ahead of most developed nations, and does really well even compared to the global average. Compared to a Swede, the average human has a carbon footprint 26% larger, European 50% larger, German 90% larger, Chinese 126% larger and each of y'all americans emit almost as much as 4 Swedes put together on average.
Our commitments were made when we DIDN'T have a government coalition of dumbass rightwingers, neoliberals, evangelicals, and neonazis in poor disguise.
Now we do have that coalition, and they're pretending climate change isn't real.
In the name of saving costs, they're killing programs which have been massive cost savers with huge ROI, and thus creating costs. Undoing wildlife management which increase costs and reduce revenue for farmers, undoing climate goals which even the car industry wants in place, removing regulations which made the industry better, etc.
Regressive assholes