The Swedish right-wing government has won the yearly greenwash award in Sweden! The greenwash award is given to a company or a person who have done the best job to avoid real environmental action, and instead put effort into creating a fake green image. Friends of the Earth has, after a period of public online voting, given this award to Andreas Carlgren, the Swedish Environment Minister.
What is a bit surprising (or not) is that Andreas Carlgren won the award by far even though he was up against other heavy greenwash opponents such as Carl-Henrik Svanberg from BP and Shell. A reason for his crushing victory must be his involvement in the controversial new Swedish motorway project Bypass Stockholm which he is working hard to brand as an "environmentally friendly" solution to the traffic problems in Stockholm.
In September 2009 the government gave permission for the largest and most expensive highway project ever, the so-called bypass Stockholm. The motorway will increase road traffic and get in the way for emission reductions. Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren defended the bypass by claiming that it is an "environmental and climate friendly option for Stockholm", "a major investment in trams and buses", and a motorway "for the future of environmentally friendly cars," said Ellie Cijvat, chairman of the Friends of the Earth in Sweden.
A new report released by the Met Office and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has come to the conclusion that there is "unmistakable signs" that "the world is warming".
The report is based on 10 different indicators of temperature changes. According to the Met Office each indicator "proved consistent with a warming world". According to the report the air temperature over land, the sea-surface and marine air temperature has all increased. Our oceans are also heating and the humidity is getting higher. Tropospheric temperature in the ‘active-weather’ layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface has also increased. The Met Office also notes that sea-levels has increased while glaciers, spring snow cover in the northern hemisphere and arctic sea-ice are all in decline.
“The temperature increase of one degree Fahrenheit over the past 50 years may seem small, but it has already altered our planet,” said Deke Arndt, co-editor of the report and chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.
“Glaciers and sea ice are melting, heavy rainfall is intensifying and heat waves are more common. And, as the new report tells us, there is now evidence that more than 90 percent of warming over the past 50 years has gone into our oceans.”
Does the individualization of environmentalism have any merits? Can it successfully co-exist with collective action? Environmental advertising (or “green” advertising) assures consumers that they can evoke positive environmental change by adopting simple habits and by purchasing green goods provided by companies (Maniates, 2001). These include wearing clothing made from sustainable fibres, consuming local and organic food, purchasing hybrid cars or choosing cosmetics made with natural ingredients. However, some environmental scholars such as Michael Maniates have criticized these actions as greenwashing which individualizes environmental problems.
The tension at the heart of consumer culture is that it is a fragile system that cannot sustain itself indefinitely (Varey, 2001). The resources needed to extract, produce, transport, and advertise the products that consumers take for granted are being used up at an alarming rate, with devastating environmental costs. We all know this. Consumer culture has received ever-increasing blame for the environmental crisis, which marketing responds to with “green advertising”.
Here is a quick quote from Tom Toles, a pulitzer prize-winning political cartoonist at the Washington Post, about the ongoing “climate debate”:
“We are apparently going to let the debate on the science run until hell freezes over. If you can’t accept the conclusions of 98 percent of the scientists whose FIELD IT IS, then why even bother with science? If that high a percentage of field of study is to be discounted ENTIRELY, then we are in deep trouble, which, of course, we are. It would be so simple if it were just a matter of ignoring the yelping commenters hereabouts: “Move on, Mr. Cartoonist! Chill out Tommy! There are more important things to worry about!”
Really? Which would those things be? This may be the only political issue whose results could be catastrophic PERMANENTLY. But the deliberate dust storm thrown up by fossil-fuel-centric interests has succeeded in contaminating and paralyzing the American response. Quite a victory for the deniers! It looks like mass-suicide to me.”
Here are two videos from Streetfilms and the BBC which shows two cities in Scandinavia where bicycles dominate. You have probably already heard about Copenhagen and the city’s great reputation as a bicycle city. But you might not have heard about Lund, a Swedish town where around 60% of the population use bicycles and public transportation.
"The Politics Show East has been to a town in Sweden where 60 per cent of people leave their car at home. In the town of Lund the majority of the population use bicycles and public transport."
German scholar Wolfgang Sachs talked about sustainable development versus economic growth in Copenhagen on invitation by The Ecological Council, The European Environment Agency and the Danish newspaper Information. Wolfgang Sachs is a former professor, former chairman of Greenpeace Germany, author of several books and contributor to the IPCC.
Sachs introduces with “the four directions” which are his logical answers to scarcity. Then his talk is divided in nine points; some skipped, others expanded. Focussing on growth, the efficiency paradox, green investments, sufficiency and commons here are a selection of quotes and notes.
When it comes to environmental and climate issues the current right-wing government in Sweden is one of the worst ever. And that is not just my own words! According to the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC), an environmental organization formed in 1909 with over 180 000 members, the Swedish governments environmental policies have been a failure.
"We have investigated Swedish governments environmental policies since the 80s. This is one of the worst we have seen. Previous governments have slowly made progress. But it’s rare for a government to make so many backward steps that this current government has made", the secretary general of SSNC said [my translation].
SSNC complains that in some areas the Swedish government has failed to implement sufficient, if any, environmental laws and regulations. SSNC also do acknowledge that the current Government have implemented several good environmental policies, such as a ban on phosphates in detergents which is expected to reduce Sweden’s phosphorus discharges into the oceans by 50 tons per year. But the problem is that these good policies have been knocked back by other contradictive anti-environment decisions. One of these decisions is the removal of the tax on fertilizers which will, according to experts, result in a loss of control over several toxic substances and will cause leakage of nitrogen into the ocean.
A general election will be held in Sweden this September. If you are eligible to vote, and the environment is one of your main concerns then clearly you can’t vote for the ones currently in power.
From 20 to 40 young people in white masks attacked the camp of the defenders of the Khimki forest park [RUS], Igor Podgorny [RUS] and Novaya Gazeta [RUS] reported. The police intervention didn’t help – instead several environmentalists and journalists were detained.
Russian police on Friday detained two journalists and 15 protesters at a suburban Moscow forest where they have been living to try to protect the woods from destruction. [...] The forest in Khimki has been the focus of controversy for years over plans to chop down much of it for highway construction. Khimki lies on the increasingly jammed route from Moscow to Sheremetyevo International Airport and St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city. A local newspaper editor who reported extensively on the issue was severely beaten in 2008 and left wheelchair-bound and brain-damaged. [...] The activists called the police at the break of dawn on Friday when a group of some 100 young men who had covered their faces blocked the campsite, thus allowing the [tree chopping in an alledgedly illegal area] work to resume, Moscow Regional police said in a statement.
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