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.

Also read: The Swedish government completes its climate wrecking track record with a pro-nuclear vote

Maria Wetterstrand, political leader of the Green Party, said during the parliament vote that this decision "could mean Sweden will be making itself dependent on nuclear power for 100 more years and there will be 100,000 years of consequences for future generations who will have to take care of the waste."

If the opposition gets the majority of the votes in the upcoming general election in Sweden this September they have promised that they will try to reverse this nuclear vote.

Ludvig Tillman, spokesman for Greenpeace in Sweden, criticized the narrow vote margin and said that: "With a narrow majority, the members of parliament show they do not take the environmental risks posed by nuclear power seriously, and that they do not trust in the enormous potential there is for Swedish renewable energy."

The Swedish right-wing government will end their 4 years in power with an rather awful environmental record. Besides ignoring reports that points to nuclear energy as an dangerous, not cost-effective, and too expensive energy solution that even will worsen climate change the coalition of right-leaning parties have also made other climate wrecking decisions. The biggest of them all must be the complete embarrassment during the climate summits in Poland (Cop14) where the Swedish government called for as much as 88% of the EU emission cuts to be allowed to do overseas in development countries. In Copenhagen and during the Cop15 meetings the Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt refused to push for strong climate targets and disagreed with Connie Hedegaard, EU Commissioner for the Climate and COP 15 President, and her calls for 30% emission reduction targets in EU.

Other major climate-wrecking decisions include the controversial Bypass Stockholm (Förbifart Stockholm). The traffic link motorway will span 20 kilometres of which 17 kilometres will be by tunnel. It is estimated the new motorway will cost taxpayers 27 billion kronor ($3.75 billion), although the final costs will probably end up much higher, and will thus become one of the most single expensive traffic construction projects in Swedish history. Critics to Bypass Stockholm have complained that the new motorway will results in increased CO2 emissions. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that the construction of the new bypass will result in an 80% increase in CO2 emissions in the Stockholm region by 2030.

“The government’s decision is very unfortunate. Bypass Stockholm will increase Stockholm’s effect on the climate and increase vehicle numbers. At the same time, it will take resources from important commitments to communal traffic,” said the Green Party’s spokesperson, Maria Wetterstrand.

But the Swedish government has ignored all this and the appointed Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren even had the guts to describe the new motorway as an "environmentally friendly motorway". Like it could ever be such a thing as an environmentally friendly motorway.

Another big climate letdown from the Swedish right-wing government is their failure to stop Vattenfall, Europe’s third-largest energy company which is wholly owned by the Swedish Government, from investing heavily in dirty fossil fuels such as coal in Europe. They are currently building a new coal plant outside of Hamburg in Germany that once completed will become the biggest in Europe. As an energy corporation Vattenfall is releasing more greenhouse gases than all of Sweden combined.

Let’s hope that the left-leaning opposition gets the majority of the votes in the general election this September so that they can stop the downward spiral in Sweden. I miss the days when Sweden was a leading role model around the world in green innovation and policies. I mean, If neighboring country Norway can have plans and targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions with 40% by 2020 so can Sweden.

If the third runway in the UK is the proof of the country’s climate hypocrisy then Sweden’s would be the huge new highway projects in Stockholm and Gothenburg.

In Gothenburg, the second-largest city in Sweden, climate activists from Klimax and the Friends of the Earth “decorated” cranes with banners, planted trees and even had a breakfast on the construction site to highlight and protest against the climate highway madness being built in Sweden.

“It’s bad enough that large amounts of taxpayers’ money is being wasted on projects that won’t work, but these road projects will even lead to an increase of carbon dioxide emissions. It’s ironically that that we activists’ risks getting arrested while the real criminals, who on a consciously and cynically way make decisions that will lock us into a continued increase of carbon dioxide emissions will go free. We just can’t sit quiet while climate criminal politicians threaten future generations living condition; it’s every citizen’s obligation to put pressure on the decision makers so they make climate friendly choices”, said Lovisa Börjeson from Klimax in Gothenburg.

Watch:

You might have seen these pedal-powered Ecocabs rolling around in cities like Toronto, Dublin and Berlin the past few years. And now these eco cabs can be seen in Stockholm, Sweden.

Stockholm’s Ecocabs will be available from May through September each year and will costs you 40 Swedish Kronor (about $6.50) per 15 minutes.

The drivers of these ecocabs won’t have to do all the pedalling for themselves. Each ecocab have a 12v self-charging battery-driven engine that helps the driver go up hills (and to run the indicator lights). The maximum speed is 25 kilometers per hour but the average speed is usually half of that.

Compared to ordinary cabs these ecocabs have to rely heavily on advertisements to keep them rolling. That’s why they are filled with advertisement, as you can see on the above picture.

Now we only need some pedal-powered delivering and transporting firms.