Sweden Blasts United States Back to the Dark Ages

This morning, Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council unveiled a proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States 24 percent by 2020 and 85 percent by 2050. These targets are much more ambitious than President Obama’s plan to cut emissions 14 percent (back to their 1990 levels) by 2020. Frankly, while I was impressed by the proposal, it struck me as highly optimistic and politically impossible.

Scratch that.

Today, the Swedish government (led by the center-right Moderate Party, mind you) announced a plan to reduce its emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, in spite of the fact that the EU only requires the country to cut its CO2 by 17 percent.

Not only that: the Swedes hope to have 50 percent of all energy come from renewable sources in the next 11 years. Compare that to 17 percent in this morning’s EREC/Greenpeace plan for America. And Sweden proposes to rid its car fleet of fossil fuels by 2030, and for the whole country to be carbon-neutral by 2050.

Now, it bears mentioning that Sweden has less than one-thirtieth the population of the United States, and its political realities are very different. But still, this is coming from Sweden’s center-right party! What would the country’s liberal Social Democrats shoot for?

Really puts that whole “America is a center-right country” meme in context.