PowerSwitch

Sweden: Decoupling GDP growth from CO2 emissions is possible

With the highest level of CO2 tax worldwide, Sweden provides strong evidence that decoupling GDP growth from CO2 emissions is possible and that CO2 tax is an efficient way of achieving a decrease in CO2 emission with fossil origin.

Noteworthy is also that this decoupling has been absolute, i.e. the emissions have decreased in absolute terms at the same time as GDP has increased. (A more common pattern is otherwise relative decoupling, meaning that emissions increase at a slower pace than GDP.) Moreover, a CO2 tax is relatively easy to administer and the tax revenues can be used where they are judged to contribute best to the overall goals for the society. It is, however, important that developing countries wishing to explore this possibility are assisted with capacity building, as needed.

The momentum for carbon pricing is growing.

http://blogs.worldbank.org/climatechang ... cgEN_D_EXT

Very good but they do have a very large area of land for a very small population. Much of that land is wooded and they had a huge storm recently which knocked down a lot of those trees which has added to the woodpile.

A good and affordable place emigrate to. Three bed house with a few acres in a rural area on a large tourist island off the south west coast, one of the milder areas, for about £80k. I was tempted.

Haven't looked at the details... But does their CO2 data include embedded emissions associated with imported goods and services? If not, it's irrelevant.

clv101 wrote:Haven't looked at the details... But does their CO2 data include embedded emissions associated with imported goods and services? If not, it's irrelevant.

Ah...I was just thinking about that in an 'any country' context. See my post in the TEQs section.

This report

http://populationmatters.org/documents/ ... _index.pdf

is significant. Sweden has one of the best resources to population ratios of any developed nation on the planet.

The report is a crude measure of overshoot. Whilst Australia is huge and still has massive biosphere resources, the human population are doing their best to wipe them out with profligate consumption, destruction of habitat and extraction of non-renewable resources, as well as facing becoming an early victim of climate change.

kenneal - lagger wrote: A good and affordable place emigrate to. ... I was tempted.

It's good to know that you approve of having the right to do so.

PS_RalphW wrote:This report

http://populationmatters.org/documents/ ... _index.pdf

is significant. Sweden has one of the best resources to population ratios of any developed nation on the planet.

The report is a crude measure of overshoot. Whilst Australia is huge and still has massive biosphere resources, the human population are doing their best to wipe them out with profligate consumption, destruction of habitat and extraction of non-renewable resources, as well as facing becoming an early victim of climate change.

A very interesting link.

Tim Flannery has said that Australia can only sustain 10 million. Having said that I do think Australia will fare better than Europe in the long run barring warmer temperatures causing drying. There is evidence that during the ice ages cooling dried out Australia's interior but may have done the opposite on the more fertile coastal regions. Global warming may do the opposite. Australia is pretty darned hot already and would not benefit from being any hotter unless the south got noticeably wetter at the same time.

The report also points to the most sustainable country on earth is likely to be Bolivia, at only about 20% of the earth's carrying capacity, and a relatively democratic and non-corporate form of government.

IIRC the president lives in a small house with his dog and drives an old VW beetle.

It is also in an out of the way place which is less likely to be nuked or over-run, or be particularly hard hit by climate change.

EDIT

Looking at wikipedia, I see that it is ecologically fragile and prone to deforestation, but where isn't? It is very biodiverse, and climatically varied so likely to fair better than most.

However, it is also also a highly popular (63% of the vote) socialist government sitting on the world's largest reserves of lithium, which is under a major nature reserves, so expect an(other) CIA led military coup as soon as electric cars become popular.

I think you are actually talking about Uruguay's President Mujica but I know you mean Bolivia as the country and are right about that. I gave some thought when I was younger to heading to South America. The whole continent by virtue of being colonialised later than almost every everywhere else and prior to that not wrecking itself by developing too fast seems to have the best outlook if you neglect inequality and law and order issues. I think a cautionary note needs to be sounded in that most of the room to expand is probably in the DODGY TAX AVOIDERS basin and will involve wide scale deforestation.

Amazed to see Africa has room to expand even if it is again will involve widespread Equatorial deforestation.

About the lithium batteries apparently they also need large amounts of graphite which may also be in short supply.

It also assumes that 100% of biocapacity is allocated to humans

That's what most humans assume.