Transport and environment
As a child I was very interested in cars. Therefore I jumped on the magazine Motor each time I found it in the postbox outside my parents' house. It's a magazine for the members of the organization M Sverige, which is an interest group for car owners in Sweden. They offer car tests, publish road maps and do other good things. However, when I read the editorials in Motor I often got mad. This was in the beginning of the eighties, and people were concerned about the acid rains that were caused in part by NO2 pollution. Nevertheless, Motormännen argued that a national legislation that required catalytic converters to remove NO2 from the exhaust gas would make the Swedish car manufacturers Saab and Volvo go bankrupt. Furthermore, the environmental benefit would be negligible since acid rains would continue to sweep in from the Baltic and the North sea. I heard the voice of a special interest trying to cover itself under a coat of reason that is too small, flapping the sleeves wildly so that nobody would notice the naked belly. Well, the metaphor just came to me, but it reflects the feeling I had as a kid, a feeling that was a kind of political awakening.
As a grown up, I have learned that the same pair of arguments is voiced over and over again to oppose action aimed at protecting the environment. I understand better now that the economic effect on companies of new regulations and taxes must be carefully taken into account. However, I still get mad when I hear that it doesn't matter what we do or don't do in our small corner of the world, that it's a piss in the Mississippi. With the same argument, it doesn't matter whether you go to work in the morning - the effect on the national economy is minuscule. Well, the obvious point is that if everyone argues like that, the effect becomes devastatingly large. Someone has to start convincing others by example to go to work and to regulate exhaust gases. In the latter case California started requiring catalytic converters, Germany and Sweden followed, and by now they are everywhere.
A Volvo PV from 1947 at a railway crossing in my home village Vittsjö
Sometimes Gröna Mobilister leaves town and goes on tour. In June 2009 a station selling biogas opened in Sundsvall. This made it possible in principle to drive by biogas from Smygehuk in southernmost Sweden all the way up to Riksgränsen in the far north. My friend Per-Jakob Kamienski and I tried to do it for real in order to promote a fuel made mostly by municipal waste, and we had a wonderful time.
There is a politcal aim in Sweden since several years to make road transports independent from fossil fuels by 2030. An investigation ordered by the state put forward the more concrete goal to reduce the use of fossil fuels by 80 % between 2010 and 2030. It seems that a similar reduction factor of 70 % will soon be politically decided.
Together with the 2030-secretariat I work with the development and maintenance a set of statistical indicators aimed at following up this transition. Gröna Mobilister contributes to a corresponding set of local indicators, following up the transition in individual municipalities. Gröna Mobilister has always stressed the importance of the transport related environmental work made by the muncipalities. Historically, they have often taken the lead in this work in Sweden. Then the politicians at the national level have followed, in a kind of "trickle-up" process.
To inspire Swedish municipalities in their transport-related environmental work, my friend Mattias Goldmann wrote the book Utmaning 2010 (Challenge 2010) almost twenty years ago. Together, we wrote the follow-up Utmaning 2020. We boast in the book that we do not come up with a single new idea, we just pass good ideas and examples on from one municipality to another. More recently, my colleague from Gröna Mobilister Fredrik Holm has written still another book about environment and transport in the municipalities: Hållbar mobilitiet från Umeå till Malmö (Sustainable mobility from Umeå to Malmö). It focuses more on the processes that led some municipalities to become outstanding in their work, including interviews with key people who recall both fruitful and less fruitful actions along the way. Fredrik Holm followed up on that book with the sequel Vänd pyramiden - planera för en hållbar mobilitet (Turn the pyramid upside down - plan for a sustainable mobility)
Transparency and consumer power
When we go to the grocery store, many of us use to check the information at the packages to see where the fish is caught or where the meat comes from. When we buy a refrigerator, we cannot avoid seeing the sticker telling us how much energy it consumes.
The NGO Gröna Mobilister (The Swedish Association of Green Motorists) is campaigning to make sure we get similar consumer information about the sustainability of transportation fuels, cars and travel services. Gröna Mobilister is also campaigning for more transparency when it comes to the origin of fossil energy and the sustainability of the production of cars. These campaigns use the common watchword Vi Vill Veta (We Want to Know).
Personally, I have been pursuing these issues since 2012, when I was the lead author of a report about the sustainability of all transportation fuels sold in Sweden. Working on that report, we realized that there is actually enough official information available to be able to design a sticker to put on all fuel pumps, telling us with reasonable detail the origin, the raw materials and the climate impact of all fuels on the market, including electricity. Compulsory eco-labels of that kind were introduced all across Sweden in October 2021, pointing at more comprehensive information on the web sites of the retailers.
The impact of sustainability information at the gas station will be limited if it is available in Sweden only. The underlying information about the fuels is present all over Europe, thanks to directives from the European Union. This means that the rest of the EU may follow the Swedish example. Ideas of a similar kind are voiced in North America, concerning health and climate information labels on gas pumps similar to the warning labels shown on cigarette packages. Gröna Mobilister collaborates with activists and academics in several countries to pursue these matters. The first climate warning labels on gas pumps were introduced in Cambridge, MA, in December 2020. The State Senate in Hawaii passed a bill requiring similar statewide warning in March 2023, but the effort has been blocked by an environmental committee in the House of Representatives two consecutive years.
Gröna Mobilister has collected arguments and evidence for the potential effect of labels of this kind in the article The case for sustainability labels on fuel dispensers. In fall 2024, leading authorities in climate, health, communication and policymaking called for climate and health labels on points of sale of fossil fuels.
Whereas Sweden is at the forefront when it comes to consumer information about fuels, it has fallen behind when it comes to consumer information about cars. However, the Swedish government has suggested compulsory eco-labels on cars with life-cycle perspective, in part as a result of Gröna Mobilister's campaign. The Swedish Energy Agency published an official report on the subject in 2022, and they will present a final proposal in fall 2025. If these eco-labels materialize, Sweden may inspire the EU to follow suit, as the Car labelling Directive is about to be modernized.
