Sweden Pledges To Cut All Greenhouse Gas Emissions By 2045 (independent.co.uk)

Sweden has announced ambitious plans to completely phase out greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. The nation also reaffirmed the urgency of tackling climate change and called for all countries to "step up and fulfill the Paris Agreement." The Independent reports: "Our target is to be an entirely fossil-fuel-free welfare state," said Climate Minister Isabella Lovin. "We see that the advantages of a climate-smart society are so huge, both when it comes to health, job creation and also security. Being dependent on fossil fuels and gas from Russia is not what we need now,â she added. All parties but the far-right Sweden Democrats party agreed to pass the law in the coming month, which will oblige the government to set tougher goals to cut fossil fuel emissions every four years until the 2045 cut-off date. Plans also include a 70 per cent cut to emissions in the domestic transport sector by 2030. The Government said the target would require domestic emissions to be cut by at least 85 per cent and the remaining emissions would be offset by planting trees or by sustainable investments abroad. The law is expected to enter into force as early as 2018.

Comments

Re:They want to be a welfare state?

[drinkypoo]

Good. Why do we need to compete against each other when we have the technology to almost live in a utopia?

Totally false.

O RLY? Let's take a look at your logic.

Only a small fraction of the population is wealthy on this planet,

The claim was about technology, not about present distribution of resources. Irrelevant distraction.

Another side effect of removing competition by making everyone wealthy is you will then need to control tightly the population to not exhaust resources.

The evidence suggests that once you care for people's needs and make them happy, the birth rate falls, it does not increase. So in fact, there is a negative feedback loop here which specifically prevents what you're afraid of.

Furthermore, there is one way in which humanity could enjoy exponential growth without exhausting its resources and living space: reach for the stars. Granted, there is a very long intermediate step of puttering around our solar system which will precede it, but there's no reason to imagine that humanity cannot evolve to expand ever deeper into space, whether that's meant genetically, socially, or technologically. If we stop fighting one another, perhaps we can collaborate on that.

Competition is what introduce a balance.

Competition itself is not harmful. Making at-any-cost competition the basis of one's society, on the other hand, is extremely harmful. We would all benefit from competition being used to determine a course of action. For example, there's a lot of throwaway electronic garbage being produced today, which not only involves mining and refining processes for the production, but then costs a lot of energy to partially recycle and which still produces significant landfill. Why should the worst of it be produced at all? Taking this a step further, why should anything which is not highly recyclable be legal to produce at all?

I agree it is not fair for everyone, but there isn't any fair for everyone solution anyway.

What? Says who? Of course there is. It's called direct democracy and minimum guaranteed income.