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Sweden Passes Bill To Become Carbon Neutral By 2045 (newscientist.com)
Sweden is the first country to significantly upgrade its carbon ambitions since the Paris accord in 2015. The country has passed a new bill committing to cut its net carbon emissions to zero by 2045. New Scientist reports: The law was drawn up by a cross-party committee and passed with an overwhelming majority in parliament by 254 votes to 41. The legislation establishes an independent Climate Policy Council and requires an action plan to be updated every four years. Sweden had previously committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2050. It already gets 83 per cent of its electricity from nuclear energy and hydropower, having met its 2020 target of 50 per cent renewable energy eight years ahead of schedule. To achieve carbon-neutral status, the country will focus on reducing emissions from transport by increasing the use of biofuels and electric vehicles. It plans to cut domestic emissions by at least 85 per cent, and offset remaining emissions by planting trees or investing in projects abroad.
They won't succeed. Trump's promises about bringing back coal mining jobs will fail. Those jobs are never coming back because they've been lost to automation. No amount of sabotaging environmental regulations will bring those jobs back.
Also, much of the actual reduction of carbon pollution falls to the state and local governments. The areas that pollute the most, which are urban areas, tend to have leaders who support environmental regulations. Populous states like California and New York also have leadership that generally favors pro-environment policies. Even the demographics of Texas are shifting and the GOP is losing ground there.
Trump and the GOP will fail. However, withdrawing from the Paris climate accords have likely spurred on other countries to increase their efforts to reduce carbon pollution.
Actually, automation has played a significant role in the loss of coal jobs. Here's a citation: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/business/coal-jobs-trump-appalachia.html. In order for coal to remain competitive with other forms of energy, mining companies have automated a lot of the mining process. It increases the efficiency of the mining operations while also being far safer. Although natural gas has caused the loss of coal mining jobs in the short term, it's led to increasing automation as coal mining companies attempt to remain competitive. In the longer term, that automation ensures that coal mining jobs will never return. Even if the price of natural gas was to dramatically increase, those coal jobs are lost permanently due to automation.
What? Sweden is not and has never been part of NATO, you can't just make up facts.
Sweden has military cooperation with many countries and has participated in many UN mission together with NATO countries, and occasionally has been under NATO command as well.
But before relations deteriorated with Russia there were cooperation with them as well. Joint exercises etc.