This summer, friends of mine are leaving San Francisco to permanently relocate their family to Stockholm. With the impending departure of Yoram and Maria, my filters are trapping many references to Sweden I may have missed before.

The UK Guardian has a short, excellent business article on Sweden's plans to be the first oil-free economy. The plans call for a complete move to renewable energy for Sweden's populace of nine million people... within fifteen years.

Some interesting stats appear in the article:

For 2003, 26% of Sweden's energy came from renewable resources. Compare this to 6% for both the EU as a whole and the United States in the same period.

In 1970, Sweden's oil dependency clocked in at 77% of their energy usage. By 2003, oil had been reduced to only 32% of their total.

"The attempt by the country of 9 million people to become the world's first practically oil-free economy is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, farmers, car makers, civil servants and others, who will report to parliament in several months.

The intention, the Swedish government said yesterday, is to replace all fossil fuels with renewables before climate change destroys economies and growing oil scarcity leads to huge new price rises."

Here in the United States, we consume around 7.3 billion barrels of oil per year. If our elected representatives in congress would simply enact legislation mandating a minimum vehicular fuel efficiency requirement of 35 miles per gallon for cars, SUVs and minivans, we could shave an annual 1.7 billion of those barrels off our total over a 20 year phase-out of aging vehicles.

The United States can't even move toward more efficient vehicles, yet Sweden's going to be oil-free by 2020. How can a country described as "the world's only remaining super-power" get faced by a small nation of nine million people? It's comparable to the Soviets throwing down a moon-shot challenge and the United States trying to bounce higher on pogo sticks.

How can the supposed "leader of the free world" completely fail to compete in what will likely be the greatest revitalization of human energy technology since residential coal rooms were emptied?

From Sweden's Wikipedia entry... this may have something to do with it:

"Sweden was one of the poorest countries in Europe in the 19th century, shaped by heavy alcohol consumption, until improved transportation and communication allowed it to utilize natural assets from different parts of the country, most notably timber and iron ore, which allowed the creation of a welfare state in the early 20th century. Today, the country is defined by liberal tendencies and a strong national quest for equality, and usually ranks among the top nations in the UN Human Development Index."

In Sweden, people are seen as people, not just consumers. Sweden works for the good of her people, because Sweden is her people.

Isn't this what America was meant to be?