The victory of the far-right Sweden Democrats is a loss for the climate
25 Sep
September 25, 2022
On September 11, Sweden became Europe’s latest government to succumb to the influence of far-right populism. The ultra-nationalist Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots, received 20.5 percent of the vote in the Swedish parliamentary election – enough to rise to the second largest party in the Riksdag. While the center-right could technically construct a governing coalition government without including the Sweden Democrats, the party will have significant influence in any centre-right government.” And it is a frightening thought: not only are the Sweden Democrats flagrant xenophobic and anti-immigrantthey are also ready to bend the country’s climate policy in a problematic direction.
Lest we forget, the Sweden Democrats were the only Swedish party that opposite the ratification of the Paris Agreement in 2016. Having made considerable progress towards realizing the ambition to be zero by 2045, Sweden’s climate trajectory will change significantly under the influence of the Sweden Democrats.
While the historical story of the Sweden Democrats’ affiliation with white supremacist ideology has been well chronicled, the party’s climate-skeptic and ignorant environmental policy has received comparatively little attention. In the midst of the crushingly hot summer of 2018 almost starved the country’s entire reindeer tribe, the leader of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson said, “making politics out of a summer’s weather is simply not serious, it’s the worst kind of populism.” Beyond the clear irony of a populist denouncing climatoro as populist sentiment, Åkesson’s claim that climate change is a political issue reeks of denial. The party’s proposed 2022 budget reflects the same perspective by referring to the supposedly “lively” debate among scientists about “the consequences of different levels of temperature increases.” Consequently, the Sweden Democrats ultimately see climate change as “an unclear situation”.
Supported by this sense of uncertainty, the Sweden Democrats do not see investing in the climate as valuable. In their spending proposal for 2022, they cut the appropriations for ‘general environmental and nature conservation’ by 41 percent, from SEK 21.9 billion to SEK 12.8 billion. The party emphasizes time and again the comparatively minor role that Sweden plays in the global emissions of greenhouse gases and essentially abdicates responsibility for playing an active role in the fight against climate change. As part of their latest lecture series with the defamatory title ‘An inconvenient truth’, two rising stars of the Sweden Democrats, Jessica Stegrud and Elsa Widding, insisted that Sweden is not responsible for climate change: “it is not that we in Sweden influence the climate.” Rather, they referred to racist tactics of location blame on high birth rates in developing countries.
The Sweden Democrats’ budget further points out that “all environmental and climate policy must be conducted within the framework of economic conditions”. They suggest we invest in technology to innovate our way out of the crisis and insist on theirs Election platform 2022 that “Sweden can contribute to reducing emissions by increasing exports.” Double down on the twin bugs that technology will solve climate change and that somehow environmental crisis can be freed from capitalismis the Sweden Democrats’ environmental playbook plagued by fuzzy logic.
The fact that the Sweden Democrats now have significant power poses a mildly expressed problem for Sweden’s net zero ambitions. While the country’s next government coalition has yet to be solidified, it is clear that climate activists will have to contend with significant advances in the Riksdag.
Image of Photo of Geran de Klerk