«Climate policy, just like economic policy, is based on forecasts.» These are the words chosen by Swedish Climate Minister, Romina Pourmokhtari, to describe why the Nordic country (which BTW was among the first in the world to introduce a climate law) is going to miss its climate targets by 2030. The news was delivered the same day that the new budget was announced. It has been revealed that Sweden will miss its target by 5.8 million tons of carbon dioxide. To put it into perspective, the amount is equivalent to the emissions from all Swedish cars (approximately 5 million) over a six-month period.
The merit for such «achievement» lies heavily on the Government’s desperate need for support of the far-right nationalists, whose climate change skepticism has often played a central role in their political agenda.
The first sign of appeasing the Swedish Democrats and backing off on climate ambitions was the appointment of Romina Pourmokhtari, the 26-year-old leader of Liberal Youth, as the country’s Climate Minister. As part of the agreement, the Ministry of the Environment was downgraded from a full ministry to a department of the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation, however, Pourmokhtari told the media that there was «absolutely no drop in ambitions» for the government’s environmental policy.
And perhaps she was telling the truth. After all, there can’t be a drop in ambitions where there are no ambitions. This was evident from the early on. Already by the end of 2022, it became clear that the emissions will rise rapidly, among others, due to the government’s promise to lower the so-called reduction obligation (reduktionsplikt). By the summer of 2023, emissions from car transport rose 18%.
But, if, as she states, climate policy, just like economic policy, is based on forecasts, the minister should be aware of the forecasts coming from the scientific community, that (with the highest ever level of agreement), points out, (with the highest level of certainty), that climate change is real and that unless we do something about, immediately, we will very soon go beyond the thresholds of the planetary boundaries’ safe operating space. In other words, the generations that come will not have the same (read nowhere near the same) conditions to thrive and prosper as the ones we have today.
So if it is about the forecasts, here is the recent one. Seven of nine planetary boundaries have now been breached, and for the first time, this includes the boundary for ocean acidification, as reported by the «Planetary Health Check 2025».
What this means is that not only the oceans’ biodiversity will be heavily pressured (many organisms that have crucial functions in the ocean’s ecosystem are suffering from damage to their shells), but also climate change (by reducing the oceans’ ability to act as a carbon sink and absorb CO2) will accelerate its paste.
Oceans are the planet’s main temperature control regulators. «They act as a huge thermostat, dampening stress and absorbing heat.», as Johan Rockström, graphically puts it. I am sure the Swedish climate minister is familiar with these and many other forecasts, but perhaps the pressure of the «reality» of cabinet meetings and compromises with the far right has caused her to overlook the systemic nature of the world we live in.
One of the main elements of that nature is the feedback loops, «networks of interactions that feed back into themselves». One great example is given by Neil Theise, who uses an air conditioner to describe the dynamics behind the negative loop that activates when the room gets too warm and keeps the temperature at the optimal (desired) level. On the other side, we have the positive feedback loop, which acts to the contrary, which in this example would manifest as the air conditioner triggering a heater to crank itself up and drive the temperature continuously hotter.
Negative feedback loops are homeostatic. They keep the living system in balance. Healthy oceans are one of the main sources of such balance. They are a true thermostat of the planet. And if that switch is broken, the world will get hotter and hotter. All the time. And fast.
And since she has already broken her promise to resign if she doesn’t deliver on the climate targets, perhaps the climate minister could use the remaining time in the office to brief her colleagues on the forecasts and remind them that the choices they make have consequences that reach far beyond the election results. After all, to live up to the challenge of serving the public through shaping climate policy, just like economic policy, is to be constantly reminded that:
«Life is ceaseless movement; stability is found in balance, not rigidity.», Neil Theise
Boris Matijas 