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– I’m pretty sure the MDGs want this. Lan Marie Berg (ODM) will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The problem is that they have a partner in the Labor Party who repeatedly proves that this is not important to them, both nationally and locally.
This is what Trine Skei Grande, outgoing Liberal leader, tells Dagbladet.
New calculations this spring showed that emissions in Oslo had not yet fallen with the MDGs in the city hall, in 2017 and 2018. The emissions figures for 2019 have not yet been reached.
However, in an interview with Dagbladet a while ago, Oslo Councilor for the MDGs, Lan Marie Berg, made it clear that she believes the government has a lot of responsibility.
– Instead of helping us, they have put sticks in the wheels for us, said Berg.
– Does not meet goals
Lan Marie Berg has explained that it is the emissions from state and private works that have largely led to the unexpected increase in greenhouse gas emissions in the capital: and that the state has not clarified whether the municipality of Oslo can regulate them or not.
Grande believes that the explanation does not hold.
– They can’t put the necessary tools. They boast of having introduced fossil-free building sites in Oslo. It’s been an adopted national policy for three years, after we approved it in the state budget in 2017, he says.
Grande believes there is much the MDG city council, Labor, and the Socialist People’s Party could have done to reduce emissions that have risen, such as prioritizing zero-emission actors in construction enforcement work.
– It has been a national approach for a long time, so you cannot blame the state buildings for the emissions in Oslo, says the liberal leader.
– Difficult to cut
– Until April, emissions were thought to have decreased in Oslo, but new calculations from the Norwegian Environment Agency mean that they have increased. Can the MDGs be blamed for rising emissions when they thought they were on the right track?
– I am not worried about blaming the MDGs, but I am concerned that they will take responsibility for their results, even when they do not reach the goals they have set. Blaming the government is a disclaimer and we don’t have time for that when it is urgent to cut emissions, he says.
Choose us
To be successful, the liberal leader believes that the MDGs should change friends:
– I hope that MDG will consider a collaboration with us, rather than with AP in the future. Then I think they will go further. We have shown on the bourgeois side that we are capable of achieving significant emission cuts and lasting change. Sveinung Rotevatn may now become Norway’s first environment minister to hit a climate target, even before the crown arrives.
– Hesitant on the left
The leader of the Oslo City Council, Raymond Johansen (Labor Party), fights back.
– The increase in emissions in Oslo is due to a methodological change, according to the Norwegian Environment Agency, where a large proportion of national emissions were distributed to municipalities. Then national emissions go down, while municipalities go up. Therefore, Grande is quite reluctant to blame the Oslo Labor Party, he says.
However, Johansen will take Trine Skei Grande seriously at one point:
– You have a long experience in separations. We have seen it in the Liberal Party, and now it is trying to divide the Labor Party and the MDGs. She won’t be successful at that, she says.
Reject collaboration
Councilor for the Environment and Transport Lan Marie Berg also rejects the collaboration.
– It is good that Grande cooperates with the MDGs. But so far, the Liberal Party and the government have prioritized new oil fields and highways like the E18, cut taxes on fossil cars, increased VAT on public transport, and delayed the introduction of carbon capture. It’s the opposite of what is needed to cut emissions and make our cities better to live in, he says.
