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The moderates often accuse the red greens of pursuing an ineffective climate policy. There are no missing points in the criticism. The government has implemented several initiatives with dubious environmental benefits, such as subsidies for electric bicycles, a tax on plastic bags, and carbon dioxide diet courses.
But if moderates want a more effective climate policy, this weekend’s proposal is completely incomprehensible. In its parallel budget, the party reduces taxes on gasoline and diesel by the equivalent of one crown per liter. In other words, they want to weaken one of the most profitable climate tools available.
Moderates also oppose the government’s proposal to reduce tax subsidies for premium cars, as well as changes to the bonus-malus system that put higher taxes on thirsty fossil cars.
A “tax impact on the car” that “makes life miserable for ordinary people,” says Niklas Wykman, spokesman for tax policy, at Aftonbladet. He himself spends seven billion crowns on M’s shadow budget to make it cheaper to own and drive a car.
In their quest to benefit the fossil drivers, the moderates become a caricature of what the Green Party often criticizes.
It’s sad that moderates, in particular, are falling into dumpopulism on the important climate issue. In many other areas, the party is pressuring the red greens with well-founded proposals. Nothing prevents the party from also formulating a more adult critique of the government’s automobile policy.
Today, for example, it is not primarily through taxes that politics drives the price at the pump. The most profitable are the biofuels that manufacturers must blend into gasoline and diesel. It wouldn’t be far-fetched if M tried to ease the tax burden a bit as fuels get more expensive and more climate-friendly. But actively trying to lower the cost of fossil gasoline and diesel when emissions have to drop is nothing serious, especially since driving a car hasn’t gotten more expensive.
Nor is it bad to problematize the bonus-malus system. Here there is the risk of a certain “water bed effect”. The more truly fuel-efficient cars that are sold in Sweden, the more thirsty cars automakers can sell in the rest of Europe without suffering heavy fines from the EU.
But the M criticism that “ordinary people” would be affected by tax rules favoring low-emission cars in new sales does not hold up. Businesses account for a large chunk of new car purchases and the most frugal cars on the second-hand market in a few years are, on the contrary, a prerequisite for people in the country not to incur higher costs.
And what principle are moderates really upholding when they want it to remain more profitable for high-income people to get a pay raise in the form of a car than in cash?
In their quest to benefit fossil drivers, the moderates become a caricature of what the Green Party often criticizes. Rather than relying on pricing mechanisms to favor climate-smart solutions, regardless of technology, they are trying to achieve emission reductions with specific contributions to things like loading docks.
Leader M Ulf Kristersson has ambition to be the adult in the room. When it comes to climate policy, it sadly sits at the children’s table.
