The "climate pilot" family Sääv. Photo: Satish Jeswani.
When talking about what to do about climate change one often ends up in rather theoretical arguments about emission statistics, new technology or ideas about how things will change sometime in an undefined future.
Therefore it felt like a big relief when I recently visited a local project called “The climate pilots”. In this project 10 households in the two local districts of Askersund and Laxå participate and set up goals of how much they will reduced their greenhouse emissions during one year.
During this period they get ten different challenges. Earlier I have written about how they tried to spend a sustainable Christmas . Their current challenge is to leave the car when traveling shorter distances than 10 kilometres.
There are lots of projects like this, where people learn how to change their lightbulbs or buy locally produced food. But this one goes a step further.
“The idea is to see how far you can go on your own, and then try to think of what local politicians could do to make it possible for you to make it even further” Johanna Björklund who is a researcher on food and climate issues at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and leads this project, told me.
Inhabitants and climate pilots of Laxå talk to local politicians about their ideas on how to make it possible to live without a car. Photo: Satish Jeswani.
So on a Monday evening the “pilots”, together with other interested inhabitants, met with local politicians to discuss how to make it possible for countryside dwellers to live life without owning a car.
Ideas were raining. Establishing new bus lines requires a big population, but there are lots of dailytransports taking place even in remote areas. Could the mail delivery car or school buses be made accessible to ordinary travelers? Or could the cars owned by the municipality be used by the inhabitants of the disctrict, in a carpool, when they otherwise would be left in the parking lot?
This meeting ended with the whole list of ideas being run through, and the politicians asked for a year when each one could be put into practice. Concrete as a street, far from fluffy visions.
