Those damn socialist Swedes

Don't you just hate it when a bunch of commies put good old American ingenuity to shame. Aren't we the best at everything?

Kristianstad has already crossed a crucial threshold: the city and surrounding county, with a population of 80,000, essentially use no oil, natural gas or coal to heat homes and businesses, even during the long frigid winters. It is a complete reversal from 20 years ago, when all of their heat came from fossil fuels.

But this area in southern Sweden, best known as the home of Absolut vodka, has not generally substituted solar panels or wind turbines for the traditional fuels it has forsaken. Instead, as befits a region that is an epicenter of farming and food processing, it generates energy from a motley assortment of ingredients like potato peels, manure, used cooking oil, stale cookies and pig intestines.

It's a damn sin that the so-called leaders in our state and nation can't manage to open their eyes wide enough to see beyond their next fundraising event. Just to say it, if we had half the sense of our Scandinavian counterparts, maybe the United States would be leaders in something besides arms exports and screwing up the planet.

Officials say the payback has already been significant: Kristianstad now spends about $3.2 million each year to heat its municipal buildings rather than the $7 million it would spend if it still relied on oil and electricity. It fuels its municipal cars, buses and trucks with biogas fuel, avoiding the need to purchase nearly half a million gallons of diesel or gas each year.

Too bad this kind of thinking isn't happening here in the old North State. I guess we're too busy subsidizing mercury polluters to worry about a little ol' thing like energy independence and carbon loading.