Letter from Sweden ... on the environment

I received this email today. Thought you might be interested in reading how one American observes the Swedish way of living with nature.

Dear SBEC [Stony Brook Environmental Conservancy]Member/friend:
A message from John Robinson, a founding Director of SBEC, who is presently on sabbatical in Sweden with his family. John has always been one of our most dedicated and supportive Directors; this is the first annual dinner the Robinson's have missed. He sends these greetings and thoughts about an apparently more environmentally attuned society..... Malcolm

Dear Malcolm and all,
We are very sorry to miss this year's SBEC dinner, but will think of you all. It has been very enlightening to experience first hand some of the environmental ideals we imagine for our area in practice here in Sweden. Upon our arrival in Stockholm last December, we experienced an immediate feeling of increased quality of life and a corresponding decrease in carbon footprint. The obvious thing helping this was the efficient and cost-effective local, regional and national mass transit systems, and the nearly universal use of people's own legs (both on their own and bicycle assisted) to get around. Cars are not king, are generally really small, and automobiles actually stop for pedestrians crossing roadways. In striking contrast to Port Jefferson on a Sunday afternoon, we walked by a Vespa rally last week. There is a bicycle HIGHWAY system, which is largely bike lanes built off the roads. One of the most surprising things was how easy it is to live without a car. Americans tend to idealize the car as the key to freedom and yet it is really stunning how freeing it is not to have one. We have not had to maintain a car, fill it with gas, insure it, or sit stuck in traffic once yet in 2008 in Sweden. At the risk of over-generalization and rampant idealism, our impression is that the Swedish value of nature and open space is radically different than the average American's. Nature isn't a thing apart from people, but continuous and integrated. People have extensive balcony gardens, wildflowers and bulbs are planted in the "lawn areas" in public places, and after a park area was used by thousands of picnickers one beautiful Sunday, there was not a piece of litter to be observed the next day (they packed it out!) . Stockholm in particular is roughly one third parkland (and another third water) that is used extensively and obviously cherished by the Swedes. Indeed, they have a national park within the city and one just on the outskirts, accessible by bus and bike. The parks are clean, beautiful, safe and used by people of all ages. We have wondered how this Swedish nature sense develops. A hint toward the answer to this question was revealed one day when I was out running on trails through the woods of one large park. There, in the middle of the forest, were 4 year old pre-school children and their teachers just playing...yes, playing... in the woods. Being Swedish, they all had day-glow safety vests on, but I couldn't think of a better way to encourage children to form positive associations about the woods and see visiting the forest as a routine part of life than that. I could not imagine that those kids would grow up to tolerate the destruction of that forest that they had played in as children.
John.