Last week, the commission on oil dependency, tasked with charting Sweden’s way out of dependency, issued its report. The Swedish Parliament and public sector is to review the proposals for decision after the elections in September. Disappointingly, the report fails to address the heart of the issue - dependency and management of risk for societal collapse - instead it chooses to concentrate on technical solutions for energy supply. The commission’s failures illustrate the magnitude and breadth of the challenges facing the western world and the lack of capacity of the present political and scientific bodies to address it.

Many were overjoyed when Sweden announced its intentions to walk along the road to oil independence. And on the face of it, a list of suggestions for stimulating alternative energy sources is a useful result. However, the report’s fundamental flaw is that is does not address the risks involved in Sweden’s dependence on oil for the provision of a standard of living for its people. The report spends less than one page on this aspect. On the other hand, it does identify that of the four areas of operation, transport, agriculture, industry and housing it is only the transport and agriculture sector where no alternative is available. Independence, to the commission, is not the same as zero consumption. Independence means there are alternative, renewable sources available.

In fact, according to the report, Sweden is not actually at any risk from oil depletion. The authors take pains to point out that the reason for the commission’s work is to fulfill Sweden’s climate obligations. They state their belief that neither peaking of oil production nor spiraling oil prices presents any risk to the transport system and thereby hardship to the economy or the Swedish people.

Although not mentioned in the report, this is actually the view of the Swedish energy authority. Their recent report sees no risk in bottlenecks in refining capacity, political unrest, peaking of production or failure to find new reserves.

This means that the oil commission has not addressed the issue of how to manage oil dependency. They reduced the problem to “what to put in the fuel tank