Scandinavian countries have some of the highest levels of happiness on the planet and lead virtually all ranks of human development. Everything they do well is worth celebrating.

But there is a problem. They are an ecological disaster, with some of the highest levels of resource use and CO2 emissions globally.

It may not be noticeable at first glance, but its air is cold and fresh, its parks are free of trash, and waste collection works like a charm. Much of the region is covered in forests, and Scandinavians tend to be environmentally conscious.

But the data tells a different story. The Nordic countries have some of the highest levels of resource use and CO2 emissions in the world in terms of consumption, dramatically exceeding safe planetary limits.

Environmentalists say that a sustainable level of resource use is about 7 tons of material per person per year. Scandinavians consume, on average, more than 32 tons per year. That’s four and a half times more than the sustainable level, very similar to the United States, driven by an overconsumption of everything from meat to cars to plastic.

On emissions, the Nordic countries perform worse than the rest of Europe, and only marginally better than the world’s most egregious offenders: the USA, Australia, Canada, and Saudi Arabia.

Yes, three Scandinavian countries, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, lead the list of countries making the most progress in their transition towards clean energy. Sweden is the leader for the fourth consecutive year. Norway is now in second place after climbing from fifth place in 2020, generating more renewable energy and increasing solar installations than most countries.

However, these gains are negated by carbon-intensive imports, causing the ratio of Renewable Energy Generation vs CO2 Emission to be too low. This is why the Nordic countries fall towards the bottom of the Sustainable Development Index.

For decades, it has been said that nations should aspire to develop like the Nordic countries. But in an era of ecological collapse, this no longer makes sense. If everyone in the world consumed like the Scandinavians, we would need almost five Earths to sustain ourselves. This overconsumption is driving a global crisis of habitat destruction, species extinction, and climate change.

You won’t see much evidence of this in Norway or Finland, but that’s because, like most rich nations, most of their ecological impact has been outsourced to the global South (the lower side of the coin, like the dark image shown as the mirror of the green one in the post picture), making it the ‘garbage dump’ of the region. That’s where most resource extraction happens and where global warming hits hardest.

The Nordic countries are right when it comes to public health, education, and progressive social democracy, also showing a big industrial and technological development, but they need to drastically reduce their consumption if they want to be a beacon for the rest of the world in the 21st century.

This informative and educational approach is one of the big advantages of our Integration Coefficient IC, which serves as a global alarm system to display and help balance all of these indicators towards a uniform level of sustainability among all countries.