Running to scissors: Decoupling energy use and economic growth

The scissors open, as GDP and carbon emissions follow different tracks in Sweden.

Nordic Council of Ministers

There was a metaphor that made a number of appearances at this year’s Nobel Week Dialogue: opening scissors. To get the metaphor, you have to look at graphs. In the closed-scissors portion of things, two items remain linked and run along the graph in parallel. In fact, the correlation has run so deeply into history that everybody assumes that there’s a causal relationship between the two, and it’s impossible to separate them.

Then the scissors open. Suddenly, one of the items starts tracking on a different trajectory, and the two show an increasing divergence. The scissors have been opened.

The Nobel Week Dialogue's host country, Sweden, provided two examples of this phenomenon. One was the outcome of what was called “Vision Zero,” the goal of eliminating traffic fatalities. The country is still a long way off from this goal, but the initial efforts involved with Vision Zero have opened the scissors between traffic fatalities and miles travelled. Historically, the two have risen in parallel; in Sweden, they no longer do.