I believe that Buckminster Fuller's idea of the Trim tab is critical to understanding current stagnation of politics in Washington.

The small changes that would lead to big socially beneficial changes in Policy are not made because political people are busy making the small changes which will lead to bigger changes that are benificial to specific interests which they foster.
I am saying that unless the trim tab principal is openly discussed in government, vested interests will continue to employ it for narrow interests only.
A corrolary of this is that the public sector does have a special power which can be used to obtain leverage over social issues thru the leverage of the trim tab applied to the social rudder of a new policy applied to society..

from BBC News

Sweden says it aims to completely wean itself off oil within 15 years - without building new nuclear plants.

The attempt is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, car manufacturers, farmers and others.

The country aims to replace all fossil fuels with renewables before climate change damages economies and growing oil scarcity leads to price rises.

According to the Guardian newspaper, a Swedish minister said oil dependency could be broken by 2020. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is worried that oil supplies are peaking, shortly to dwindle, and that high oil prices could cause global economic recession.

"Our dependency on oil should be broken by 2020," said Mona Sahlin, Sweden's minister of sustainable development.

"There shall always be better alternatives to oil, which means no house should need oil for heating, and no driver should need to turn solely to gasoline."

The Scandinavian country, which was hard hit by oil price rises in the 1970s, now gets the majority of its electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric power. In 2003, 26% of all energy consumed came from renewables, compared with an EU average of 6%.

The oil committee is to report to parliament in several months. Swedish energy ministry officials said they expected the panel to recommend further development of biofuels derived from its substantial forests.

It was also expected to expand other renewable energies such as wind and wave power.

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