Living without fossil fuel

Living without fossil fuel.
It is possible to live comfortably without wasting energy and polluting the air. There are fine examples in several countries and they should be studied by city planners.
................................
7 November 2006: Sweden has a penchant for safety and cleanliness. Swedes invented the Volvo, one of the safest automobiles. Volvos are built to minimize harm to passengers during accidents, and they are built without toxic flame-retardants. Swedes invented the safety- match and dynamite too - much safer than the alternative it replaced, black powder. Recently, Sweden has become known for its innovations in sustainable development - safer development.
.
Sweden recently declared that it will create an energy and transportation economy that runs free of oil by the year 2020. But the groundwork for this radical declaration was laid in the 1980s by Sweden's eco-municipality movement, which successfully incorporated sustainability into municipal planning and development.
.
The Swedish economist and planner Torbjorn Lahti was one of the visionaries in Overtornea - a town of 5,000 that had 25 per cent unemployment and had lost 20 per cent of its population during the previous 20 years. Lahti and his colleagues engaged the community - getting participation from 10 per cent of residents - to create a shared vision of a local economy based on renewable energy, public transportation, organic agriculture, and rural land preservation. In 2001 the town became 100 per cent free of fossil fuels. Public transportation is free. The region is now the largest organic farming area in Sweden and more than 200 new businesses have sprung up.
.
In North America, cities like Whistler, British Columbia, Portland, Oregon, and Santa Monica, California are on the bleeding-green edge with city-wide master plans in which sustainability is more than just a buzzword. These cities are making the transition to renewable energy, mass-transit, green building, zero waste and open-space preservation. As a report card on Santa Monica's progress shows, they have a long way to go, especially on the social-justice front, to meet the Brundtland Report definition of sustainability. But they are trending in the right direction. They are trying!
.
http://www.citymayors.com/environment/sustainable-communities.html