Denmark - The State of Happiness

Denmark small successful and perhaps the country Scotland most seeks to emulate leading the green transition with the world's second most livable City the most contented Workforce and Europe's shortest working hours but its people pay some of the highest personal taxes so what makes the Danes so happy a lot of people ask is there model can we scale this I don't think so and go I pay about uh 37% of my income and taxes if you don't pay that much a tax you're not able to uh have this welfare state and then so you see it's all interconnected we're not allowed to do exams exactly and we're not allowed to give grades so that is a very unique possibility for us to teach in a way that nobody is controlling How We Do [Music] [Applause] It Copenhagen the world's most sustainable Capital but like everything in Denmark that happened not by accident but by Design in the 1980s the city was close to bankruptcy with heavy industry and decline a falling population falling tax income and a dirty polluted river the challenge was to bring young families back so the council asked how and got a surprising [Music] reply swimming right here in the center of the city and uh as luck would have it um my colleague Tina Sai is here nice to meet you you're here right in the water I know how astonishing that we are here together tell me you were the city architect here for 10 years and help they saw a lot of changes when did they start swimming here in the harbor it began around year 2000 2002 we had the first swimming bath I guess it was in 2000 and just how much did you have to clean the water because it must have been horrible quite a lot so there was a lot of pipes that was going directly into the water and we needed to to change them that's putting it mildly a new sewage system was installed with a runoff to make sure rainwater didn't cause overflows and the harbor sediment was cleaned it cost hundreds of millions of pounds 40 years ago but it was worth it the harbor was splitting the city in two nobody was coming down to the harbor because it was industrial area and it was dark and it was gated and yeah so it was not it was not place you came and today the harb you can see is almost Binding Together The Copenhagen elsewhere a newly restored Waterfront would be full of upmarket flats and private peers but not here with planners determined to protect Public Access we have a planning system where we have been putting uh some guidelines and regulation so all the area is with Public Access so a lot of the land is privately owned but you but it is with Public Access and I guess um the solution that people can walk and bike along the harbor is also one of the reason that we want to go here have you managed to keep the population in have you got more families that are living and not going off to a smaller suburb when you just look around here there is young people that is there is families kids uh babies and there is also uh old people so I guess we have quite a good population here where every generation is is living in in the city but the 80s restoration didn't stop at the river housing was improved and instead of glorified B parks and back tenaments copenhageners got lovely designed Gardens with rules to guarantee cooperation you should uh make it into a one community so you're not allowed to put any fence to privatize it it should be the rainwater should have its own system so you were off uh the big system there should be no cars so in a way you can also say it was an early thinking of sustainability and then the important thing was also that we should maintain it ourself afterwards so it was also a democratic way of of taking care of it so so now there is uh money from every family living here into the maintenance so there is a a community maintenance you can say a third of homes in Copenhagen are cooperatively owned and that's helped cap prices housing costs are slowly Rising but heating remains relatively cheap the city's had District heating for a 100 years and 98% of homes today get high efficiency lowcost heat from 10 Central Boiler plants no struggling with individual boilers here only the D could imagine and build a heating plant like this the amarachi plant nicknamed copen Hill has an artificial ski slope on the [Music] roof the energy comes from from incinerating local rubbish and that means minimal transport the only emissions are water vapor but the city IMS to switch to biomass by [Music] 2025 another design feature that keeps copenhageners happy is travel bikes outnumber cars today 58% of residents travel to work and school by bike using 500 km of bike B Lanes and carfree bridges this is one of the great bits of infrastructure that makes cycling the fastest way to get around Copenhagen and the safest cuz it's a cycl and uh pedestrian only Bridge it's what makes cycling popular because it's fast it's quick I'm joined by Marian vinrich who chairs the cycling Embassy of Denmark no anguish stressed Expressions on cyclist faces here generally no helmets in in fact people don't look like conventional cyclists at all it's striking to see women like you you're beautifully dressed yeah you know change into work you know cycling gear to get messy or Mucky no we we don't dress for the ride we dress for the destination right amazingly in the 1980s Copenhagen was as car centered congested and cycle unfriendly as many Scottish cities today but there's been a lot of work to turn that around we've come to napor station in the city center redeveloped with a huge bike park it's big but already not big enough politicians have chosen every year to have budget and Investments and build more and more uh cycle Lanes so it is kind of because it the people also want it and we have uh Visionary politicians who you know makes decisions about this and sees this as part of mobility in Copenhagen you're so relaxed here about cycling because you've built in the safety through the design of the Copenhagen Lanes safety is part of the design it's not necessarily something you wear um and protected bike Lanes is kind of the the Copenhagen the Danish uh design standard and that means that uh there is a uh pedestrian area and there's a curb of physical separation that also separates pedestrians from cyclist then we have the bike lane and then there's a curve that again physically separates the moving cars from the cyclist and that physical barrier is key because if it's just a painted lane or something like that that you can cross it doesn't give the same kind of uh uh yeah a feeling of of Safety and Security and also de facto saf Safety and Security is that a key thing for getting women actually onto bikes because that's very noticeable here yes research has shown that um the share of women cycling in a city is an indicator for how safe it is to cycle there women are generally more averse to risk in life than men and when it comes to cycling we simply won't cycle if it's not safe I would say we're kind of smart that way um and and also when you combine that with the fact that uh women do 75 of the unpaid care work in the world and that also means often uh traveling with with children then you need it to be extra safe for you to to travel uh with your children so designing for especially for women and also for children to be able to to cycle that is designing you know with with safety in mind and then being that's part of normalizing cycling and making it for a much broader group than the younger more daring and and strong and fearless FR cyclist yeah although you're pretty good at that as well it's a joined up transport strategy that makes cycling the obvious choice for commuters there's a dedicated apartment for bikes not just five places you don't have to fight for it it's not bookable and it's on every commuter train it's to die [Music] for leaving Copenhagen behind I'm off to explore the rest of this island nation heading for the small town of ska in the heart of Jutland Denmark has roughly the same population as Scotland but just half the land mass it wasn't always this way Denmark once controlled Norway Sweden Finland Iceland and sches Holstein lost to Germany in a disastrous war in 1864 after which Denmark almost ceased to exist yet the Danes rapidly adapted to this huge loss of territory population and Status without acrey or Nostalgia instead the country accepted change and powered back thanks in large part to an education system that's quite unique take the next right on to freelance [Music] by well uh there is life beyond Copenhagen and the big cities uh this is small town Denmark it's very different though it's quiet there's no Pub there's no shop in this little village but there are apparently six little groups and societies all funded by the council so people are active citizens here just not in the the public realm Lissa alers is a teacher and Mom she walks her son fell to kindergarten every morning okay they start the month before they turn three children start primary school not at four or five but at 6 in Denmark and kindergarten is a light touch start they work with the letters and they work with the numbers and the colors of course but it's not a must that you can spill out your own name okay it costs roughly a third of a full-time place in the UK if you didn't have the kindergarten or any child care it would be very hard for you to be a teacher at all yes exactly I I have about a 30 minute drive to my work and also 30 minutes back so I need to go somewhere I can deliver my children and know they are safe and then I can do my job and provide money and provide for my family mhm you need to pick your child up before five mhm and that's fine if you don't mind me asking um how much tax are you paying and are you happy to pay high tax for these facilities yes I pay about uh 37% of my income in taxes and I'm really happy and I'm glad I'm doing it because it means I got the kindergarten I got hospitals and anything I need provided is that the Danish way yes we all help each other so that everybody gets the possibility to go to kindergarten you also have families who don't have that much money and then by us paying taxes we actually help them getting a cheaper or more discount in the daycare and some of them even go freely to daycare they don't have to pay head teacher Marian Christensen says the kindergarten encourages children to explore and learn the key skill of cooperation we have activities that the the grown-ups are preparing for the the children all day today is we are really having a good weather so we are outside but we can go inside and cut and um paint and play and we all have all kind of toys inside yeah um do the do any of the children have a difficulty with being outside no no not at all yeah it's mostly the parents that have difficulties they think they um hiding and we can't see them or they're cold they're wet but that's not an an issue at all what do the children get from being outside all the time experience they have to taste and uh feel and yeah yeah and their social activities are skills are very very good because they have to move and get inside the play can I be with you or can I have not and and so they're learning to cooperate yeah yeah because this is the Danish way yeah uh the Danish way is uh that children playing is very valuable yeah [Music] yeah the kindergarten sets up play and cooperation in education but that gets reinforced at the age of 15 when many youngsters spend a year away from home in a remarkable Danish invention the after schola they still do core academic subjects but also learn something they truly love this after schola specializes in diving swimming and sailing there's a holiday today but normally 170 15y olds from all over Denmark are learning living cooking and Diving together principal teacher Yanik Marshall says after schoola are about far more than just hitting academic grades dishes I think it's important that that we take some of the the pressure off take some of the of the the the tempo out of the getting through to college and getting through to to to our work and I think that's too much where we have to stay right now in in in in this age 15 16 and and look at each other but also look inside and see who am I H what do they want to do with my life um I can see you're living a different life from the one I lived that's interesting tell me more um so so this this whole Dan as a as a um that's that's that's after school students share domestic chores and for most of these 15year olds it's their first time living away from home and they sit in the dining room in the in the families all right so it kind of makes it more manageable rather than being 170 people yeah and then each family has a a teacher that's their Mentor or closest relation to to home in home that's a very important role to be because life hurts sometimes yeah yeah the young people who come here are learning how to cooperate create a community and become active citizens I think we're we're happy but we're also very self-focused um and we try to use this year to show that now now you're part of a of a fellowship U this is the strength of a fellowship you give and you take and some give more because they're wider shoulders right now or being a better place in life and then you give more to to to the community uh and then they get you get back so you there ups and downs in life um ups and downs this year um so I think that's that's also the one of the big values of being in an School what's not to love but the chance to explore your interest and yourself doesn't end with after schola at 15 Danes aged 18 to 199 can also attend folk high schools or folk Co schooler these res idential Learning Centers inspired by the Danish thinker Nikolai gunic expand Horizons especially in that year between high school and University Caroline Spiel HBO the principal at krais home H schoola explains that they recruit passionate practitioners not conventional teaching staff we're not allowed to do exams exactly and we're not allowed to give grades so that is a very unique possibility for us to teach in a way that nobody is controlling how we do it well there is obviously some kind of control we have to teach for some hours for a certain amount of hours and it's not like there's no control with the schools at all but it is the a very clear claim of the school that we should not be a school with a curricul curriculum and no no exams and no paper if you ask people who in my age they would say the year in the after school or the year in the high school what the best in my life so that's something you take with you you the rest of your life krais home is a modern arts-based School in a 500y old building with living teachers whose role is to encourage and Inspire teacher Kirsten Pals is here after an international career in Visual Arts I'm not trained as a teacher I I am trained as a visual artist and I work as a visual artist and this is also something which is possible in this kind of school that uh we can work here without being trained as teachers but we come here through our knowledge and engagement and passion for the Arts I'm from a Norway and I can already see a huge difference in how the education system is between the two countries cuz here it's more for your own sake than doing something for your teacher so you develop much more skills and I feel like we're all very motivated to do whatever we're doing in whatever Studio or Workshop because it's for your own sake and you learn so much more than just having a grade and a teacher coming in kind of saying oh no don't do that they kind of guide you yeah so I think it's quite normal in Denmark to do a high school yeah I'm 21 and uh I used to go to uh gymnasium and I did two gab years um and I thought that I might want to try to do some art and architecture so I found this school the students pay for half of the the fee and the Danish government believe very much in this kind of school so they also subsidize uh High School in Denmark because we believe that it it's a It's a larger project uh making um good citizenships so so the what you what you get with you in this half a year about living together taking responsibility for each other being a collective and um orienting or like this personal also a personal development has such a high value that the Danish government uh have decided to to pay for this kind of school of course University still plays an important role in Danish education tuation is free and students often qualify for additional living support expenses it's part of flex security another uniquely Danish take on the welfare state that accounts for more than a third of all government spending Danes pay an average income tax of about 40% so what do they get for their money free healthcare may sound like the average welfare state but Flex security is different there are the small things like parents get a day's pay to stay home with a sick child and the big things the Danish pension is truly livable not one of the worst in the developed world and unemployment benefit is linked to pay that's the security part but unusually it's also relatively easy to get laid off in Mark and that's the flexibility bit here at rosilda University Professor Yong fist is an expert in Denmark's welfare policies have a a flexible labor market so it's relatively easy for employers to sack people and that's one of the reasons why we don't have zero our contracts you know people employers can take in people if they need more labor and they can sa them if they don't need them because there's a high train over the economy works well uh but it's not born on the shoulders of the employers or of the unemployed it's born on all of us on the society who collectively Finance these unemployment benefits and all the measures that have help people get back into work so that's the contract we have that you're not entitled to a specific job but you're titled to a job and if you don't have a job then you will get unemployment benefits and active labor market policies and other measures trying to get you back into work and that must be what partly makes Dan's happy is security yeah yeah I've not thought of about it that way before but my friend the painter he loses his job two to four times a year and he's a very happy man because he knows that he will get another job when he's fired and he knows that in between the two jobs he will get an unemployment benefit so he's not uncertain about his income and his financial institutions are not certain that he would pay his mortgage so they also happy to live and keep his house [Music] so where does the money come from what fuels an economy that can Finance such a generous welfare system and BR Denmark is now a small country with relatively few natural resources it's incredible to think that long ships like these once cross the oceans in the Viking era striking Terror into the hearts of people in Scotland England and Ireland but although the long ship's era has passed the Danish domination of the world Seas continues unabated MK is one of the world's biggest shipping companies and in the 70s just as the Danish government had a hungry welfare system to feed MK Diversified into something new Henny Morgan is the MK company historian we also went into energy energy production formed a Consortium called the Danish underground Consortium and uh they produced the first Danish oil in 1972 which is actually ahead of Norway and Scotland yes so you're just quietly first that developed into a company called mask oil we developed into uh contractors called with a company called Mass drilling offshore services in Mass Supply service so got engaged in offshore and oil and gas production which became a significant leg in the mass companies after 1972 it's ironic to be sitting in a country that's a leader in the green transition when you still got a lot of your business in oil we we did have a lot of our business in oil we have divested uh basically all of our activities in production of oil and gas by now uh and uh as a reaction to the green transition uh Mass Supply service is still part of the AP M group uh but is moving away from offshore services to servicing the the windmill industry you pay taxes and you paid taxes at a time when Denmark was really rolling out its welfare state yes uh in the 1970s 1980s 1990s where we had the contract with the Dan State on the production of oil and gas uh we paid a lot of taxes and whether that paid for some of the welfare state absolutely uh our role today has probably been taken over by other companies because most of our activities The Mask activities are around the world this is the uh office of Mr AP Miller so the founder of mask right um he died in 1965 and uh at that time the office was uh put down and taken away and then reestablished here as part of our Museum your founder had some great sayings and one of them was if you have the ability you have the responsibility so what does that mean let me start with the Danish phrase It's called n VI meaning having a positive impact on society so if you look at the many of the sayings of AP Miller and his son Mass mckin Miller you'll find this lying underneath what they're saying we want to have a positive impact on society and if we have the ability we also actually have the responsibility to act on that ability for a small country Denmark has some huge corporations MK is known all around the world though it may not quite match Lego as a household name that pioneering plastic toy launched in 1958 400 billion pieces have been made since and that's 50 bricks for everyone on the planet and the wind industry wouldn't be the same without the innovation of Danish blacksmith in the 1970s who created the company Vestas today they produce a fifth of all the world's wind turbines on and offshore and sit at the Forefront of Denmark's green International [Music] image Danish turbines are powering an International Energy Revolution but the underlying infrastructure needs to keep Pace that's where Danish colleges come in ska College trains students from all over Europe in electricity distribution and subc cabling head of Education court Lindholm says they constantly adapt to the latest industry needs every year we have a adjustment of what is asked for in knowledge and competence what are we going to produce of students and knowledge to fit the future I would say about 80 to 90% of our students are somehow link to the green transition and the future so I'm from p uh Kingston p uh the reason I'm here is I'm a traine for my company called s energy renewable energy services and uh we're here for a training to get qualified to a 66 we have people from Poland Great Britain Portugal on a commercial training because the the green transition is global and we provide some specific skills and some specific training that are are needed around the world so they come here we are small country but we know we are good in engineering and we are good in in acting convert knowledge to action so we can sell our knowledge we can sell our products I think we have uh realized we cannot um we cannot only produce things or components we also need to produce things that can be exported like [Music] knowledge well we're leaving the mainland behind and heading to the tiny island of samso normally people think that the big advancers the Pioneers the go-getters are all in cities but this little island rather proves differently they were the UN climate Champions at the 26 Summit and they're likely to be Net Zero before the rest of Denmark and Europe 9 miles off the Jutland Coast the island of samso has less than 4,000 inhabitants and it's less than a third of Aon in size it's a low-lying farming community and a popular holiday destination Not So Different to many islands around Scotland this metal is part of a system that pretty much no Scottish island has which is a big subsea connector that takes all the Surplus energy in samso for sale on the mainland of Denmark and that's exactly the opposite direction of travel that it used to be when the cable came in in 1960 agriculture is at the heart of the island economy with small farms producing cereal crops and vegetables typically Danish they trust that the tourists will [Music] pay in 1998 samso Council won a Danish government competition to become a model Community for the green transition now an energy Academy is generating and passing on skills and knowledge its Champion is a vegetable farmer turned energy Guru sain Hermanson who has the human nouse needed to bring canny Islanders on board folk who wouldn't accept change simply for change's sake the whole concept of being green is actually also my my my perspective not what we aim to be for us I think it's kind of how to maintain a healthy Society is maybe the most important reason for people to accept changes if we can change things to the better and the better is not for me to decide it's not environment it's not energy or wind turbines but the wind turbines can be tools to achieve what you want to change or where you want to make a better quality of your life in the in the soci social concept and I think that is what we have kind of been sniffing around to find this connection this glue of society where we can say where does it makes sense and then wind turbines was one answer and using bi biomass instead of imported oil was another one I mean every time we had to evaluate it does it does it take all the boxes is it cheaper is it better is it local does it produce jobs which was all the answers that we had on the other side I think that is basically kind of our recipe and a lot of people ask is there a model can we scale this and I don't think so it's not scalable but it's but it's [Music] inspirational there's nothing new about wind power in Denmark but getting the Islanders to accept a new generation of towers in the landscape to careful negotiation while Farmers like Yin could see the money and that didn't impress all of the neighbors we get a license here because we have a good air air here it's a long way to church that's a point one oh okay so if if there was a church here that would be a problem no it was hopeless oh to avoid kind of the conflict between farmers and neighbors we we had a an agreement with the farmers that they would let land lease land to a co-op and the coop was already existing and they could then have two turbin or we didn't know how many but we asked people to sign up and and show up and say I'd like to buy a share in a wind turbine not to silence them but to give them an opportunity to be co-owners because the co-ownership makes people much more aware of why it's it's there well because it's money in the bucket for one reason but it's also like you are part of a process where you are involved in it both physically and mentally that we are doing this not just a few farmers and so in two weeks there was 50 Farmers that ask for win turbines on the country side wow because it was terrible good business everybody could see we could pay it back in uh six seven years and once Islanders shared the benefits few begrudged Jorgen his new wind based business Empire I have the farming and the energy and now we have built a 20 flat for older people so now I have three legs three legs right okay not just one farming leg Yeah you have a farming leg an energy leg and a building leg Yeah right that's quite a lot of legs surin's plan also included making the Island's Villages and towns more energy efficient they had largely relied on Imports of oil but their own Fields were brimming with another potential Fuel and there was a looming energy crisis so then we talked and negotiated with the farmers they knew what the oil prices were and we said to them can you provide a 20% cheaper price with straw then I think we can convince most people to connect to District heating because this will mean the entity bill will be cheaper per year so there's a win-win for everybody that the house owners will have cheaper heat the farmers will make a living or make a make a an income from store where they usually just had to compost it on the field and we produce a number of jobs we didn't have before to dig down the trenches for piping connecting the houses taking the oil furnishes out and putting in heat pumps and so on and so forth so so so when we talked about it in that way we gave kind of a lot of different reasons for people to connect to this and say yes this is exactly what we're wishing for you also killed a lot of birds with one stone because when you had the Pavements up you put a lot of stuff down there in in one go I mean when when when we're looking at change a lot of people say but we also have this problem and that problem and this problem and then we can get stuck in in a number of problem that piles up instead we try to reverse that and think to how many problems can we solve in one go so when we do open up the road then we could talk to the water people and say what about these old rusty steel pipes maybe it's time to change them all right that's fine we'll pay our bit the electricity people why don't we take these hanging wires down that every now and again there's a storm or ice or or they they also corrode and they fall down and maintenance cost are higher and higher put them in the ground and cable and it could be Broadband it could be many different things here so we talked to everybody and made them commit to this and co-finance the the installations that made everything cheaper so you are 3,700 people yeah with one Council here yeah yeah and that really works you you would be in Scotland there is nothing that small so everything's huge sometimes people are say oh would it would be much better if we in in a bigger municipality because there's also a lot of little things that becomes big problems because we are a small place but I think in the long run it has a lot of advantages to be a small place where we can actually communicate directly but I mean everything has has a flip side but but but I think that's true it is better um to make decisions in a in a in a smaller environment where where where you know who to talk to that very local decision made yoran a happy farmer Highlanders too 80% now have District Heating and their bills were cut during the cost of living crisis when UK bills trebled samso has four District heating boiler plants bales from local farms are loaded on a slow conveyor belt that inches the straw into a high efficiency burner the furnace heats water and the waters piped in the streets to heat local homes with Ash returned to the fields in here I see a whole lot of straw bales that's kind of like a bit of a straw shed you see on the other hand this is not just a hayan this this is a a bank uh deposit uh for enery the great thing about this is that all your materials basically are so local I mean this facility has contracts with five six farmers who are not more than three to five kilm away from this facility and we have the same with the other facilities also so we don't spend kind of the saved carbon emission in transporting long distances and big trucks and tractors driving on the roads for long distances and then the other thing is if anything goes wrong the Machinery is simple enough that a local person can fix it this is not Hightech so yes we can call the plumber and he'll come and fix almost everything here with his own tools and his own capacity the only variable factor is weather late season rain has delayed the Harvest this year so as I leave Samu the farmers are still in the fields it's clear that going green has brought jobs security and cheaper energy and that's made the whole Community very [Music] happy back in Copenhagen I'm heading to the heart of Danish democracy how have these Progressive policies survived the coming and goinging of governments over 50 years the TV series bargain brought Denmark's Coalition politics into living rooms across the world with its female prime minister hatching deals in these very cloysters and that's because Denmark's proportional Parliament man's negotiation unlike the Westminster system with its first pass the post and Winner Takes all Ban's dramatic film location is nowhere near the actual seat of government that business is conducted across the river in less striking if more practical modern settings like the foreign Ministry Dan Jorgenson is the minister for climate energy and utilities most people would have watched borgan and thought that okay that's brilliant it's impressive but it's a drama it is actually for real because your Parliament your governments are invariably coalitions between many parties and that's normal because you got proportional Parliament well not only are they coalitions very often they will also be minority governments so you'll be in governments but you won't actually have the majority uh yourself you you're dependent on other parties to support you and this makes it almost impossible for political parties to just go strictly for their own agenda also um very often even if you have a majority for instance right now we have a majority government we don't actually use that uh majority very often uh we almost all always seek to have other parties uh on board for several reasons one is okay so if power changes we're pretty sure that the decisions that we've made will stand that's an important reason but also actually it's a part of Danish culture that political culture that uh Broad majorities and Broad compromises are seen as a good in itself now if you ask most Danish people they would probably tell you that they think that we have a lot of political differences in Denmark but which we also do on on on on some issues but but if you compare it to almost all other countries the things that we are arguing about in Danish parliament are quite small differences so for instance we have this tax funded welfare state and there's actually no parties in the Danish Parliament that wants to fundamentally change that I must say in the time that we've been here we can really see that just in every sort of small way people are very relaxed it's very consensual there's not much conflict about well this is also something that you can see in the United Nations happiness index we are almost always on top of that that index and I think again obviously for idealistic reasons you want your people of a country to be happy but also for rational reasons I mean a happy country is a country that's less sick that's more productive that's got less conflict there's so many positive things to say about that and of course it's all a circle because if you're not happy and you don't have a lot of trust uh social capital in society then you're not able or willing to pay that much in tax and if you don't pay that much in tax you're not able to uh have this welfare state and then so you see it's all interconnected in the 1970s a big decision happened when the oil crisis happened the OPEC crisis happened all the oil gas prices in the world went up but Denmark did something really quite extraordinary afterwards which was well we decided that it wasn't a good idea to be dependent on energy sources from other countries so basically uh instead of being dependent on on oil uh from uh countries that could like this uh decide to raise the prices and thereby hurt our economy we needed Alternatives and that's actually how we started developing renewable energy so at that time it's strange to think about it now but at that time it didn't really have anything to do with the environment uh it wasn't a green movement as such it then quickly evolved to that because many of the very active forces in the Danish society that wanted to make this happen were also interested in the environment so it went hand in hand but actually that's how it started so really it was about protecting your Independence as a country really yeah it was instead of buying your energy very expensive from other countries and thereby also being dependent on them it was much better to create your own energy but then you also decided to keep the price of oil and gas high in Denmark and you made the cost of importing cars really really expensive who votes for parties like that well we decided decades ago that maybe it's a good idea if you want the welfare states that that is expensive so you need a lot of tax revenue maybe it's then a good idea to tax the things that's a good idea to tax because you also want to limit it uh because then you'd get two things you'll get the revenue from the taxes but you will also get less pollution uh having said that I I would lie if I said that it's very popular to tax C uh it isn't but on the other hand uh I think most people in Denmark sort of just accepts it because they know one we need to do it because of the environment and climate and two if we didn't tax that if we didn't tax the cars we would need the money from somewhere else and we would have to tax something different coming back to the question of climate Denmark is still is now right at the front of the green transition having created the grouping Beyond oil and gas at the cop 26 Summit actually in Glasgow um what are your immediate aims and how com an arue you're going to get there well we've decided to stop our oil and gas uh production when we made the decision we were the biggest oil producer in the EU so so we did even though we also uh had a lot of Renewables already then uh we still also had oil and gas and we still do have oil and gas today but we decided that if we want to fight climate change it's not enough to be leading in renewable energy so that's really the demand side of of um of the energy question we also need to be leaders on the supply side so it would have been a bit of a paradox if in the future we would be 100% Green in Denmark but we would still withdraw oil and gas and sell it to others so we would just export the problem that that would not be a good idea so we decided to stop all um future licensing rounds and put an end dat in 2050 now for this to to actually happen which it will uh of course we then need Alternatives so this means that we also had to spark and our Innovation and be even more ambitious on uh on Renewables and that is what we're doing but life's not perfect Denmark's Refugee policy has International critics it's proportional Parliament means far right parties are represented and very visible and a controversial new law limits the proportion of nonwestern people in certain neighborhoods to Aid integration but though Denmark has many of the same problems facing Britain it tends to approach them with an instinctive solidarity o Dal is a regional newspaper editor and was a political correspondent in Copenhagen the age for when you can leave your job is is going up because we want people to stay a little longer working retirement age retirement age yeah that's going up slightly uh all the time actually uh 67 now but it will go up to maybe 69 in a in a couple of years so so uh but we accept that we have to maybe be hardworking to have the money for the the the welfare system the the social system we have to make sure that everyone has uh the possibility of a of a of a good life biggest problem is now to have enough people uh uh to fill out the the the the the jobs which is not occupied at the moment meaning both the welfare system and the education system and the private companies could use a lot more stuff at the moment many many places also here locally so we just hope for for except for instance the Ukraine have very easy refugees from Ukraine have very easily found job here and we're happy about that uh but we also need you know the young people with they finished school uh more of them to stay in this area instead of moving to Copenhagen uh for instance we need them here to to fulfill the the job applies that are here issues you might find in any Scottish paper in fact Ola is a regular visitor to Scotland and sees strong similarities with Denmark in many ways you know Scotland and Nordic countries are so similar I think when it comes to life and priorities in life that I hope also uh that this cooperation could even be stronger between Scotland especially and the Nordic countries Denmark is now a small but perfectly formed country the astonishing thing about the Nordic countries is that there are so many small countries working together but nobody seems to think you should all have the same currency all of you have a different currency from each from the neighbor and you're not a United States of Scandinavia no and you you never will be will you one one State no no never no no no no we like to have this uh Independence as we have the the Scandinavian countries and and it works very well we cooperate and uh we let the the people and the countries flourish in their own way and and in a way which where they have their strength they can show it and still have a a good strong cooperation because that's needed of course when when we have a challenge in the world Europe should stick together as far as I can see it and the Nordic countries and maybe Al Scotland could could be part of of that cooporation to to you know stick together and work together and Scotland of course we like to see uh Scotland back in Europe someday I've got one more trip in my journey of Discovery I'm traveling East from Copenhagen to test the ease of movement between Denmark and her nearest foreign neighbor Sweden very easy as it turns out the famous orison bridge between Denmark and Sweden a frictionless border between two different countries with different systems different languages and different currencies does that get in the way of crossborder trade not when you pay by [Music] card which country are we in Sweden yeah just so so close to Denmark and no bother hang here yeah want to receip just like [Music] that so this is Denmark it's known for its green energy and happy people but it's biggest achievement threaded through my journey and across the lifespan of every Daye is cooperation it's built into the kindergarten and unique after schola the district heating that powers communities and the Coalition parlament that can stick to an anti-oil strategy for 50 years you can ski on heating systems swim in docks and Escape your parents at 15 all courtesy of the state Denmark is relaxed cooperative and playful without the stress that bevil's adversarial Britain happiness like beauty is more than Skin Deep no wonder the Danes are [Music] laughing [Music]

Channel: Lesley Riddoch

Views: 444,065

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Id: UTJnu6lAhvM

Length: 54min 9sec (3249 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2024