Well, those morally, intellectually, and environmentally superior Europeans to whom President Obama wants us to defer on energy and environmental questions now have a real success story we can emulate: Sweden, the only country actually to reduce its GHG emissions — at least, without the benefit of a ruse (crafty Denmark choosing to buy electricity from outside the country), a one-off fix (the UK closing its now re-opened coal pits), or a tragedy (the economic collapse in Germany and all points east) — has decided on a site where it will bury spent nuclear material.

Nuclear, you ask? Why, yes, nuclear. After years of fooling no one with an evergreen promise to swear off nukes in a decade — “evergreen” because it was renewed every few years or so — the Swedes recently admitted that you can’t run a country on renewables, and have decided not only to eschew mothballing their existing plants, but to build more.

At that point, finding a place to put your waste is the thing that a responsible country does — that is, once you get over the preening and frivolity that is environmental politics. It just seems to have taken the Swedes less time than it is taking us.

This is actually good news for “nuclear free” Denmark, too, the country that President Obama now holds up as our environmental model (even if he tells a whopper about how much of their electricity consumption comes from windmills). After all, Sweden is where Denmark gets much of its nuclear-powered electricity.