Inconsistency?

The Danish Government is hosting the COP15 climate change conference at the moment. For many people this is entirely consistent with Denmark´s image as a green and eco-friendly land. Think of Denmark and you might think of wind-turbines and avid recyclers and cyclers on their bikes. The wind-turbine part is true. Vestas and several other firms make thousands of wind-turbines each year and this forms a big part of Denmark´s export business. This is the part about the business of green that the Danish People´s Party/Liberal/Conservative (OVK) coalition is interested in. In this sense the "environment" is a business opportunity rather than something you might want to take care of for its own sake.
Since winning the general election in 2001 the present admininistration has tirelessly sought to downgrade issues concerning what I prefer to call nature (rather than that insipid term "the environment.") The first OVK prime-minister awarded the climate change sceptic Bjørn Lomborg with a large cash grant and an organisation of his own to promulgate his views, the Institure for Environmental Assessment.
The Ministry for the Environment was stripped of cash and influence.
Motorway construction has been given a priority and where motorways are built there soon come other buildings dependent on motor-transport.
Rail transport has been starved of funding.
The Danish Government sought carbon credits for the straw that Denmark had buried in the ground since 1989. The point of this was to estimate how much extra carbon Denmark could then emit later on. If 2 million tonnes of CO2 had been buried then Denmark sought permission to emit an extra 2 million tonnes later on.
If you drive a Porsche Cayenne but have the rear seats removed you can call it a business vehicle and get one third off the price (this amounts to a €30,000 rebate to pollute).
Commuters are given a tax-break to drive to work but only if they drive more than 9 km a day. This amounts to an incentive to live as far from work as you can - many people do so and Danes routinely drive 2 hours a day. This is thanks to a work and employment policy that encouraged commuting instead of supported moving nearer to work. The policy is 30 years old but you´d have thought that subsidising driving was ripe for review.
90% of Danes live in bungalows miles from the nearest services. These energy inefficent homes come with a lot of downsides but the one I wish to note here is their wastefulness. Even so-called carbon-neutral homes are dependent on an average annual vehicle use of 12-16,000 km a year (which means about 1300 liters of petrol per car)
In short, at the micro and macro level, Denmark fall far short of image of environmental awareness other than at the level of health and safety where safety hazards are minimised.
After the Dutch, the Danes throw out the most packaging waste in the OECD. Packaging is encouraged because it is collected and burnt to generate heat. In effect, the Danish government gets citizens to pay extra for superfluous packaging which they give for free to the heating provider who then charges them for the energy they use. The energy use is itself dependent on the style of housing Danes prefer, which is free-standing bungalows rather than in denser streets of row-houses.
The truth is that Denmark is an energy intensive society wedded to the idea of motorways, motorised transport, land-hungry suburban housing, two-car households and a legion of ill-considered polluting subsidies. A recent poll of Danes asked them if they would alter their personal behaviour to help avoid climate change. 70% said they wouldn´t, thank you very much.