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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

I agree with your sentiment. However, wouldn't a person pitching that argument then counter that Norway built their hydro grid in part using oil exports, ie that Norway is responsible for enabling a lot of global pollution per capita in order to pay for that grid (and the on-going vast per capita oil exports necessary to continue supporting it)? What's the counter to that premise?

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Norway also exports and imports energy to Europe to exploit the potential for energy price arbitrage. In effect, any country that is connected to an international energy grid has partial responsibility for bringing down global CO2 emissions.

I don't see how this is an argument against electrical vehicles. In fact electric vehicles should increase the incentive to reduce the carbon emissions of electricity production since now at least improvements there will have a material effect on the carbon efficiency of transportation.

(Norway built out most of its energy grid before the oil industry got started, by the way -- but we do maintain out grid partly using tax money from the oil sector, just like all parts of our public sector).

No, the power generation in Norway, like pretty much elsewhere, is paid for by the power consumers, not oil revenues; it also predates discovery of oil deposits in the North Sea.

Well, is your argument that, had Norway not exported oil, the actual use today would be lower?

Would countries use less energy if not for Norway's oil exports?

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