Edit: I would like to rephrase the last sentence as "At least it is better than _an_ alternative, which is to sell oil and buy fossile fuel cars." which is a fairer categorisation of the problem space and less consumerist.
That being said, given how much of our workforce is directly or indirectly tied to pumping up oil and gas, I also get that simply stopping the pumps tomorrow will pretty much make the country collapse.
As such I think that spending our black money to help foster greener technologies like EVs is at least better than nothing.
We're also using our oil fund a bit more actively[1] when it comes to climate and investments.
[1]: https://www.nrk.no/norge/for-forste-gang-kaster-oljefondet-u...
To me it is obvious that the solution to the global climate change crisis isn't rich countries buying new luxorious cars, that happen to be electric. That's a very western-centric view.
Still though, switching from gasoline cars to electric ones is a substantial improvement.
THE solution? Who has ever said the problem is solved with just one thing?
It's certainly a very important part of the solution. Solving climate change is absolutely impossible without electric vehicles and better batteries. This is not just about driving your SUV to your cabin, it's about transportation of goods, farming, mining etc. We're also seeing that there's overlap in development of EV batteries and grid batteries (at least for short term frequency regulation).. so there's some synergies there that will be important for increasing the share of renewables.
It just happens that personal cars is the easiest vehicle to implement as BEV first. If rich western countries didn't buy them, and China didn't have the foresight to push BEVs hard, the development could easily have taken 10-20 years longer.
> That's a very western-centric view.
Cars are used in non-western countries too. Now that batteries for vehicles are getting cheaper, you're starting to see BEVs become viable at the very bottom of the market as well. Cheap BEVs and cheap renewable energy will be huge for developing countries. You're already starting to see renewable micro-grids giving a much lower barrier to get access to electricity. Importing oil is expensive for a developing country. Importing refined gasoline is even more expensive.
No, the solution is leaving the oil in the ground, anything less than that and what you're making is excuses and not progress. We can't keep moving the goalposts.
There is nothing good for the climate about 13 norwegians (to reference another comment on this article) buying luxurious cars that happen to be electric.
I doubt renewable micro-grids are going to power EVs in the third world anytime soon, but that would be nice I guess.
> https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
So, yeah, that argument is actually valid.
[1] Side note: I'm impressed by the explosion of high-quality electric replacements for small gasoline engines over the past few years. All my power yard tools are electric; the only gasoline engines we own our the car and the generator.
In what way? It's not like Norway is responsible for the worlds dependence on oil, or that they've ever claimed that they're saving the world. They haven't said that others should stop using oil/gasoline right now either. They're just trying their best to help develop alternatives.
If you have oil, what's the third alternative? Should Norway just not have extracted any of its oil ever? Is that realistic to expect? Would it even have helped in any way, or would it just be offset by increased production in the middle east?
It's a huge discussion around this in Norway btw. The green party wants to cut all oil production by 2035. Obviously it's not very popular, although the green party has been growing quite well recently. The main argument against it is that cutting oil/gas production will easily be offset by other nations, most of which have worse CO2/methane pollution from their oil/gas production, and cutting gas to Germany could increase coal usage. It has been a big focus on that in Norway, to the point that Equinor is building a wind power plant to supply oil rigs with cleaner electricity rather than burning gas in inefficient power plants on the oil rigs. Of course, a lot of people are saying that this is green washing. Personally I'm ambivalent. Cutting production early would send a very strong signal, and could perhaps push other countries to cut oil/gas use, but at least building those off-shore wind power plants will help reduce cost of off-shore wind.
Norway is not the "good guy" here, but then nobody is. Everyone that has cheap/easy access to oil reserves has developed them. Expecting anybody to do otherwise is naive. Everyone in the world is hopelessly dependent on oil. We're all product of the circumstances of the 20th century, and all we can do is to try to do the best we can going forward.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Hypocracy
It's clearly _not_ hypocrisy by any normal definition of the word.
I mean, first of all EVs isn't just about cutting CO2-emissions. Norway is very concerned about local pollution, and EVs is pretty superior there.
And Norway does not believe that they're the good guys when it comes to CO2 emissions, at all. There's a continuous debate about what to do about the oil/gas production though, and there's some pretty strong arguments that cutting oil/gas would do nothing or even be damaging to global CO2 emissions. Cutting production will easily be offset by other countries with worse emissions in their production chain. Cutting off gas to Germany will either push them back to coal or to Russian gas. And most of those other countries are not investing as much of their oil profits in renewables and EV tech. I'm not sure I agree with this line of though, but it's valid because it depends on knowledge of alternative futures that we just don't know.
I mean if you think it's hypocrisy you're free to do so, but it's not very productive. What action should Norway take to reduce the worlds CO2 emissions more than they are? The Norwegian green party wants to cut all oil/gas production by 2035. Is that enough, or should they have cut everything already?
Okay sure if you define their goals for EVs simply as decreasing _local_ pollution, then you're right it's not hypocritical. Though in that case I would instead refer to it as extremely selfish, since they are using the proceeds from their exportation of pollution to decrease their own local pollution. Honestly I'm not really sure which perspective I find worse.
> There's a continuous debate...
Given you clearly don't strongly agree with what you wrote, I won't attack you on it. I'll simply point out that those arguments are really no different than all the other self-serving arguments people use to post facto rationalize their actions. If them ridiculous. They remind me of the arguments I sometimes hear from fellow Swedes saying that Sweden's large profits from arms exports aren't bad since they'd be sold by someone else anyway. Convenient how easily such reasoning can be used to ignore one's culpability.
> I mean if you think it's hypocrisy you're free to do so, but it's not very productive. What action should Norway take to reduce the worlds CO2 emissions more than they are? The Norwegian green party wants to cut all oil/gas production by 2035. Is that enough, or should they have cut everything already?
If this is a serious question, then I'll answer it. They should stop being hypocrites. That is they should either stop their exports immediately or they should come to terms with the fact that they are making the world a worse place. You might want to get rid of Solberg as a first step:
https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/7335804
"Norge är ett av världens rikaste länder, mycket tack vare sin olja. Men man tar inget klimatansvar för den olja som exporteras.
Det säger Norges statsminister Erna Solberg i Ekots lördagsintervju idag. Enligt henne är det den som köper oljan som har ansvaret för utsläppen. Och då menar hon bland annat Sverige."
Total bullshit. I mean I agree that Swedes need to take responsibility for their actions (Sweden is probably just as full of hypocrites as Norway), but Norway is selling their oil knowing very well the result. Of course they are responsible. They are selling it because they want money. There's nothing noble about it.