Is Norway the New East India Company?
branko2f7.substack.com
branko2f7.substack.com
Compare this situation to Nigeria, whose similarly massive oil wealth is corruptly consumed and distributed within Nigeria, leading to massive disparities in wealth and no long term savings to provide for its citizens.
Someone has to produce oil and gas. It might as well be the Norwegians.
Not really comparable. Nigeria is in this case more like China during the opium wars - the western companies are taking away their oil from them with bribery, political and economic threats. Just read a bit about how Shell operates there, they have more power than the government.
There is so much reward for the winners in these exchanges, that yes they do try different commercial arrangements to make it stick; and that changes over time.
As an American schoolchild we studied Nigeria as a success story and a hopeful future for Americans who wanted a modern stable country in Africa. From what I can tell in passing, the reality is repeatedly short of the lofty goals set long ago. It might be said that there is some responsibility for the sad state of affairs there, with the people who are local and governing, not just the terrible hands of America or Dutch-Royal Shell, right?
-- from the wikipedia EN page on Nigeria:
Ethnocentrism, tribalism, religious persecution, and prebendalism have plagued Nigerian politics both prior and subsequent to independence in 1960. All major parties have practised vote-rigging and other means of coercion to remain competitive.
That said, it's not only the Westerners screwing over Nigeria. It's also their own rich people screwing them over to get more rich. Nigerian leaders are afraid to go the China route on stamping out corruption because, unlike in China, in Nigeria you can kill the leaders and get new ones.
It's a complex problem, and since Nigeria is the African superpower, there is little that anyone can do about it.
There is little anyone in Africa can do. Other countries can do plenty, but after the nation building demonstrated in Iraq and Afghanistan by the western powers, belief in their prowess must surely be non-existent. So much damage has been done with those fiascos.
Shell is going to push its luck as far as it can with every country
Have a read of the Wikipedia entry for Shell Nigeria. The death and destruction they are involved in (and which the acknowledgment involvement in) is horrendous. Armed conflict has broken out numerous times and Shell has backed some of it by their own acknowledgment.
The ecological and human toll from their polluting is incredible and their own reports show they aren’t attending some spills for significant portions of a year, quite apart from attempting to clean them up.
Shell is a corporation like any other and will not hold itself to moral standards unless forced to by other entities.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Ac...
Even if it were not, I struggle to understand the purpose of your comment.
Do you mean to say that it's morally justified for Shell to bribe Nigerian officials? Because it goes unpunished by governments? Or because the citizenry of Nigeria that do not benefit from such bribery are unable to punish such transgressions? Or is it just a nitpicky "gotcha" that adds nothing and isn't even correct?
I wonder how Norway would look if they were constantly under the same threat.
The truth is it is difficult to wean away governments & companies used to milking the colonies dry to give up so easily. Not to mention the many institutions including religious & media designed to aid this exploitation.
As much as the blame might be place on Nigeria, it is not to be ignored that a lot of power and influence is still held by the English speaking elite who are inturn in the grips of the colonial institutions and their masters.
In my own country of India, any attempt to decolonise is labeled "right wing nationalist".
None of us were happy to wear a tie to school when the temperature goes upto 45 degrees, this colonial brainwashing has to go for the people to become really free.
Opium wars were a clear blackmail. In this case, corrupt Nigerians are in league with corrupt companies. Not sure if both situations are comparable.
What western company is using what political and economic threat? I think if we are specific about this we can work together to bring accountability to it.
"On average, the fund holds 1.4 percent of all of the world’s listed companies."
At the moment, NOK 12 121 718 452 052,- or about $1 368 155 330 418,05
For Nigeria 2018, it seems to be about $160 (USD 32.6 billion [2], 201 million people)
[1] https://www.norskpetroleum.no/okonomi/statens-inntekter/ [2] https://eiti.org/es/implementing_country/32
Drill baby drill
The "Western world" accounts for a bit over 25% of the world's total production.
If they all banded together to stop domestic oil production, that could have a big impact. But maybe other countries would just increase production? And maybe higher prices would spur more exploration?
I don't think Western countries turning off the pipe is going to reduce oil consumption as much as climate experts think is necessary.
Maybe banning or heavily taxing both production and consumption would create enough advances in e.g. electric vehicles that it would help the whole world move faster?
Absent a global ban of hydrocarbon production and use, which would need to be implemented by every country through universal local enforcement, our only chance to reduce global carbon production is by making hydrocarbons uneconomical to produce and uneconomical to use. You are right, unilaterally cutting production in one region would only move production to another region, and global consumers will always use the cheapest energy source that they can get access to. In less-developed countries, there will be little that governments can do to prevent their citizens from burning hydrocarbons if hydrocarbons remain the cheapest form of energy available.
The most effective policies will be those policies that individual countries can implement to impact the economics of hydrocarbon production and use within their borders, and globally. Carbon taxes, for example, that incentivize investment in renewable energy sources and storage and discourage the burning of hydrocarbons. Border taxes that impose penalties on imports from countries that rely too heavily on hydrocarbons in manufacturing or generally within their economies. Infrastructure investments in electricity transmission that link low-cost renewable electricity sources with large electricity markets. Heavy restrictions on the manufacturing and sale of internal combustion engines, and the banning of internal combustion engines in consumer vehicles. Research and development focused on new low-carbon technologies that compete favorably on cost with carbon-heavy production processes, and subsidies to encourage their wide adoption whey they reach near-parity in terms of cost. Foreign aid and technology transfer that work to establish low-cost low-carbon industries in less-developed countries, and which displace local high-carbon industries via price competition.
There are policies that will make hydrocarbons too expensive to use for most purposes. Many of these policies have been tried to some extent, but there has never been a committed and concerted effort to implement all of them. Political focus should be on implementing these kinds of policies, which will actually be effective, unlike the outright banning of hydrocarbon production.
But of course this has been tried before, most recently in 2009-2011. I’ll leave the details as an exercise to the reader.
That being said, there is the option 4 which the EU and US are talking about right now: economic punishment. Adding a "you don't have a carbon tax" levy on imports is a good way to motivate other countries to adopt technologies and ways of thinking that the rich countries of the world are pioneering for high quality but low carbon lifestyles.
We need to focus on consumption. I.e. moving to other sources.
I guess the big deal is to come up with alternatives that can compete on cost with oil?
Right now, I think there is no truly viable alternative for electricity generation in most low income countries. Not enough money for renewables + battery storage. Not enough money for nuclear or hydro.
We can only hope that more advanced countries can create the battery technology we desperately need for the whole world.
Do you mean those alternatives are more expensive per Joule, or do you mean that the alternative have higher up front capital costs?
For the later, the global financial system can help: capital from rich country is more than happy to invest in poor countries as long as the risk-adjusted returns are there.
(Thus driving down the risks is important!)
There's also still the replacement of kerosene lamps by eg electric lights that going on.
EDIT: John Deere has done some interesting work with electrified tractors and other farm implements, including finding ways to avoid using a battery (with an autonomous tractor using a cable): https://www.futurefarming.com/Machinery/Articles/2020/3/John...
If oil prices were to rise a lot, people would find all kinds of ways to economize and substitute. Especially in the longer run.
And, of course, if food becomes expensive enough, many people would switch away from eating expensive meat towards more and cheaper plants.
That's an economic statement, but also a statement in terms of energy costs.
The university of Minnesota has had a pilot plant for wind to ammonia for over a decade now.
"Most of the ammonia is still coal-fed. China currently accounts for 95% of global ammonia capacity based on coal feedstock. In view of China’s ample coal reserves, coal gasification technologies have been further developed and are now used extensively. Coal-based ammonia capacity represents 86% of total Chinese ammonia capacity"
https://www.fertilizer.org/member/Download.aspx?PUBKEY=51f32...
Sure things are changing recently. A few coal-fed ammonia plants have been shutdown. But change is going to take time.
PS: Natural gas still is a heavy CO2 emitter - it doesn't make things all that better.
https://cen.acs.org/environment/green-chemistry/Industrial-a...
Green Hydrogen (made from water via electrolysis powered by renewable energy) is the generally accepted solution. You can find EU plans, or various corporate plans to move entirely to that over the coming decades.
There's some discussion about whether the fossil fuel suppliers are funding propaganda to encourage this move and intend to secretly just use fossil sources and release the carbon anyway, but one limit on this dastardly scheme is that renewable created hydrogen will soon be cheaper anyway, and before that governments and corporations can insist on certificates that reflect the chain of custody of the products.
Anyway, green hydrogen is good, and while it won’t ever be as cheap for vehicles as electrification (and the vehicle costs are higher for fuel cell vehicles, too), it is important for industrial uses of hydrogen, like iron ore reduction to metal and ammonia fertilizer.
There was a time in the 2000s when natural gas based hydrogen was about $2.50/kg. I think we can get green hydrogen down to that level at large scale. Biggest question is really the electrolyzer capital cost as renewable electricity is already cheap enough.
How will cargo ships run without heavy fuel oil ? They are responsible for global trade and keep world-economy and industry running. (Well one solution is nuclear...)
Sails? It might not be as profitable, but I see no reason it can't be done.
But nobody's actually talking about a 100% ban. They're talking about incentives so that people choose an electric car when they buy a new one. And some higher taxes on the use of fossil fuels. And maybe eventually banning new fossil fuel-powered passenger vehicles.
If it's anything like Australia, the agricultural industry would be exempt from such taxes. And presumably countries won't tax their own militaries.
Whether that's sufficient, I don't know. But it seems like a multilateral agreement, including the US, on both supply and demand side, is the most likely to happen and also have a substantial impact.
(1) https://www.worldometers.info/oil/us-oil/#oil-consumption (2) https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/popu...
I mean the East India Company caused (as far as I can tell) a extrema degree of damage of which the echos still noticeable affect all of us today and will so in the future, it might even have lead one of the foundation stones which might start WW3 (if a WW3 starts in the not to long future involving China as a major aggressor).
Sure, we can't say what would have happened if things would have gone different, but we can say that the East India Company might have screwed us over big time.
In case of Norway I don't see that, like at all.
I'd also like to add that oil and gas are not going to fade away anytime soon as we shift towards "clean energy". There are a lot of petrochemical products that are are manufactured from the oil we drill.
India wasn't really a country, more akin to the various Italian or German ( if we exclude the whole HRE thing) states pre-unification than a country - a bunch of independent-ish entities ruled by princes that were often in alliance or war with each other, and differed somewhat from each other culturally/language-wise/etc. but had plenty of common ground.
Could you perhaps describe how rich democracy that both uses and produces oil should behave if it were to be ⓐ not at all hypotcritical ⓑ unremarkably average ⓒ very hypocritical?
You may assume that the there's a spectrum of opinions among the voters on the relevant issues, and ideally that the country has a tradition of choosing policies that suit most voters rather than 50.01%.
ⓒ Ramp up Oil production as much as possible to sell as much Oil as possible, covertly use money and influence to make people dependent on Oil but in the country and to the press say that Climate Change needs to be stopped and Oil usage needs to degree and make your country less dependent on Oil usage (so that it has no problem when it runs out and so that you can sell more).
ⓒ Some where in between? But I assumed the hypothesis is about countries which produce Oil in a economical relevant amount, so I'm not sure there is a "unremarkable average".
As far as I can tell Norway tries to go with ⓐ but not perfectly 100% commitment, but then expected a perfect type ⓐ approach is IMHO unrealistic. For example as far as I can tell their Arctic(1) expeditions are more about being able to keep their Oil output around the current level if necessary then about ramping it up.
A country which could be saied to go with type ⓒ is Saudi Arabia I think, but I'm have vastly to little knowledge about it to make that judgement.
(1): One note about Arctic Oil mining. There is nothing which makes Arctic Oil mining inherently more climate damaging then non-Artic Oil mining. The reason many see it as a no-go is more related to environmental concerns (which are not the same as climate concerns!). Through there are also arguments about reducing the amount of Oil which can be blasted in our atmosphere by blacklisting Arctic Oil. Either way while there are many reasons to complain about it I also can think about reasons why it might make sense and why I maybe might have done such decision. (Mainly related to increasing geopolitical tensions, increasing influence of China, and the China US conflict.)
From context you must mean something Norway hasn't done or tried to do (otherwise Norway wouldn't be "pretty hypocritical") and if the word hypocritical is to be meaningful (not "something everyone is all the time"), such compromises must exist.
The Kyoto protocol makes me sad.
EDIT: No, wait, perhaps I get it.
You're not contrasting hypocritical with "not hypocritical" as I thought, but rather with other bad traits, right?
So Norway is spending oil income on things like building Tesla's car business and Wärtsilä's electric ship engines, and that's hypocritical, while (name other country) has a large profitable construction business that burns lots of oil on fixed construction sites, and that country is not spending its tax income on subsidising electric companies that take on Komatsu and Caterpillar. The other country is then (in your opinion) somehow bad, but not hypocriticial. And that's the contrast. Is that it?
b) Just be Norway.
c) Just be Norway, but wage war on governments that refuse to buy oil.
1) Is it hypocritical by definition? Yes or no.
2) Does it bother me? Yes or no.
I think it is incredibly juvenile to find their push for sustainable consumption domestically to be a problem. Or, alternatively, incredibly juvenile to consider their nation building and wealth building oil exploration to be more of a problem because they tried to stop consuming it themselves. The oil production won't stop whether they were consumers or not, since that is the constant and their domestic behavior is the variable, then why create an argument based on the presence of the variable?
That's because you fail to mention the climate catastrophe which causes an extreme degree of damage[0] and will so in the future[1].
[0]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7eyn8/five-million-people-d...
[1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbwpdb/the-climate-change-pa...
At least currently there are still enough Oil reserves around the World that Norways reduction of Oil production would be fully compensated by other sources.
Maybe this would short term reduce the amount of Oil usage due to hiked prices, but due to now countries less invested into green energy profiting from it instead of Norway it likely would not be better wrt. climate change. Maybe even worse.
Furthermore Oil in all of it's forms is currently so widely integrated into our daily live that "just higher Oil prices" won't help. I mean plastic uses Oil for production and is in much more places than many people are aware of and much less nicely recyclable then many people are aware of. E.g. many clothes contain plastic and in turn oil, if we look at a global scale we probably could even say the large majority of clothes contain plastic. Another example is that even if we produce and use electric cars they contain a lot of plastic and in turn Oil, similar you PC, Phone, Couch, Window Frame, Water Pipes, Internet Connection, etc. etc. And even if we would only allow new E-Cars from tomorrow, there are still a lot of non E-Cars which won't go away anytime soon even if Gas prices double...
So all in all our demand for Oil will hopefully reduce, but won't go away anytime soon. And IMHO this demand being covered by Norway with some of the money earned being reinvested into alternatives if largely preferable over all (realistic/practical) alternatives.
I find it interesting, this argument of "If we don't do it, someone else will." It can be used to justify any kind of unethical activities, from arms trade to factory farming, and somehow in that logic the Norwegian oil becomes friendly for the environment.
The article's comparison is only an "absurdly extrema leap of logic" if you buy into that kind of magical thinking that can make responsibility disappear.
Imagine me grabbing your wallet out of your pocket and arguing: "If I didn't steal your wallet, someone else would've done it, and they would've been far less polite about it than me, so in the end you're better off with letting me keep it." I guess you'd be okay with that.
No, not really.
> Norwegian oil becomes friendly for the environment.
There is a difference between something being friendly for the environment and blindly doing changes without considering there global implication not being help full and maybe even harmful. The world is not black and white.
> magical thinking
I would call it considering the effects of you actions before acting. Instead of blindly acting based on ideology not matter if it's actually helpful or not for the end goal of the ideology.
> If I didn't steal your wallet, someone else would've done it,
Which is a good example of why you can't reason arbitrary bad things with the argument. Because most likely no on else would have stolen your wallet. There is a very big difference between creating arbitrary hypothetical situations and considering realistic very likely consequences of actions.
The video you link e.g is titled "‘If I Don’t Steal [Your Home] Someone Else Will’ Israeli Settler Justifies Forcible Takeover".
But there are some major differences between that and my arguments mainly I consider realistic consequences of blindly changing the (not so perfect) status quo by reducing Oil production in Norway, while the argument in the video creates a hypothetical in normal situations completely unlikely scenario. Furthermore in the video, it's used to justify something which is normally considered a crime and where you force someone else. While here it's neither about a crime nor about forcing anyone (selling Oil is not a crime and not causing climate change, burning it does. And no one is forced to buy the Oil.), if anything Norway tries to convince people to buy less Oil in total on the long term as far as I known.
And sure there are similarities no one will reduce Oil production (implicitly causing Oil usage) if everyone always argues that then other will increase Oil production.
Or that would be the case if we move it in a hypothetical scenario where everyone would argue that way. But in reality we are in a different scenario where some parties don't use such arguments but base their decisions on completely different factors, which makes it predetermined how they would act in the hypothetical scenario in turn nullifying the idea that everyone is shifting blame onto everyone else, making this a very different situation then the ones you refer to.
And yes, you know try to extend it to the settler arguing that the Israeli governments action are predetermined and as such it's the same. And indeed there is a argument to be made to blame the Israeli government and not the specific settler(s), but you then can blame the settler not for settling but for supporting evilish decisions of their government.
But at this point we side-tracked the discussion to a degree which kills is.
The point I want to make is that there is a major difference between considering likely outcomes of actions and trying to choose the best action in your power (or in this case Norway power) and creating hypothetical scenarios to justify something which in your own moral system is normally considered a crime.
Sure this approaches might sometimes look similar in their outcomes but their are very different in their approach and philosophy.
E.g. in one case you satisfy demand while trying to not increase demand with to low prices while trying to reduce demand in in turn then reduce production in the same degree. I.e. something which iff done right would be generally considered good. While on the other hand you hypocritically try to find excuses for your actions (hypocritically because the person using the argument would probably not fine with their house being stolen).
The commonalities are (1) state capitalism (2) harmful effects.
But the analogy kinda stops there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli...
Instead of trying to tackle all the problems with this piece, I will just address the most glaring ones:
1) Norway is a nation, not a company. It does not have maximization of shareholder value as it's primary driving force. Yes, there is the sovereign wealth fund. But, that is about managing the assets that have been collected. It has nothing to say about where the assets come from.
The author conflates these things, when they are completely separate. In fact, the wealth fund is in the process of divesting itself from fossil-fuel related entities. [1]
2) Speaking of Norway being a country -- it has 5 million people and dozens of political parties. Most of those people and political parties do not actually support further north sea exploration [2]. Much like in the US and most other countries I suppose, the actions of the government do not represent the will of the majority of the people.
3) Given that Norway is well aware of the climate crisis, they have spent considerable effort trying to make their economy less dependent on oil. Since 2008 or so, the share of oil as a percentage of total exports has been on the decline [3]. This has been the result of a conscious effort and set of policies to diversify the economy. Norway wants to stop being dependent on oil because they know it is shitty for the climate and it is an economically precarious position to be in.
And yet, this piece suggests Norway should just drop oil all at once and further suggests that it has not made any effort at all to do so in the past. In fact, a lot of money and political will is being exerted into this very endeavor [4]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-swf-oil-idUSKBN1WG...
[2] https://naturvernforbundet.no/lofoten-vesteralen-og-senja/hv...
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1025405/share-of-crude-o...
Your citation is about political parties, and the majority of political parties would not translate to the majority of actual voters.
> Much like in the US and most other countries I suppose, the actions of the government do not represent the will of the majority of the people.
Maybe get a better source for the position you claim is held by Norwegian citizens before speculating on this.
The views of the parties express anywhere from complete support to complete opposition to further drilling, with some compromise positions as well. If you compare that with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_N... how much each party has representation in parliament at the moment, you will see that a large swath of the population is opposed to it.
However, because of the way that the parliament system works here, this issue is not correctly represented in current policy.
The only way to show actual public support/opposition for the issue is to do just that, everything else is not really a valid substitute. You may be right about the actual public support, but without actually showing the data for it, it remains speculation.
> However, because of the way that the parliament system works here, this issue is not correctly represented in current policy.
How would you change the system to avoid such a misrepresentation of public opinion in actual policy/legislation? If there is such massive public support, what would be the fallout from just not approving north sea exploration?
I believe this is the most egregious charge in the article, which turns out to be true
https://europeangreens.eu/news/norway-opens-arctic-more-dril...
The Arctic Circle being "most sensitive to climate change", doesn't mean drilling for gas and oil in the Article Circle is a cause or any significant factor to this sensitivity (over drilling anywhere else).
In other words:
(1) oil and gas can cause/contribute to climate change
(2) The Article Circle might be most sensitive to climate change
(3) Drilling for gas and oil and thus increasing production will contribute to climate change (after that oil is consumed)
(4) Drilling has impact of its own (like spills) that might damage the Article Circle
But that doesn't mean that drilling in a sensitive to climate change area incurs any more climate change impact to that area over drilling in SA or Texas or wherever.
Climate change impact is about the increased production - not about where the drill happened.
But not a "climate change" related one that's tied to the drilling area (for that only the increased consumption would matter, which would happen elsewhere).
> It is therefore of huge concern that the Norwegian Ministrer of Petroleum and Energy, Tord Lien from the Progressive Party (FrP), is set to announce the opening of the 23rd licensing round for exploration in 57 new drilling locations in the Arctic, further north than ever.
-- From your link
The other countries mentioned are much bigger, not to mention that Nigeria is going to see massive population growth this century. You don't want a country that's projected to have 800 million people to get addicted to fossil fuels.
The main point of the article is right of course, the way it's communicated is terrible.
I had to look this out, and it checks [1][2]. Of course, as with any forecast, anything can happen. I hope this turns out to be a bad forecast. Right now, Africa is in need of a lot of things, but this wouldn't be one of those.
---
[1] https://www.populationpyramid.net/nigeria/2100/ [2] https://theconversation.com/why-nigeria-cant-fix-its-develop...
If you were looking for changes from the first world, you'd start there.
I agree that non-first world countries are the where you'll see the most growth in oil consumption.
So, not in the top-10 even, exactly as the parent noted.
And even if they were in, say, fifth place, such a ranking would tell us nothing about their impact, without knowing the distribution. In a top-heavy distribution, for example, if the top 1 makes 10,000 tons and top 5 makes 100 tons for example, it would still be as if the fifth largest produce doesn't matter at all, impact-wise.
>and outside the Middle East the 1st per capita.
Why would "per capita" production have any relevance at all?
It's incredibly relevant.
First, without it you have no good measuring stick. It just all depends on the unit (state, member state, country, nation, union, OPEC) you choose for measurement.
Second, and more significantly, changes are more feasible with smaller populations. It's easier for Dublin to make a change than Ireland, and easier for Ireland, than the EU, and easier for the EU than the world.
To answer your earlier point, Norway is ~2.5% of global production. Texas is ~2%.
When it comes to climate change impact the measuring stick is "barrels of oil produced".
Per capita doesn't come into play at all.
Sure it's the 13th biggest oil producer, sure its wealth comes from Oil and Gas but it does try to reduce the impact by trying to reduce the long term global Oil consumption. Do they maybe sometimes also follow other interest, maybe? But does it nullify the point that it tries to long term reduce global Oil consumption? Not really.
Furthermore and most important Norway stopping Oil and Gas production would not help. You need to reduce the demand first, or else, with rising prices Oil production in likely more problematic countries with likely more environmental damage would largely increase. Leading to a situation where maybe we short term have slightly less Oil usage due to higher prices, but in total a higher climate and environmental damage in the long term.
It also would make Western countries more dependent on non Western countries, which is not a climate aspect but still not grate.
The same with expecting the low-per capita producers to change first.
That the point, that's why Norway reducing Oil production will make no difference.
> The same with expecting the low-per capita producers to change first.
But what matters is not Oil production (as we can't expect major improvements here due to the point above) but consumption and Norway does invest a lot into improving this internally and externally. And while I don't have any stats I would not be surprised if the per-capita Oil consumption is pretty good on a global ranking.
I mean the fact that Norway not only internally but also externally tries to improve the situation around Oil consumption show that they are not Hypocritical but instead try to balance differently problems in a reasonable way. Sure maybe not perfect, but nothing is really perfect.
Is this the first time you've heard of Norway? It's one and the same. Statoil is majority owned by the Norwegian government.
(Which isn’t to say the right wing kind of ignoring or blatantly lying about climate change is better…)
(Yes, I understand that these particular incentives result from any situation of competition for resources, and aren't inherently related to the economic system. However, the point is more general.)
https://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/facts/companies-production-...
While gas and oil might be on the way out replaced by newables, they wont be anywhere near enough capacity to build, carry, install, and serve while maintaining the same levels (of even half-reduced levels) energy consumption for decades.
That is, oil and gas can't just be stopped using overnight, and we switch over to renewables and electric energy and so on. It can't even be stopped in 1 or 2 decades, it will take much more. Even going with nuclear, it would take decades to get new factories up and running starting from today, and then there's all the other needs for oil...
One example: one billion+ of gas-powered cars wont magically dissapear overnight (nor it's globally a case of replacing them with electric cars in 5-10 years, the way some western consumer is used to buy "the new model"). And that's just a very small example of such needs (add public, state, industrial, and other uses).
So if Norway didn't invest in oil and gas, others definitely would need to, to feel a huge gap.
> Moreover, the government has recently decided to expand exploration and production of gas and oil in one of the areas that the very same government acknowledges are most sensitive to climate change—the Arctic Circle.
My understanding is that the fossil fuels that may be extracted from the arctic circle would be exported and processed elsewhere. The arctic circle is not going to be more affected by climate change just because the fossil fuels causing climate change came from under the arctic circle, right? Or am I missing something here?
Here's a list [1] of a few other reasons on why this is a bad idea.
[1] https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/top-10-reasons-why-arctic-oil...
The article was very unclear about this - it implied fossil fuel exploration in the arctic is bad because the arctic is "most sensitive to climate change", but what it really should have said is "least able to deal with the environmental damage that inevitably accompanies drilling".
Am I still correct that as far as climate change affecting the arctic, burning one barrel of oil extracted from the arctic is the same as burning one barrel of oil extracted from (e.g.) the middle east?
If Norway really cared deeply about climate change, they could halt fossil extraction, raising prices globally, thus reducing demand, and encouraging migration to alternatives.
They're the world leader in electric cars, for example.
The thrust of the article is that somehow they should change worldwide oil production (which they have little control over) rather than domestic oil use (which they are working on with relative success).
Simply put, the writer is either completely mad or a cynical shill of some sort.
There are about 5 million Norwegians, and 9 million people in New Jersey.
Would anyone care if 1/2 of New Jersey “was the world leader” in electric vehicles, or would you consider that some side effect of other variables?
“Smaller rich country has new vehicles that work well in short ranges” doesn’t really have the same ring to it.
The chargers are an amazing enough feat: So much infrastructure has been built. Most of Norway is sparsely populated and getting the proper infrastructure has been really important. I've only lived here 8 years, and have seen an increase in that short time.
New Jersey has a much higher population density, and though that leads to its own challenges, it makes the sort of infrastructure you need for electric cars a little bit easier.
Oil rigs hundreds of miles into the ocean look very clean when you can't even see them from the beach. Gasoline cars look much worse, so they're what gets addressed.
Home heating is another thing that is hard to see, yet is very bad for the environment. Eco houses that are super insulated and heated just with the body heat of the occupants have been around for 50+ years, but we still burn oil and gas to heat modern homes because nobody sees...
Saying that, many homes could use better insulation in their roofs. It’s interesting on a snowy day to see which homes have good and bad insulation.
A huge step forward in energy savings.
I don't really understand the hypocrisy argument. Would it be preferable if Norway continued to produce oil while not doing any work towards climate change? The current oil situation in Norway is a huge political topic and several of the more left wing parties are for stopping oil production - but the population and political system as a whole isn't ready for it. It seems that the current compromise is investing in green energy while making the transition towards non-fossil fuel based economy in the future. The Norwegian population and political system isn't a monolith and the hypocrisy argument just doesn't make sense to me considering different factions promote the different actions.
A bit OT but I've had some discussions with people who seem to care more about perceived hypocrisy and double standards than they care about the actual outcomes of actions. It's morally just if a business ruins the environment or lives of people if they believe that they are in the right about doing it. On the other hand they are morally unjust if they see the issues they are causing and take steps to minimize the externalities. I've chalked this up to a more deontological instead of consequentialist moral stance but I still find it a bit confusing.
They cannot convince anyone to reduce production. And you don't fight climate change reducing production. What needs to be reduced is consumption, and Norway doing just like that.
But "hypocrisy" aside, the article is generally spot on. Climate change will be addressed by lowering incomes or standards of living anywhere in the world. Schemes to make people give up comforts, personal transport or their houses are going to fail. Schemes that aim to simply decarbonize existing lives (EVs, heat pumps, air capture fuels, carbon capture, novel protein) will succeed. Essentially, convincing people to switch to carbon free alternatives (EVs, protein) is about as much as you can expect from people.
Edit: deleted a bunch of hyperbole
Surely oil used in a newer car must be a lot better for the environment than an old car due to advancements in exhaust filters?
Or a modern fossil fuel power plant with good filters.
To me, a single source of emission with high quality filtering (modern fossil fuel power plant?) seems better than many smaller sources spread around the world with varying filter qualities (cars)
But in writing that question, I think I got the answer. With what money would the company buy the Chinese goods? They can’t pay with European money if there is nothing the Chinese want to buy from Europe. And they can’t acquire Chinese money without selling them something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund#Largest_...
Mostly it's the same as one of the previous stages: "pretend dealing with climate change will cost everyone lots of money to put them off doing so" but I like the references to the East India Company. Very worldly and vaguely progressive sounding so ideal to disguise arguments that amount to "dealing with climate change is too expensive lets not bother".
Of course they provide no evidence of this claim (because it's not true), just a weirdly stretched metaphor and a suggestion that taxing carbon will anger the proles and anyone who believes in climate change is a big hypocrite.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15453-z
> A strategy that informs on countries’ potential losses due to lack of climate action may facilitate global climate governance. Here, we quantify a distribution of mitigation effort whereby each country is economically better off than under current climate pledges. This effort-sharing optimizing approach applied to a 1.5 °C and 2 °C global warming threshold suggests self-preservation emissions trajectories to inform NDCs enhancement and long-term strategies. Results show that following the current emissions reduction efforts, the whole world would experience a washout of benefit, amounting to almost 126.68–616.12 trillion dollars until 2100 compared to 1.5 °C or well below 2 °C commensurate action. If countries are even unable to implement their current NDCs, the whole world would lose more benefit, almost 149.78–791.98 trillion dollars until 2100. On the contrary, all countries will be able to have a significant positive cumulative net income before 2100 if they follow the self-preservation strategy.