Norway is wealthy because of oil. Can it give up fossil fuels?
csmonitor.com
csmonitor.com
What they see is the old system of explore and exploit.
Hold our currencies.
And this rational fear is becuase our currencies continue to devalue.
You did ask.
Which, ironically has plagued South America for quite a while - The reason Colombia and Venezuela have similar flags is they had the same wars and fight for freedom. They freed themselves from Spain and then became the institutions we know today. Corrupt, semi corrupt nation states, not on a national level but influence can be bought.
Africa no idea, but that's the thing, was it fully rejection?
Not every country can be the United States in terms of fighting for freedom, gaining independence and being successful. You can still go into many parts of New England and see lots of British influence.
Also Florida, and see much Spanish influence.
It isn't as much as "export" but building, having a plan and the problem then (and possibly event today) is that the people who are successful, ethical, moral and such are living comfortable lives.
Prisoners were most of the people that were on the Spanish ships that sailed to Venezuela and Colombia and built much of that, alongside prisoners were political refugees such as Jewish people and people who were destitute. Religious political refugees too, bad enough stuff but not exactly criminal.
You can kinda align it today with the people who are ground on troops with USA in AFghanistan, where we exported our way of life for 20 years.
Overnight, erased. The people there didn't want it, we didn't leave anyone part of the military behind and whomever had some influence slid into power or fled for their life.
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I don't even know where to begin w/ Africa, I'm not up to date on their History or such besides some/much used to belong to the French.
I had to read this a few times to be sure this really was the point you were trying to make.
One of many examples on how this is absolutely abhorrently untrue:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free...
When Philips struck at Ekofisk some very smart people in the US/UK came to help them develop.
Norway was (by their own account) a country of scattered fishing villages.
By whose account, again? I grew up in Norway just before the oil boom started, and I never thought of the country that way. We had lumber, we had cheap hydroelectric power that we used to process aluminium and make fertiliser, and we were practically a global superpower in terms of ocean shipping. True, we weren’t rich in the way we are now, far from it – but weren’t that poor either.
A big part of our success as an oil producing nation is that we weren’t simply letting the (mostly) American oil producers just come in and do as they pleased; instead, we insisted on building our own expertise and running the business on our own terms. We hit many snags along the way, but it has paid off in the long run.
I think you missed that they have tons of hydro power available which is iirc cheaper or at least on par with burning fossil fuel, so they don't even need oil. Cheap power basically runs down their hills. (Similar to how in Iceland the hot water just spawns out of the ground. Yes I'm a little jealous.)
Only the best prepared attackers can wrestle control of those oilfields from the government and their delegates.
Whereas if oil is over land, all it takes is a few determined people to shut down production for weeks.
Not sure where they got that climate/environment was a big issue for this campaign, because it hasn't really been. The most outspoken "green" party even got a fairly mediocre result and fell below the very important 4 % limit. This will probably be seen as a sign that the Norwegian people is in no hurry to completely stop our petroleum industry right away.
In any case, what we do here won't have any significant impact on global environment. However, if we lead the way then perhaps others will follow; the big question is what the most effective course of action to achieve that will be.
Soon there will be nowhere to sequester carbon, no new space to plant trees, and oil and gas extraction will cease.
Along the way, tremendous funds will be poured into carbon collection and sequesteration technology, and energy prices will rise, forcing investment into alternatives.
> In any case, what we do here won't have any significant impact on global environment.
> With their hydro-powered energy grid and electric cars, they are among the world’s most enthusiastic consumers of green power, but decades of exporting oil and gas means this nation of 5.3 million enjoys a generous welfare buffer, and sits on the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund.
It was easy for them to give up fossil fuels, but then they simply export those fossil fuels to other countries who will burn them anyway.
Its “just say no” with cartel scale sales operations.
(Sacklarian? Desackler-capitalism?)
Whether this matters depends on what you're counting. The main problem is that if you count this Norwegian electricity that Germany buys towards Germany's renewable energy percentage, you shouldn't also count it towards Norway's or it gets double-counted. One approach is to just ignore the EECS as fiction and only count local generation, in which case Norway does look fairly clean (and Germany less clean than some numbers would suggest). A different approach is to consider stuff sold on the EECS as actually swapped for other energy (at least on paper) and compute a "residual mix" after the sales. In that way of accounting, Norway doesn't have a very green residual mix: https://medium.com/@skloesch/why-norwegian-and-icelandic-and...
Not that Norway is alone in this hypocrisy. Other countries nearby such as Sweden for instance with its arms manufacturing industry (instead of oil) while being seen and promoting themselves as super liberal peace-mongers.
https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feab...
Can they give up exporting it too though? I doubt that will happen.
In any case, if we stopped exporting oil products now, the only real effect would be that supply goes down, driving prices up for Qatar, the US, Russia and other major exporters -- who each have significantly higher emissions (per capita) than Norway. Instead we are spending money on finding ways to decrease demand, to make the step away from petroleum globally. If you ask me, that's a far better, and more realistic, solution.
How much would Norway lose if they pivoted to exporting plastics instead of crude oil for burning?
I don’t think Europe is too big on plastics (or ammonia fertilizer) production because they really need the gas for local use and wouldn’t want to depend on Russian gas any more than they do.
"an end to Norwegian production would have a net negative effect on global emissions. Demand would stay the same, and cleaner Norwegian production would be replaced by other countries with higher emissions"
While these things might well be true, there is a distinct and corrosive 'hypocrisy factor' in Norway shifting it's society to sustainable energy, all paid for by continuing fossil fuel exports to the rest of the world.
Norway could prove it's green leadership credentials, and send a very clear rallying message to the rest of the world, by starting to shut down this industry, perhaps redirecting it to deep geothermal, etc.
It is interesting that some precious resources, such as fossil fuels, are also a great liability. In retrospect, I can think of quite a few nations that would have seen far less foreign interference and invasion had they had less fossil fuel reserves. A Canadian tribe also once famously tried to hide their precious metals from Europeans for fear of invasion.
However, it makes more sense for us to export our petroleum than to let supply decrease, driving up prices for the Russian exports.
Is a lot being sold at a steep discount to particular industries? Or is there a huge dependence on resistive heating or?
https://www.nationmaster.com/nmx/ranking/aluminum-production
Hah, that's good. It IS nuanced, or rather, not a simple matter, but it seems that unless you personally feel the threat of getting cut off from the gravy train, you are likely to toss around simplistic slogans which environmentalists and "green politicians" are notorious for. But it's likely that in the latter case, this is just pandering, like the whole "tax the rich" theater.
It will be very interesting to watch what Norway does, and telling. The proof will be in the pudding.