Both invest (almost?) exclusively in an agency capacity, i.e. they don't directly make any investment decisions other than by shaping what sorts of products they offer.
Why would Norway starve without oil exports? Surely they would figure something else out, its neighbors are not sustained on oil exports so why wouldn't Norway be able to too?
Norway has very diffrent terrain from neighbouring Sweden, she is practically all coastline. Not much easily logged forrest, no big lowland plains for large scale farming
Norway is a tiny country, they are largely irrelevant as far as their consumption habits go regarding climate change at large. They are not even a particularly large exporter of oil, outside of top 10 I think.
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.
>Norway is the 13th biggest oil producer in the world
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?
> 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%.
Given that we are speaking about a global scale event both "outside the Middle East" and especially "per capita" doesn't matter.
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.
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.
> You don't want a country that's projected to have 800 million people to get addicted to fossil fuels.
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.
This article is so quick to blame a national government when the problem is squarely on oil and gas companies. It's not like the oil and gas industries haven't lobbied for decades to cover up climate change evidence so that the world would remain dependent on them. They are the ones who ensure that the biggest polluting nations enact any kind of significant climate change reform.
Equinor (formerly Statoil) is only one of operators, although all of them are taxed by the state. And while two thirds of Equinor's equity are held by the state, it's a public company.
The difference is that Norway is not replying to internal demand but external demand. They have reduced their own need for fossil fuels. The issue is that other countries are extremely dependent on fossil fuels due to before stated lobbying efforts. The bigger, wealthier countries do not take climate change seriously and continue to consume high amounts of fossil fuel. They need to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels.
Yeah, this is a big problem I have with a lot of left wing climate criticism: they blame capitalism for climate change as if nationalizing the industry would make any difference. If anything, having the companies be privately owned puts extra barriers between the companies and the regulators, reducing (in theory, at least) the odds of regulatory capture.
(Which isn’t to say the right wing kind of ignoring or blatantly lying about climate change is better…)
Pedantic note: nationalising an industry doesn't always affect the incentives that result from capitalism. Sometimes it does (because it has to deal with the externalities, so the government would lose out if it kept the industry behaving like that), but in cases where the harm is international and the benefit is national, the incentives are the same.
(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.)
Reduction in production has to follow reduction in demand. Or as an agreement between all major producers. If Norway was to unilaterally stop production today, the slack would be filled by russian gas.
The comparison to the East India Company is a bit of stretch to say the least, but it certainly seems hypocritical to continue to push fossil fuels internationally while eschewing them domestically.
If Norway really cared deeply about climate change, they could halt fossil extraction, raising prices globally, thus reducing demand, and encouraging migration to alternatives.
Norway is perhaps the best run petro state in the history of the world. To avoid Dutch Disease, whereby an economy becomes dependent on a particular commodity, Norway long ago decided to invest its considerable oil wealth in assets located outside of Norway, building a massive sovereign wealth fund that will provide income to Norwegians long after the oil is all gone.
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.
Both are to blame but there is a long history of the "blame free" variety of African leaders getting assassinated or "regime changed" by external forces if they don't cooperate.
I wonder how Norway would look if they were constantly under the same threat.
Royal Dutch Shell is headquartered in the Netherlands and registered in the UK, and both countries are part of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention that criminalizes the bribery of foreign public officials.
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?
This may be an acceptable attitude to some, but it is a shamefully craven way to make money.
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.
…no, it’s shamefully craven behaviour by the woeful Nigerian government who couldn’t be bothered to act in their citizens’ best interest in even the most basic ways.
Shell is a corporation like any other and will not hold itself to moral standards unless forced to by other entities.
People wrongly assume that colonisation effectively ended after the 2nd world wars.
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.
I was just going to comment that Nigeria's wealth is not so much "distributed within Nigeria" as it is expropriated by the Nigerian élites and given to their Western partners. And bribery is fundamental to that process.
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.
> 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.
I read the non-fiction book "The Taking of Getty Oil" about a 1970s series of oil company mergers and acquisitions, and the length that the oil negotiators go to, to include and pay (bribe?) the national leaders is obvious over and over.. The USA and its oil market partners like Shell had been bitten by overseas power dynamics multiple times, and they specifically evolved strategy post-British Colonialism ..
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.
> 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.
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.
This. If only every other country with oil managed their wealth with such good intentions and for the common good the whole world would most certainly be way far ahead in getting rid of much of our dependency on it. So no, I do not think that selling oil to oil dependent countries is the same as selling opium. They have the same knowledge, means and even more motivation (no freaking oil) to get their shite together and follow the same conversion Norway has been undergoing for almost half a century now. What, do you think their fight is that they just grew a conscience yesterday and decided to replace all their petrodollars with Teslas? They freaking groomed generations of environmentally conscious citizens with all around free access to the best education to become great scientists and engineers to fight off this dependency. In and out of their country. They imported some of our best research scientists which were struggling to make a living out of their work and did not even care about it (At least until they reached their mid 30s and tried to start a family). They now own and live in literally million dollar mansions because their research efforts paid off by a country acknowledging their value. As they should. They were even able to monetize this fight for the environment, making good bucks from it. The fight for our freaking oxygen and clean water. Which shouldn't need any monetary incentive by the way, in case that is not obvious enough. In my mind they are the best kind of society you can get nowadays. I do appreciate the point of view comparing them with freaking vicious enslaving East India trading company and I am sure there is people with that mentality in their numbers but... Bitch, please.
The United States is the world's largest producer. Canada is about fourth. Norway is about 11th. The United Kingdom is about 17th.
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?
I'm not sure it's that easy: if you just reduce consumption but don't touch production, someone with less scruples than you can buy (slightly) cheaper oil and use it.
I guess the big deal is to come up with alternatives that can compete on cost with oil?
It will definitely have to match or exceed performance based on cost.
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.
> Not enough money for renewables + battery storage. Not enough money for nuclear or hydro.
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.
Forcing reduced consumptipn will lower costs of alternative energy sources. It's already happening anyway, but governments can enact policies that accelerate this trend.
How would you cope with food prices rising 10x in cost ? And the famines ? And the breakdown of law and order accompanied with the failure of most industry and the military. ? Please propose a solution along with your oil-ban utopia.
A sub-25 reduction over several decades might be doable. But we will need to invent brand-new industrial processes and change world-wide practices. Because modern Agricultural Industry is deeply tied to Oil today and that dependence is barely reducing.
We’re already reducing significantly per capita, without the desastrous consequences you decry. Oil consumption is essentially stagnant in the US since 2000 (1) while the population has grown by 50,000,000 (2), i.e. by ~17.8%
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...)
Huh. I thought this was a joke (moving a 100k tonne cargo ship via sail), but apparently there are actually some prototypes. Though its more like Sail assistance than pure sail.
Why would food costs increase 10x? It’s not particularly hard to make ammonia fertilizer with renewables. Ammonia is made using hydrogen already (not fossil fuels directly, as is mistakenly believed by many), it’s just that usually that comes from natural gas. The price of ammonia might increase a bit in the near term as we make it with clean hydrogen, but it wouldn’t increase food prices 10x. Secondly, electric tractors are a thing and that wouldn’t be too hard, either (and you can use ammonia as fuel for more traditional combine and tractor engines if you want).
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...
You absolutely don’t need oil to make that. In fact usually it’s made with natural gas. But it’s easy to make hydrogen using water and renewable electricity. That’s what fuels almost all hydrogen vehicles.
The university of Minnesota has had a pilot plant for wind to ammonia for over a decade now.
AFAIK China is the world's largest producer of Ammonia (32%. on checking wikipedia).
"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"
I don't understand how your interesting info about China making Hydrogen from gas (that it makes from coal) supports your point that you need oil to make hydrogen and so if you ban oil (which I don't particularly think we need to do) civilization and specifically farming would collapse? Isn't that a bit melodramatic as well as wrong?
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.
It’s not that secret. fossil fuel companies are pushing “blue hydrogen” (ie regular fossil fuel produced hydrogen plus carbon capture) pretty aggressively. Of course, you can just not do the carbon capture step to save cost, and boom, you’re still using fossil fuels with climate impact just as bad as before.
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.
There was even a book authored on this "Eating Oil: Energy Use In Food Production" in that era that showed how reliant agriculture is on oil and how close the first world was to food crisis.
But there wasn’t a food crisis. So if I understand you correctly, the economy is resilient enough for a sudden, externally imposed oil shortage, but if we decide it ourselves and give us a few years to prepare, the economy, and indeed society, will collapse?
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.
I find such "pragmatic" viewpoints on climate action quite amusing as in defining what is or isn't feasible, they take social and political aspects as hard constraints but nature forces as negotiable.
From a game theoretic perspective - fossil fuels will be depleted. Even if the US reduced its consumption to zero, other countries, as independent players that want to maximize their benefit will be glad to take over and enjoy the effects of reduced demand and price.
This means that there are two ways to deal with it:
1. Force all countries to reduce use. To make this really worldwide, this can only worked by force, economical or military (i.e. a world cop). Unfortunately, even if we had that, it is not a stable solution since the short term benefits of using these fuels create constant political pressure.
2. Mitigate the emissions, for example by carbon sequestration. I'm a strong believer in technological progress and our ability to reduce the cost exponentially, the tricky part is to make profitable at any cost.
3. Direct the limited fossil fuel supplies towards economical uses that do not have the same negative impact. For example, by encouraging consumption of more plastics. Plastics essentially trap the carbon in the oil into a very stable form, essentially sequestering the carbon in the oil without first going into the atmosphere.
I don't think even my great grandchildren would see the end of oil if we were to allow consumption to continue as it is today. There is an immense amount of reserves in the world.
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.
That’s option #1 above. The problem is the instability of it as economic incentives continuously push you in the direction of increased consumption / changing public policy.
> And maybe higher prices would spur more exploration?
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.
All you have to do is make oil more valuable. There are many options for that. Gold is valuable because it’s a legal form of banking reserve collateral. If the World Bank did that for oil reserves, petro states would lend reserves to banks instead of pumping it out.
But of course this has been tried before, most recently in 2009-2011. I’ll leave the details as an exercise to the reader.
In the non oil producing countries, the cost of consumption adds to the fiscial deficit. They even have huge incentive to move away, but the alternative has to be cheaper or open IP. The producers who have a cash cow, have no reason to stop production even if they agree on the environmental issues.
This seems like an exciting new phase of climate change denial.
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.
Dealing with climate change will cost money. The article is suggesting that if climate change activists want to be successful, they need to acknowledge that and start talking about cost-benefit trade-offs. The argument is, explicitly, that this is a precondition for effective political activism. If you don't want to do that, and if you want to kid yourself that transitioning to a carbon-free economy can be done without spending money, fine, but there's no need to misrepresent the original argument.
> 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.
If they want to make the biggest impact they should still sell the oil but invest in technology that might mitigate climate change. Playing defense when your overall impact on climate change is so small is a poor choice.
Norway is absolutely shifting away from fossil fuels themselves for domestic use.
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.
Driving through the mountains here in Norway this past week, I saw plenty of electric cars and plenty of charging stations along the way, no matter if I was off in the countryside or not. They do well enough for vacation, so I'm not sure what the problem is.
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.
It’s a single charge for an modern EV side to side, it’s long, but populated area to populated area it would be almost impossible to run a vehicle dead on the highway.
The problem will never be the seller, its the demand thats problematic. Solve the problem of demand with suitable alternatives and you have solved global warming. Of course blaming those who produce and sell is easier but they're selling it to someone too.
The root of this issue is that everyone is doing what they can to appear clean and eco friendly without much regard for actually being clean.
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...
Wouldn’t a home with that type of insulation be rather unhealthy to live in over time? Homes are designed to “breath” - you not only want to circulate air but also prevent mold, etc from taking form.
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.
> 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.
I believe this is the most egregious charge in the article, which turns out to be true
> A recent study conducted by researchers at London University College concluded that globally, a third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and over 80% of current coal reserves should remain unused from 2010 to 2050 in order to meet the target of 2 °C. Specifically, the study concluded, all oil and gas reserves north of the Arctic Circle should remain in the ground to halt dangerous climate change.
> 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.
This is what bothers me about Norway. They have become rich by harvesting abundant natural resources, and now spend that money to try and stop other countries from exploiting their own. It seems hypocritical to me, especially because they present it as being altruistic when they shame poor countries for trying to provide for their people.
Not many around. USSR is gone, and China doesn't do this "hollier than thou" facade, plus the prerequisite is that the superpower "now spend that money to try and stop other countries from exploiting their own"
I live in Poland, our government love coal ("our black gold" as they call it) and I never heard anything from Norwegian government about this. I don't listen/watch our government radios/tv, so the message should come to me as any other related to climate catastrophe. I'm not saying that you're lying or anything, but I would love to see some examples of this shaming.
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).
I think getting off of fossil fuels should be a worldwide priority, and expanding fossil fuel exploration is a bad way to spend our time and effort as a species. But I don't understand this line:
> 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?
I think the point is partially imprecise (the Arctic is actually particularly sensitive to spills, in addition to its sensitivity to climate change) as well as just kind of highlighting the irony/hypocrisy of the situation. “Well sweet, the Arctic is gonna be ravaged by climate change, but I suppose that makes it easier to extract oil and gas and accelerate that climate change! Woot for us!”
I think what you're missing is that oil extraction doesn't happen in a vacuum. The externalities of extracting oil from the arctic circle would be massively detrimental to the local environment. Not to mention the fact that any accidental oil spill or a well blowout would wreck havoc on the biodiversity and local species in the region mostly because according to the consensus opinion of many scientists, "we do not have the technology, nor the infrastructure, to deal with the specific challenges of a disaster in this region."
Here's a list [1] of a few other reasons on why this is a bad idea.
Ahh, this makes sense for why we wouldn't want to drill in the arctic, and I hadn't seen these arguments before, so thank you.
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?
Others have pointed out the ecological reasons. It’s also a sizable chunk of oil and gas that’s currently not very well developed. Once the infrastructure of arctic extraction is built up, the marginal costs of extraction would likely decrease making it easier to extract more oil from the region and consequently harder to keep the carbon in the ground. It’s easier to block new extraction than to shut down an existing development that has jobs and investment dollars committed to it.
Let's give them some credit here - they've done quite a lot to move the EV industry forward and widespread EV adoption will wreak havoc on the oil industry. Exactly whom and how badly it'll hit is hard to predict, but Norway will be able to take a hit regardless.
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.
"If we want to really confront –as opposed to just talking—climate change we should first, be rid of extreme hypocrisy (as this one), and second, design policies that would be acceptable to the population."
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.
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.
The real issue is the marketing of "oil and gas are evil". No they are not...they are essential. At the same time, the marketing of "renewable energy is good" continues, yet overtly hides and masks the ugly, toxic side of it.
Domestic consumption is tiny in Norway, not least of all because of their small population. They are something like 13th-14th largest in the world for exports, Saudi is about 10x larger at number 1. The planet doesnt care about per-capita, the sooner the environmental lobby figured this out the better, and I mean that sincerely.
This has to be the most insane take I’ve ever read.
There is no shortage of would-be fossil fuel producers if the price is high enough. Norway, on the other hand, by restricting consumption of fossils pays “early adoption fees” for greener tech. That’s not the most direct way to invest oil dollars in renewables, but it’s certainly one, and it works.
Surely, higher oil prices would be good for the environment, though. While I don't think one necessarily has to agree with the arguments in the article, this is hardly an insane take.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 193 ms ] threadEdit: deleted a bunch of hyperbole
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.
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.
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...
https://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/facts/companies-production-...
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.)
If Norway really cared deeply about climate change, they could halt fossil extraction, raising prices globally, thus reducing demand, and encouraging migration to alternatives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund#Largest_...
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.
Drill baby drill
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.
Shell is going to push its luck as far as it can with every country
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Ac...
I wonder how Norway would look if they were constantly under the same threat.
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?
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Nigeria
Shell is a corporation like any other and will not hold itself to moral standards unless forced to by other entities.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
"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
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?
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.
(1) https://www.worldometers.info/oil/us-oil/#oil-consumption (2) https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/popu...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
A huge step forward in energy savings.
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.
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...
> 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 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).
> 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?
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.
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.
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.