11–20 of 172 posts
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.
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?
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.
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...
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.
The analogy doesn't hold for me; Norway is not immune to the consequences of climate change.