101–110 of 172 posts
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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.
What major superpower does that remind me of...
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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 sor…
>They're the world leader in electric cars, for example. 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.
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.
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 similarl…
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.
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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 has a lot of fishing going on, it was their main export before oil.
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Spot on. Production cuts would actually lead to more countries with unscrupulous leaders ramping up their own production. We need to focus on consumption. I.e. moving to other sources.
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?
Is it just me or is whole "Is Norway the New East India Company?" a absurdly extrema leap of logic? 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 ag…
The commonalities are (1) state capitalism (2) harmful effects.
But the analogy kinda stops there.
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 supe…
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.
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 similarl…
Is it just me or is whole "Is Norway the New East India Company?" a absurdly extrema leap of logic? 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 ag…
> 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, 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…
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.