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Is Norway the New East India Company?

branko2f7.substack.com

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Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#31

Post by paulddraper »

londons_explore wrote: post #18

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…

Moderns homes have drastically increased heating efficiency.

A huge step forward in energy savings.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#32

Post by falomor »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #15

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".…

What can I read to understand how dealing with climate change won't be uncomfortably expensive?

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#33

Post by dash2 »

martythemaniak wrote: post #24

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.…

Did you mean "Climate change will not be addressed by..."?

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#34

Post by paulddraper »

ttul wrote: post #13

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…

> Someone has to produce oil and gas. It might as well be...

Drill baby drill

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#35

Post by progre »

BurningFrog wrote: post #20
krona wrote: post #3

The analogy doesn't hold for me; Norway is not immune to the consequences of climate change.

As a subarctic country with little sea level land, they have little to fear from a warmer climate.

One scenario for Scandinavia is that the Gulf stream collapses eventually and we get substantially colder climate.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#36

Post by coldtea »

I call BS on the whole premise.

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.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#37

Post by Robotbeat »

paulddraper wrote: post #25
teslafire124 wrote: post #6

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.

> This article is so quick to blame a national government when the problem is squarely on oil and gas companies. Is this the first time you've heard of Norway? It's one and the same. Statoil is majority owned by the Norwegian government.

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…)

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#38

Post by likecarter »

mikelward wrote: post #14

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'…

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.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#39

Post by lenkite »

mikelward wrote: post #14

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'…

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.
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