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.
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?
> 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.
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.
Please expand on #3, as I’m sure you’re aware that’s very much the opposite of what’s commonly said!
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?
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.
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.
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.
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...
Also: the world isn't particularly efficient with energy input in agriculture, because we don't have to be.
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.
Who is going to make that Ammonia fertilizer without functional industry and oil ? You need oil to produce gaseous hydrogen for the process.
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"
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...
Why would anyone use ammonia as fuel?
Ah yeah, who doesn’t remember the infamous famines and the collapse of police and industry in the U.S. during the oil crisis in the 70s.
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?
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.
Why do you think these things would happen? (Also, how is the military responsible for maintaining law and order?)
The US Navy runs on oil. Without the Navy, say welcome and kneel to large-scale high-seas Piracy, extraordinary human-trafficking, drugs, smuggling, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_Sta...
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.
It's not a proposal, it's a thought exercise.
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.
What makes you think that a sub-25% reduction in oil production would raise food prices by 10x?
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%
(1) https://www.worldometers.info/oil/us-oil/#oil-consumption (2) https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/popu...
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 aggressor).
Sure, we can't say what would have happened if things would have gone different, but we can say that the East India Company might have screwed us over big time.
In case of Norway I don't see that, like at all.
No, you are not alone in rightly assuming that the whole article is bullshit. The whole basis of the article is that East India company did not sell opium in the west, but sold it to the Chinese. And that "similarly" Norway advocates for clean energy but grows wealthy by selling oil and gas. The comparison is illogical because the East India company was the poster boy of imperialism and corporate exploitation. It had its own private army of 250,000+ soldiers that was larger than the British army! It is the only instance I know of a corporate conquering a country (India) and establishing a British colony that it ran for decades. In fact, the exploitation was so perverse that the British government had to step in take control away from them to ensure that India (the jewel of the British crown) did not slip away from their hand because of the greed and cruelty of the East India company. (In the 19th century, they chopped away the hands of Bengal weavers as the clothes they produced were superior in quality, which made it difficult to sell the inferior machine produced British imported garments.)
I'd also like to add that oil and gas are not going to fade away anytime soon as we shift towards "clean energy". There are a lot of petrochemical products that are are manufactured from the oil we drill.
The Dutch East India company ( VOC) did plenty of conquering themselves in present day Indonesia and the Caribbean. And in a more indirect way ( funding rebels, lobbying their government to intervene), so did the United Fruit Company in Central America.
India wasn't really a country, more akin to the various Italian or German ( if we exclude the whole HRE thing) states pre-unification than a country - a bunch of independent-ish entities ruled by princes that were often in alliance or war with each other, and differed somewhat from each other culturally/language-wise/etc. but had plenty of common ground.
India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator --Churchill (b. 1874)
The analogy is not perfect: it doesn't look like Norway is going to start a war to push its product. But I get the comparison: Norway looks pretty hypocritical here to me.
I've heard that before and it's always been a difficult point of view for me to understand.
Could you perhaps describe how rich democracy that both uses and produces oil should behave if it were to be ⓐ not at all hypotcritical ⓑ unremarkably average ⓒ very hypocritical?
You may assume that the there's a spectrum of opinions among the voters on the relevant issues, and ideally that the country has a tradition of choosing policies that suit most voters rather than 50.01%.
ⓐ accept and knowledge both problems and find reasonable compromises while keeping the larger/global picture in mind.
ⓒ Ramp up Oil production as much as possible to sell as much Oil as possible, covertly use money and influence to make people dependent on Oil but in the country and to the press say that Climate Change needs to be stopped and Oil usage needs to degree and make your country less dependent on Oil usage (so that it has no problem when it runs out and so that you can sell more).
ⓒ Some where in between? But I assumed the hypothesis is about countries which produce Oil in a economical relevant amount, so I'm not sure there is a "unremarkable average".
As far as I can tell Norway tries to go with ⓐ but not perfectly 100% commitment, but then expected a perfect type ⓐ approach is IMHO unrealistic. For example as far as I can tell their Arctic(1) expeditions are more about being able to keep their Oil output around the current level if necessary then about ramping it up.
A country which could be saied to go with type ⓒ is Saudi Arabia I think, but I'm have vastly to little knowledge about it to make that judgement.
(1): One note about Arctic Oil mining. There is nothing which makes Arctic Oil mining inherently more climate damaging then non-Artic Oil mining. The reason many see it as a no-go is more related to environmental concerns (which are not the same as climate concerns!). Through there are also arguments about reducing the amount of Oil which can be blasted in our atmosphere by blacklisting Arctic Oil. Either way while there are many reasons to complain about it I also can think about reasons why it might make sense and why I maybe might have done such decision. (Mainly related to increasing geopolitical tensions, increasing influence of China, and the China US conflict.)
What reasonable compromises do you have in mind?
From context you must mean something Norway hasn't done or tried to do (otherwise Norway wouldn't be "pretty hypocritical") and if the word hypocritical is to be meaningful (not "something everyone is all the time"), such compromises must exist.
The Kyoto protocol makes me sad.
EDIT: No, wait, perhaps I get it.
You're not contrasting hypocritical with "not hypocritical" as I thought, but rather with other bad traits, right?
So Norway is spending oil income on things like building Tesla's car business and Wärtsilä's electric ship engines, and that's hypocritical, while (name other country) has a large profitable construction business that burns lots of oil on fixed construction sites, and that country is not spending its tax income on subsidising electric companies that take on Komatsu and Caterpillar. The other country is then (in your opinion) somehow bad, but not hypocriticial. And that's the contrast. Is that it?
a) Either produce and consume oil or don't. If you do, you have to accept the ecological impact and you can't push a story about how your country is morally superior. Sorry, you have to find something else on the basis of which you can feel superior.
b) Just be Norway.
c) Just be Norway, but wage war on governments that refuse to buy oil.
I think it is important to decouple two issues:
1) Is it hypocritical by definition? Yes or no.
2) Does it bother me? Yes or no.
I think it is incredibly juvenile to find their push for sustainable consumption domestically to be a problem. Or, alternatively, incredibly juvenile to consider their nation building and wealth building oil exploration to be more of a problem because they tried to stop consuming it themselves. The oil production won't stop whether they were consumers or not, since that is the constant and their domestic behavior is the variable, then why create an argument based on the presence of the variable?
> 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/the-climate-change-pa...
Not really, Norway reducing Oil production will most likely not affect the climate change, it might even make it worse due to less environmental friendly produced Oil and much less reinvestment of Oil money into trying to reduce the Oil consumption.
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.
> Not really, Norway reducing Oil production will most likely not affect the climate change, it might even make it worse due to less environmental friendly produced Oil and much less reinvestment of Oil money into trying to reduce the Oil consumption.
I find it interesting, this argument of "If we don't do it, someone else will." It can be used to justify any kind of unethical activities, from arms trade to factory farming, and somehow in that logic the Norwegian oil becomes friendly for the environment.
The article's comparison is only an "absurdly extrema leap of logic" if you buy into that kind of magical thinking that can make responsibility disappear.
Imagine me grabbing your wallet out of your pocket and arguing: "If I didn't steal your wallet, someone else would've done it, and they would've been far less polite about it than me, so in the end you're better off with letting me keep it." I guess you'd be okay with that.
> "If we don't do it, someone else will." It can be used to justify any kind of unethical activities,
No, not really.
> Norwegian oil becomes friendly for the environment.
There is a difference between something being friendly for the environment and blindly doing changes without considering there global implication not being help full and maybe even harmful. The world is not black and white.
> magical thinking
I would call it considering the effects of you actions before acting. Instead of blindly acting based on ideology not matter if it's actually helpful or not for the end goal of the ideology.
> If I didn't steal your wallet, someone else would've done it,
Which is a good example of why you can't reason arbitrary bad things with the argument. Because most likely no on else would have stolen your wallet. There is a very big difference between creating arbitrary hypothetical situations and considering realistic very likely consequences of actions.
Not really, its considering the global effects of your actions.
The video you link e.g is titled "‘If I Don’t Steal [Your Home] Someone Else Will’ Israeli Settler Justifies Forcible Takeover".
But there are some major differences between that and my arguments mainly I consider realistic consequences of blindly changing the (not so perfect) status quo by reducing Oil production in Norway, while the argument in the video creates a hypothetical in normal situations completely unlikely scenario. Furthermore in the video, it's used to justify something which is normally considered a crime and where you force someone else. While here it's neither about a crime nor about forcing anyone (selling Oil is not a crime and not causing climate change, burning it does. And no one is forced to buy the Oil.), if anything Norway tries to convince people to buy less Oil in total on the long term as far as I known.
And sure there are similarities no one will reduce Oil production (implicitly causing Oil usage) if everyone always argues that then other will increase Oil production.
Or that would be the case if we move it in a hypothetical scenario where everyone would argue that way. But in reality we are in a different scenario where some parties don't use such arguments but base their decisions on completely different factors, which makes it predetermined how they would act in the hypothetical scenario in turn nullifying the idea that everyone is shifting blame onto everyone else, making this a very different situation then the ones you refer to.
And yes, you know try to extend it to the settler arguing that the Israeli governments action are predetermined and as such it's the same. And indeed there is a argument to be made to blame the Israeli government and not the specific settler(s), but you then can blame the settler not for settling but for supporting evilish decisions of their government.
But at this point we side-tracked the discussion to a degree which kills is.
The point I want to make is that there is a major difference between considering likely outcomes of actions and trying to choose the best action in your power (or in this case Norway power) and creating hypothetical scenarios to justify something which in your own moral system is normally considered a crime.
Sure this approaches might sometimes look similar in their outcomes but their are very different in their approach and philosophy.
E.g. in one case you satisfy demand while trying to not increase demand with to low prices while trying to reduce demand in in turn then reduce production in the same degree. I.e. something which iff done right would be generally considered good. While on the other hand you hypocritically try to find excuses for your actions (hypocritically because the person using the argument would probably not fine with their house being stolen).
It is a bizarre analogy.
The commonalities are (1) state capitalism (2) harmful effects.
But the analogy kinda stops there.
"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli...
We got click-baited by an interesting headline, friends.
Instead of trying to tackle all the problems with this piece, I will just address the most glaring ones:
1) Norway is a nation, not a company. It does not have maximization of shareholder value as it's primary driving force. Yes, there is the sovereign wealth fund. But, that is about managing the assets that have been collected. It has nothing to say about where the assets come from.
The author conflates these things, when they are completely separate. In fact, the wealth fund is in the process of divesting itself from fossil-fuel related entities. [1]
2) Speaking of Norway being a country -- it has 5 million people and dozens of political parties. Most of those people and political parties do not actually support further north sea exploration [2]. Much like in the US and most other countries I suppose, the actions of the government do not represent the will of the majority of the people.
3) Given that Norway is well aware of the climate crisis, they have spent considerable effort trying to make their economy less dependent on oil. Since 2008 or so, the share of oil as a percentage of total exports has been on the decline [3]. This has been the result of a conscious effort and set of policies to diversify the economy. Norway wants to stop being dependent on oil because they know it is shitty for the climate and it is an economically precarious position to be in.
And yet, this piece suggests Norway should just drop oil all at once and further suggests that it has not made any effort at all to do so in the past. In fact, a lot of money and political will is being exerted into this very endeavor [4]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-swf-oil-idUSKBN1WG...
[2] https://naturvernforbundet.no/lofoten-vesteralen-og-senja/hv...
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1025405/share-of-crude-o...
> 2) Speaking of Norway being a country -- it has 5 million people and dozens of political parties. Most of those people and political parties do not actually support further north sea exploration [2].
Your citation is about political parties, and the majority of political parties would not translate to the majority of actual voters.
> Much like in the US and most other countries I suppose, the actions of the government do not represent the will of the majority of the people.
Maybe get a better source for the position you claim is held by Norwegian citizens before speculating on this.
The source is a summary of the position of the 9 major political parties on further oil exploration. There are dozens of parties here, yes, but the 9 listed there account for about 92% of the population. They are all the ones that have representation in parliament at the moment.
The views of the parties express anywhere from complete support to complete opposition to further drilling, with some compromise positions as well. If you compare that with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_N... how much each party has representation in parliament at the moment, you will see that a large swath of the population is opposed to it.
However, because of the way that the parliament system works here, this issue is not correctly represented in current policy.
> If you compare that with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_N... how much each party has representation in parliament at the moment, you will see that a large swath of the population is opposed to it.
The only way to show actual public support/opposition for the issue is to do just that, everything else is not really a valid substitute. You may be right about the actual public support, but without actually showing the data for it, it remains speculation.
> However, because of the way that the parliament system works here, this issue is not correctly represented in current policy.
How would you change the system to avoid such a misrepresentation of public opinion in actual policy/legislation? If there is such massive public support, what would be the fallout from just not approving north sea exploration?
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.
> 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
https://europeangreens.eu/news/norway-opens-arctic-more-dril...
It's also a non sequitur.
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.
That’s sort of true. The point was imprecise, but the Arctic is also sensitive to oil spills and is dangerous to operate in.
Yes, that kind of impact it can very well have.
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).
Increased supply creates its own demand (via reduced prices).
> 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.
-- From your link
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.
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.
It's interesting that hipocracy bothers people more than knowingly turning the world into an unlivable hell for short-term profit.
What major superpower does that remind me of...
All of them? ;)
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"
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.
> 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.
---
[1] https://www.populationpyramid.net/nigeria/2100/ [2] https://theconversation.com/why-nigeria-cant-fix-its-develop...
Norway is the 13th biggest oil producer in the world, and outside the Middle East the 1st per capita.
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.
>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%.
>First, without it you have no good measuring stick.
When it comes to climate change impact the measuring stick is "barrels of oil produced".
Per capita doesn't come into play at all.
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.
I think you are ignoring some realities if you expect change from the Middle East.
The same with expecting the low-per capita producers to change first.
> [..] if you expect change from the Middle East.
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.
Per capita is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. If one cared about actual pollution contribution they'd write in Russia or the United States.
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…)
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.)
If I am not mistaken the oil company in Norway - Statoil - is owned by the government. But I guess the argument regarding lobbying still holds.
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.
https://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/facts/companies-production-...
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.
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.
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 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.
[1] https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/top-10-reasons-why-arctic-oil...
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?
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!”
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
Norway is a large sparsely populated country.
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 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.
They use a heat exchanger to get fresh air in while still keeping the heat in.
Moderns homes have drastically increased heating efficiency.
A huge step forward in energy savings.
No. Blackrock and Vanguard are.
How do you consider Blackrock and Vanguard similar?
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.
"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.
> what type of arguments do they plan to use to convince Mexico, Gabon, Nigeria, Russia to reduce production of gas and oil?
They cannot convince anyone to reduce production. And you don't fight climate change reducing production. What needs to be reduced is consumption, and Norway doing just like that.
On a second thought, the same applies to opium, I mean, any addictive product. You don't fight smoking tobacco by forbidding it's production, but do so by reducing it's consumption.
There are so many logical flaws (and bad English) here that it’s hard to know where to begin. The analogy with opium is perhaps the only sensible one. Norway, however, is the world’s cleanest and most ethical producer of opium (oil). Given relatively fixed demand, who do you want as a producer?
When is the quality of written English ever relevant if the message is coherent? The author is ESL/Serbian. That cheapens the rest of your point
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.
Did you mean "Climate change will not be addressed by..."?
The idea that Norway would not starve if she gave up on the oil exports is quite something.
Edit: deleted a bunch of hyperbole
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 has a lot of fishing going on, it was their main export before oil.
True but coastal fishing is all but gone. Now they are competing with Russia, China and Japan on international waters.
They were a very poor country before exporting oil.
One thing I feel I don't understand in these discussions, is all use of oil equally bad for the environment? The assumption to me sounds like all use is bad, but I never really hear about how and why.
Surely oil used in a newer car must be a lot better for the environment than an old car due to advancements in exhaust filters?
Or a modern fossil fuel power plant with good filters.
To me, a single source of emission with high quality filtering (modern fossil fuel power plant?) seems better than many smaller sources spread around the world with varying filter qualities (cars)
I was about to ask for help understanding why the East India Company needed to sell anything in China? Why not just buy the tea/porcelain/etc in China and sell it in Europe for a profit?
But in writing that question, I think I got the answer. With what money would the company buy the Chinese goods? They can’t pay with European money if there is nothing the Chinese want to buy from Europe. And they can’t acquire Chinese money without selling them something.
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.
Norway has one of the most profitable sovereign fund in the world - valued at over $1.3 trillion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund#Largest_...
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.
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.
Norway is Norway. It has the population of a small city in China.
No, it's the new Hanseatic League (and was part of the old).
The guy is envious.
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.
The analogy doesn't hold for me; Norway is not immune to the consequences of climate change.
Also there is something to go on about passively encouraging remaining oil dependent but opium wars just doesn't compare.
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.
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.
What can I read to understand how dealing with climate change won't be uncomfortably expensive?
What are you reading that suggests that ignoring climate change is going to cost less than dealing with it?
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.
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.
> Compare this situation to Nigeria
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.
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.
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.
This seems to be the fault of the Nigerian government no?
Shell is going to push its luck as far as it can with every country
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Nigeria
…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.
No, bribing foreign governments is illegal, and also immoral.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Ac...
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?
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.
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.
> the western companies are taking away their oil from them with bribery, political and economic threats
Opium wars were a clear blackmail. In this case, corrupt Nigerians are in league with corrupt companies. Not sure if both situations are comparable.
i
> 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.
There is a live counter showing the approximate value of the fund: https://www.nbim.no/en/
"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
To accurately compare Norway and Nigeria would require broadening the scope of the history you're providing.
Is per-capita data on oil income available for both Nigeria and Norway?
In Norway for 2021, the oil sector accounts for about 14% of the state's total income (154 billion/milliard NOK) [1]. That's about $3500 per capita
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
> Someone has to produce oil and gas. It might as well be...
Drill baby drill