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posted by martyb on Friday June 19 2020, @01:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the strawberry^W-oil-fields-forever-♫♫ dept.

As oil slumps, Norway explores new fields in the Arctic:

But the move does make you look askance at Norway. This week, MPs in the super-rich oil nation are expected to vote against further protection of one of the world's most important biological hotspots, so enabling continued exploration in the Barents Sea.

This comes off the back of a pledge to delay more than $10bn in taxes for petroleum companies, to spur investment which will help fund drilling in a uniquely biodiverse area called the marginal ice zone.

[...] But then Norway is environmentally at odds with itself.

You have the oil that made it one of the richest nations on earth. Then walk around Oslo and you will see electric cars all over the place - in fact, three out of four cars now sold in Norway are either wholly or partially electric.

And 98 percent of Norway's electricity comes from renewable energy, of which hydropower is the main source. The nation talks highly of its own sustainable prowess. And well it might.

But all those fossil fuels Norway extracts? They go overseas. The nation may not emit too many greenhouse gases, but it exports them on a colossal scale. Norway's wealth is someone else's smog.

Perhaps Norwegians welcome global warming?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @05:25PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @05:25PM (#1010423)

    Imagine you had a large group of people with no clear leader. What would happen? Sooner or later you'd have some group decide they want to control the other people. Their motives might be benevolent or malevolent - it's irrelevant. And so they'd try to put this end into action. They'd be naturally challenged by other groups but eventually, after the dust settled, you'd see one group left standing. Who is this group? "The Government."

    The point I make with this is that government has absolutely nothing, inherently, to do with economics. Government is defined, exclusively, as the group that has a monopoly on violence. It's not only the requisite but the one and only requirement to maintain their role as "the government." Because of this, so long as there are people that want to rule other people, which is probably safe to say that so long as humanity exists, there will be governments. Even if the purpose of that government is merely to work as a defense against others. And while this applies on a local level, the exact same thing follows on an international level. Weak countries (or alliances of countries) only exist as the leisure of strong ones. In modern times this has become less true due to nuclear weapons, but it's likely that eventually a highly reliable defense against nuclear weapons will be developed at which point this dynamic is right back on.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @06:49PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @06:49PM (#1010444)

    Without people desperate to survive, where do the governments get soldiers to enforce their will?