Climate hero or villain? As it rapidly adopts clean technologies while drilling furiously for oil and gas, Norway is a paradox.

Said before, I'll say again: I'm trying to figure out how the use of a country's resources, resources that are a worldwide necessity, in order to ensure the wellbeing of that country's citizens via a fund that puts to good use the proceeds from the resource is unethical. Since time immemorial fuel has been required for human survival and development. All fuel, be it wood, coal, fossil, or nuclear, pollutes. All of it. If Norway never pumped a drop of oil it wouldn't have made a difference, it wouldn't have magically created cold fusion reactors to power every ship and vehicle, it wouldn't have stopped climate change, all it would have done is make Norway poorer and its citizens less secure in their lives. The mere act of living creates pollution, if polluting is what makes something unethical, then life itself is unethical.

Instead Norway used their resources to secure the future of their citizens and now that their fund has grown to the point that it is over a trillion dollars it can use that huge influence to require the companies it invests in to clean up their act.

“As the climate crisis has developed, the fund has been thinking more and more about what it should do as a financial investor,” said Carine Smith Ihenacho, the chief compliance officer at Norges Bank Investment Management, which owns the fund. It lobbies companies in its portfolio to set net zero targets and argues the business case for developing credible transition plans – divesting from “climate laggards” who refuse to engage. “For us, climate risk is financial risk,” said Ihenacho.

As is stated in the article even if Norway stopped pumping oil, others would just take up the slack. The demand for the oil doesn't change, the infrastructure needed to make every country carbon neutral doesn't exist yet. Despite what some people state, the presence of oil isn't stopping any country from moving toward carbon neutrality as fast as possible and cutting off the taps (even if done worldwide) isn't going to make it all happen with a snap of the fingers.

It's all hypocritical nonsense. They'd be complaining about Norway being poor and having none of the green tech they have now if they didn't drill for oil and now that they have a huge fund and can't comprehend the amount of money involved they want to complain about how it was funded. I don't see any of these hypocrites chomping at the bit to move to a country without all of their oil-funded creature comforts.

I dont think its a paradox for a nation to not neatly fall into an abstract judgment of good or evil.

Theyre doing climate thinga because they can and think its a good bet for the future.

They are drilling for oil and gas because they know its currently a necessity for the world right now.

Both of these make sense and do not inherently contradict eachother.