12
votes
Norway's supreme court has approved government plans for oil exploration in the Barents Sea, rejecting a lawsuit by environmental groups
Link information
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- Title
- Norway rejects Greenpeace appeal over Arctic oil exploration | DW | 22.12.2020
- Authors
- Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com)
- Published
- Dec 27 2020
- Word count
- 427 words
When people sing the praises of Norway and its social progress, they often don't know or forget that a huge chunk of its economy is held up by oil exportation, which is taxed very heavily and funds a lot of Norway's public infrastructure.
The reason they have wanted to explore the Barents Sea for oil is because their current reserve in the North Sea is already past its peak production capacity (meaning it'll now yield less and less).
They really need to find a way to move past an oil economy. I know they're taking steps towards that but oil is still such a huge supporting pillar for them that they won't outright remove it as of now.
Because the very use of that resource is a big part of the reason why the Earth is experiencing climatic changes on a scale that have not been seen for millions of years, causing everything from catastrophic species die-off, to ice sheet collapse, to partial biosphere failures.
It's a misnomer to describe oil production as more/less "environmentally friendly", if the final product being shipped and used causes mass-environmental destruction on an untold scale. It's like arguing with your bank over an unpaid balance in cents on a home loan.
The future of not just Norway, but the entire planet's health, rests on divesting and eliminating our need from fossil fuels. It is cheaper, economically, to leave it in the ground. People of the future will have a much better outlook on life if we leave a planet that's hospitable for them.
Norway stopping production would have wider positive environmental and social consequences though (and it's also the right thing to do, from an ethical standpoint).
It sends a political message to everyone downstream that this practice is unacceptable and cannot continue—this is associated with a variety of chilling effects, as businesses will always seek to mitigate risk and reduce costs, they will invest in alternatives because they're aware that continued reliance on this product is deleterious for their long-term viability and survival. This was fairly obvious when oil prices peaked in 2008-2010 and we saw a large uptick in the sales of more efficient vehicles, and it's also credited with the accelerated roll-out of more fuel-efficient wide-body planes like the 787.
Those are the sorts of changes we need to encourage and incentivise—and divesting from unethical stocks, stopping deleterious processes, and encouraging demand-side uptake in more climate-friendly solution does accelerate the transition in a positive way.
There's also nothing "responsible" about how Canada manages their tar sands.
They why is simply because it's not sustainable (ignoring the "its better for the environment" argument here since that's already a given).
All oil reserves are finite and will reach the end of their lifespan sooner or later. I of course don't mean they have to stop extracting oil, I understand it is a useful product for many things, and Norway isn't the worst country to be having large oil reserves, I'm just saying in the long run relying so much on it as a county will bring about downfall sooner or later, and they will need to diversify income to sustain themselves eventually.
Thanks for that bit of info regarding the wealth fund. I had no idea that was part of their plans when I wrote my reply. The last time I had learned about this subject was in some interviews with Norwegian politicians where I know they didn't mention this, so to me it felt like they knew they had to do something but it wasn't clear what at the time. That helps put a lot into perspective, and I guess with that in mind I don't have as many qualms with their oil drilling anymore, although environmentally speaking I do want it to end sooner rather than later.
Oil and oil products are mostly consumed by transportation and energy production. A shift in both of those sectors away from fossil fuels leaves a far smaller role for oil to play in other sectors (e.g., chemical production), and even those could be replaced (by biomass-derived plastics, for example).