The court didn't say Norway can't drill anymore, just that when you're doing an environmental impact assessment of a new oil field (which is required in Norway) you obviously have to assess the impact of burning the oil. I don't think this is very controversial.
I was surprised because I assumed Norway wouldn’t open new oil fields. I’d say it’s “interesting,” but what I actually mean isn’t publishable.
It's not at all obvious.
1) If we assess all the indirect negative impacts that happen in remote places, nothing will ever be done. Should a factory making phones assess the DALY lost by drivers who get into accidents because of distracted driving?
2) Also, if we are going to assess hypothetical impacts of burning oil, why not assess the positive impacts? This oil could be used to build wind turbines, or to deliver food to a famine-impacted areas, or to raise living standards in the developing world. Generally oil is energy and energy is a precursor to GDP and high living standards.
The end result on not developing European (or US) energy reserves is that Europe is going to buy energy from dictators all over the world. Frankly it's one of these cases where I switch to my cynical mode "I hope there's enough civilization left for my lifetime, cause if you are THAT dumb, you deserve to be defeated."
IMO they really should!
2) Also, if we are going to assess hypothetical impacts of burning oil, why not assess the positive impacts? This oil could be used to build wind turbines, or to deliver food to a famine-impacted areas, or to raise living standards in the developing world. Generally oil is energy and energy is a precursor to GDP and high living standards.
And that's what a comprehensive assessment will include. Both positive and negative arguments. But you can't cherry-pick the ones you like. That would invalidate the results.
To answer your questions, yes anybody involved with making phones should be fully aware of their negative effects, and yes an environmental impact assessment should assess all environmental impacts, including positive ones.
Carbon capture has constantly been shown to just not work at any scale. and geo-engineering causes so many extra problems and will absolutely lead to termination shock at some point.
This doesn't sound like a terribly scientific assessment.
Climate change is either an environmental disaster and geoengineering would be a huge risk - or climate change is an existential threat to humanity in which case we have nothing to lose. Which is it?
We don’t have enough data on geoengineering to judge yet, there is no real science to follow.
Also I don’t understand this attitude of rejecting potential solutions outright. Science doesn’t “prove” things, we can’t ‘follow’ it due to the problem of induction. So we should stay open minded and support all potential solutions, not just those we like best.
The rich love using future carbon capture to justify present day inaction.
if not, then you are just littering with words.
The only thing that's ideological is advocating for a technology that uses virtually as much energy to put carbon back into the ground than the carbon yielded in the first place, when the alternative is to simply not take it out of the ground to begin with.
Carbon capture is like trying to cool your room by leaving the fridge door open or running on the treadmill while eating fast food. Trying to delegitimize efforts just by labelling them 'degrowth' as if that is an actual argument, needs to stop. It's the pro-growth cult that causes us to constantly have to invent solutions for problems that we could avoid in the first place.
And when I say "carbon capture" I of course mean "pinning our hopes on carbon capture". If actual, working, viable carbon capture existed then nobody would be against doing it, but that's a pipe dream. It's always going to be more economic to not burn stuff than to burn it and then unburn it.
Kind of like carbon credits. If they were real they'd be a pretty decent idea, but they're basically full scam.
Something like 20% of the government budget comes from oil revenue, and the entire pension system (to my understanding) comes from oil funds.
It didn't seem particular to the locations. Under this ruling, if the oil gets shipped to India and burned there they would now need to include it in the local impact assessment.
Maybe they just need to resubmit with a new impact assessment? But it does seem like the precedent they are trying to set is to reject all projects based on emissions.
However, the key information here is neither side of that contradiction, but that Norway has found a very large deposit of Phosphorous. Until now, Marocco has the largest reserves (by so much it’s actually daunting, confusing really, how they didn’t end up like the Saudi Arabia of bird poop, which is essential for growing food, so a tad more essential than burning donuts).
Norway seem keen to leverage that the way they leveraged fossil fuels, so I’d expect that fund to grow bigger, faster, and without the discomfort of selling something that could, and most likely will, end up drowning Norwegian towns.
Oh, sure, you want the state to stop doing bad environmental things? Well, ok, as long as you pay for it!
Oil has an impact on their ability to import, and on their ability to meet their own energy requirements.
[1] "Novel" meaning "without precedent in Norwegian rulings". I did not mean "without foundation" or "unreasonable".
Both tingrett and lagmannsrett are district courts in the sense that the cover specific geographical areas (kretser, circuits).
https://www.domstol.no/no/om-rettssystemet/de-alminnelige-do...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/19/russia-s...
I remember the fracking hysteria quite well when it happened in Eastern Europe because I too fell for it, to then find out it was a Russian psyop.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/20/russias-quiet-war-again...
An import tax on coal burning countries (especially China) would push the incentives in the right direction instead of outsourcing the climate externalities to them.
I feel like this is a case where urbanites with no idea how rural life works attempt to legislate their naivety onto others for the worse, like the rural firefighter responsibly managing their property and the forests of their state.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
There are many things you can say about china, but they do take climate change serious (maybe because they have already problems with desertification).
“ The International Energy Agency estimates that China more than doubled its solar generation capacity and added two-thirds to its wind generation capacity in 2023.”
At least this is the Greenpeace standard for businesses.
Retirement age in Norway is 70... And there are some rumors about going to 72. Also there is talks of increasing taxes on the pensionsts... So what is the point of having a pensions fund if you are never going to retire...
You need a strong economy to shift to a Green future. Norway was a small country before oil and gas, now they've made the best use of it out of any country in the world.
Shouldnt they keep their foot on the pedal a little longer? Making new battery technology isn't cheap.
Shareholder value had a cost (industrialization in general [1]), and now it must be paid back.
The problem is, it is voluntarily.
It is a relatively gradual change with a lot of uncertainty about the final magnitudes of warming and the actual risk involved. Bad policy to reduce emissions have opportunity costs. E.g. biofuels policy exacerbating starvation in the 3rd world. Read Bjorn Lomborg, he suggests the best policies as well as other problems we should prioritise above climate change. Then read Judith Curry to better understand the risks involved.
It’s not black and white and choosing solutions is hard but random countries turning off their fossil fuels is not an effective policy.
Last year, large phosphate deposits were found in Norway, effectively doubling the known world supply. Given a similar taxation model, we could keep growing the wealth fund even as we phase out the oil industry over time.
Though oil industry phase-out is not something with a political consensus behind it right now anyway. Labour and the conservatives tend to reach across the aisle on that topic.
