Leaving aside how ludicrous the comparison is to the East India Company (Norway isn't invading other countries to force them to consume oil, for instance), the author ignores or doesn't know that the oil profits are used to fund the country's sovereign wealth fund, which is one of the key ways that Norway grows its pension system-- it uses petroleum profits to invest internationally. In the long run then, reducing Norway's sales of petroleum increases their reliance on the global stock market, because they no longer have a backstop against a market downturn. It's even possible that halting Norwegian petrol production would cause that very market downturn! In addition, the need to support the petroleum industry encourages the development of other technical industries which also can bring in money.
One could draw a comparison between the US and the East India Company, in that they invade countries, overthrow governments and fuels civil wars in the Middle East and Africa (partly) in order to enforce US dollars as the de facto medium currency of international oil trade, and the subsequent funneling of oil profits into western financial assets and companies.
Pretty sure the author knows that, and he s making an argument ad absurdum, doesn't literally want norway to stop oil extraction. That said, i dont understand your point, does norway have some moral advantage vs other oil producing countries?
Norway is not the EIC because they didn't enslave massive swaths of humans and start a war to sell oil, but Norway doesn't exactly have the moral high ground in the fight against climate change either.
Norway did participate in the invasion of Libya to destroy their competition and continues to export capital at usury rates at gunpoint. Different, but not qualitatively.
Poor countries are forced to take loans with usury rates, often from the likes of the IMF. Countries that refuse get propaganda, coups and invasions. It’s not just the US that does this.
[edit] Libya was selling oil independently and offering loans with much better terms to other African countries.
True, often other lenders with even worse rates and terms show up first. It’s how entire countries become owned by a few foreign companies.
IMF loans primarily come with horrible terms: privatisation, deregulation and austerity. Same with EU funds. Poor countries have to choose between exploitation or aggression.
Austerity to destroy public services is good? Deregulation to reduce worker and consumer rights is good? Privatisation to destroy publicly owned production is good?
Almost every country the IMF has imposed its terms on has higher levels of poverty than before.
I can’t even take trains in my country anymore, they cost more and never get maintained since they were privatised.
Reining in profiligate government spending is good. If the countries were actually being run sustainably, they wouldn't have needed bailouts in the first place.
> Deregulation to reduce worker and consumer rights is good?
Can you please point me to where and how this happened?
> Privatisation to destroy publicly owned production is good?
Publicly run enterprises in my country were and still are hopelessly ineffective. They continue to leech taxpayer money that could have otherwise gone towards healthcare, education and infrastructure spending. If it wasn't for private sector enterprise, many goods and services would simply remain unable to the ordinary public.
> Almost every country the IMF has imposed its terms on has higher levels of poverty than before.
Definitely not in my country. Poverty rates have been cut in half since the reforms.
It's a phenomenon that I find strange. Laissez-fairism has a holdout on HN, despite being a century dead in the real world. It's a position argued frequently here, which surprised me at first because it's sophomoric.
So far, I've been unable to reconcile holding that position with having any level of empathy. It's a position held by people with "mechanical efficiency" (not that Galtism is efficient) high on their list of values, but "collectivism" nowhere in the list. People who maxed their stats on technical attributes but have no calculus of human suffering. Dunning Kruger comes into play.
It's also the position held by bastards; but I don't get the impression that the hackerati are bastards, just... specialised.
1. Financially privileged people are emotionally and culturally incentivized to believe that their position in life has more to do with their effort than luck. There are a lot of of high earners here.
2. Many members here were active during the golden age of silicon valley startups. This brief period of new opportunity in online services allowed a lot of speculative money to flow to new businesses if you were lucky enough to experience it. This temporary and narrow band of economic opportunity for people in the industry at the time serves as their historical “evidence” that the system “works.”
3. The tech industry has had, so far, slightly fewer gatekeepers than other industries with high paying careers due to the temporary shortage of required labor. A lot of people have been able to come from marginalized positions in life and become financially successful, myself included. Survivorship bias is very high amongst those people, especially when it is encouraged by people and institutions of privilege.
It’s frustrating, but on the bright side younger generations of tech folk seem much less convinced by the mythology. You’ll find a lot more of them on Reddit. HN skews older, and the status quo of popular ideology is comfortable and convenient for people already established in their careers. “I learned to code and got a six figure job” is the next iteration of “I could pay for college by working summers.”
Or, those of us who grew up in socialist countries understand the folly of overarching government control of the economy. Nothing drives home the importance of price signals more than having to wait for years to buy a car despite having the money to pay for it.
Countries that were historically exploited and remained under siege by all capitalist countries after their socialist revolutions can’t be expected to have the same productive forces as the established industrialised countries that oppress them.
Don’t confuse the effects of imperialism with supposed shortcomings of planned economies.
> Countries that were historically exploited and remained under siege by all capitalist countries after their socialist revolutions can’t be expected to have the same productive forces as the established industrialised countries that oppress them.
Yet somehow the productive capacity of these countries skyrockets once they embrace free markets. It's almost as if they are somehow related.
They didn't, though? Look at the former members of the Soviet Bloc today. Higher infant mortality rates, lower education attainment, no industry of which to speak. Name one country doing better after an IMF loan!
I could talk about Argentina, Haiti, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Honduras, El Salvador... all of which have not been saved by "the invisible hand of the free market"
one thing I agree is that to tackle climate change - rich countries must first start with themselves and reduce carbon emissions per capita.
I see climate activists bash developing countries with large population for carbon emissions, yet when you account for per capita carbon output - turns out that carbon/capita of rich countries far exceeds that of developing/poor countries
I suspect most oil companies are investing in post-fossil... to the end of future-proofing themselves; they have no interest in fossil fuels being supplanted any time soon. That would be to cede position to their replacements.
So their investment will result in less public benefit than equivalent investment by players that aren't, uh, invested in fossil.
Every country seems to have some way to rationalize why they are more justified than the others, or at least that their contribution doesn't matter.
For small countries (Norway, New-Zealand), the feeling may be that their contribution is just a drop in the ocean.
For countries with victim complexes (China, Russia, the Middle East), they may feel that the West has exploited them for too long, and now it is their turn.
For countries that are still objectively poor/-ish (India, much of Africa), they may feel they don't have the luxery of acting long term.
And progressives (in the USA, Germany and much of the EU) may focus more on symbolic efforts ("renewable" power) while failing to start large scale activities that can realistically reduce emissions to levels that would be sustainable as world averages (either through having enough Nuclear power, or to make sure that there is enough energy storage capacity available that renewables can be depended upon).
Meanwhile, nationalists (in all countries) may see it more as a zero-sum game, where the goal is to "win" over other countries, and they definitely do not want to sacrifice too much without an ensurance that "the other side" contributes at least as much. Furthermore, perceived (partly based on reality, partly based on conspiracy theories) hypocrisy from environmentalist leftists is used to downplay, doubt or even deny the reality of the threat.
As long as everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else, while the world's carbon emissions continue to grow, we will not be able contain CO2 levels. Most likely, we _will_ suffer the consequences, and experience some global warming over the coming decades. Also, as usual, poor countries will suffer the most.
That being said, 2 degrees of warming is much better than 6. Also, blaming everyone else will just serve to add hostility between groups on top of the warming, in ways that can lead to hostilities that may be even more dangerous than the warming itself.
So for those that genuinely want to work towards a sustainable environment, I think we need to:
- Look at what we can do ourselves, personally, within our political party and within our country, in that order, instead of just pointing fingers at the "Other" to take the attention away from our own contributions. Finger pointing just serves to make us feel good, but is not likely to change the minds of the "Other".
- Promote a world view that is based on real mainstream science, rather than fringe scare-mongery, politically correct dogmas etc. Exaggerating predictions will just provide fuel to the deniers (ie the world will end by 2030), and even if some scare-mongering may mobilize some politically active youths, I believe the net effect will be to increase polarization which in turn causes inability to act.
- In particular, fight dogmas that prevent initiatives that can realistically help, such dogmas surrounding nuclear power. Institutions that spread such dogmas need to be confronted, especially when they are on "our side" (since there is little we can do to affect the "other side")
- Generally, stop fueling all sorts polarization. As individuals and organizations we may benefit from turning to the extremes of "our side" as it may make us seem extra virtous, while demonizing the "Other". But we need ot be mindful of the fact that participating in this, is to inflict harm on society and implicitly on the plant. Polarization, both within and between countries, serve to undermine objectivity, as ideas start to be seen in terms of ideology rather than science.
- Instead, by trying to avoid partisanship and focus on the objectively most reliable science as well as policies that can be accepted by a wide, bi-partisan majority, we may help restore some trust in institutions in the general public.
It's not really worth bothering trying to convince any one country to reduce their oil production. The Saudis, Russians or Venezuelans could easily fill the supply gap, and the point is moot. Arguing for a worldwide reduction in supply is equally moot, not to mention politically hopeless.
The best way is demand reduction, which won't happen overnight. Technology exchange and helping developing countries to build renewable energy and nuclear power plants seems to be, outside of geoengineering, the only viable way forward.
Whatever way you go about it, ultimately carbon has to be left in the ground.
Norway's policy is to not leave anything in the ground. Even when you think maybe economic pressures will limit it, instead Norway subsidizes search for new fields. From the profit estimates of e.g. Johan Sverdrup, you can directly see that Norway thinks the world will NOT limit its oil consumption very much (and it will probably lobby against attempts to do so e.g. through coordinated carbon taxes). Our investments speak louder than words: we're betting on climate disaster.
It's going to be hard to convince other countries to leave anything in the ground, if you can't even convince Norway.
One important difference is that opium addiction in China hurt the addicts in China (and indirectly everyone else in China). Fossil fuel addiction through climate change hurts everyone.
The merchants of the EIC stayed away from using opium themselves because being an opium addict is plainly pretty bad for you. Being a fossil fuel addict, though, can be very pleasant - ski trips to the Alps every month, fast cars, fresh produce flown in out of season etc. The costs will be carried mostly by other people.
> 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.
The East India Company grossly mismanaged India leading to the Indian Revolt in 1857 and the birth of a truly unified Indian Independence movement. If the Crown had directly managed India from the beginning, the UK may have looked rather different today.
Hitler turned around Germany's economy in the 30's. Stalin liberated Eastern Europe from the genocidal Nazis. Nelson Mandela plotted terrorist attacks as a young activist.
Good people (and organisations) do bad things, and bad people do good things. It doesn't change the fact that the British East India Company was rotten to the core, and the Opium Wars were absolutely abhorrent abuses of China's sovereignty and human rights.
> Hitler turned around Germany's economy in the 30's
Sorry, I must comment on that, because this point is sometimes publicly repeated by politicians. It was mostly an expected recovery after the crash in 1929, combined with job programs that were planned before the Nazis, a secretly state-sponsored war economy, and various dubious methods (to say the least). see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany#Recove... for a summary.
Thanks for that! I have a similar pet peeve when people talk about the economic performance of the CCP, so get where you're coming from completely.
Truth be told, I don't know much about Nazi History at all. I just used Hitler as he's often held up as the paragon of evil, but even he helped some people.
> the company decided to engage in a war to open Chinese ports. This was the origin of the infamous Opium War whose final outcome in 1842 was the opening of five Chinese “treaty ports”, cession of Hong Kong
“Liberation” implies freeing someone(s) from a pre existing entity. So no matter what you think of the CCP today, the opium wars had nothing to do with liberation, it was just outright conquest. The CCP didn’t event exist until 1921, almost 75 years later.
If anything, a direct line can be drawn from the carving up of China by European, and later Japanese powers, to the fall of the Qing, the Chinese civil war, and the rise of the CCP.
What’s “strange” is interpreting dynastic greed and colonization as a good thing in 2021.
