No, you are not alone in rightly assuming that the whole article is bullshit. The whole basis of the article is that East India company did not sell opium in the west, but sold it to the Chinese. And that "similarly" Norway advocates for clean energy but grows wealthy by selling oil and gas. The comparison is illogical because the East India company was the poster boy of imperialism and corporate exploitation. It had its own private army of 250,000+ soldiers that was larger than the British army! It is the only instance I know of a corporate conquering a country (India) and establishing a British colony that it ran for decades. In fact, the exploitation was so perverse that the British government had to step in take control away from them to ensure that India (the jewel of the British crown) did not slip away from their hand because of the greed and cruelty of the East India company. (In the 19th century, they chopped away the hands of Bengal weavers as the clothes they produced were superior in quality, which made it difficult to sell the inferior machine produced British imported garments.)

I'd also like to add that oil and gas are not going to fade away anytime soon as we shift towards "clean energy". There are a lot of petrochemical products that are are manufactured from the oil we drill.

The Dutch East India company ( VOC) did plenty of conquering themselves in present day Indonesia and the Caribbean. And in a more indirect way ( funding rebels, lobbying their government to intervene), so did the United Fruit Company in Central America.

India wasn't really a country, more akin to the various Italian or German ( if we exclude the whole HRE thing) states pre-unification than a country - a bunch of independent-ish entities ruled by princes that were often in alliance or war with each other, and differed somewhat from each other culturally/language-wise/etc. but had plenty of common ground.

The analogy is not perfect: it doesn't look like Norway is going to start a war to push its product. But I get the comparison: Norway looks pretty hypocritical here to me.

I've heard that before and it's always been a difficult point of view for me to understand.

Could you perhaps describe how rich democracy that both uses and produces oil should behave if it were to be ⓐ not at all hypotcritical ⓑ unremarkably average ⓒ very hypocritical?

You may assume that the there's a spectrum of opinions among the voters on the relevant issues, and ideally that the country has a tradition of choosing policies that suit most voters rather than 50.01%.

ⓐ accept and knowledge both problems and find reasonable compromises while keeping the larger/global picture in mind.

ⓒ Ramp up Oil production as much as possible to sell as much Oil as possible, covertly use money and influence to make people dependent on Oil but in the country and to the press say that Climate Change needs to be stopped and Oil usage needs to degree and make your country less dependent on Oil usage (so that it has no problem when it runs out and so that you can sell more).

ⓒ Some where in between? But I assumed the hypothesis is about countries which produce Oil in a economical relevant amount, so I'm not sure there is a "unremarkable average".

As far as I can tell Norway tries to go with ⓐ but not perfectly 100% commitment, but then expected a perfect type ⓐ approach is IMHO unrealistic. For example as far as I can tell their Arctic(1) expeditions are more about being able to keep their Oil output around the current level if necessary then about ramping it up.

A country which could be saied to go with type ⓒ is Saudi Arabia I think, but I'm have vastly to little knowledge about it to make that judgement.

(1): One note about Arctic Oil mining. There is nothing which makes Arctic Oil mining inherently more climate damaging then non-Artic Oil mining. The reason many see it as a no-go is more related to environmental concerns (which are not the same as climate concerns!). Through there are also arguments about reducing the amount of Oil which can be blasted in our atmosphere by blacklisting Arctic Oil. Either way while there are many reasons to complain about it I also can think about reasons why it might make sense and why I maybe might have done such decision. (Mainly related to increasing geopolitical tensions, increasing influence of China, and the China US conflict.)

What reasonable compromises do you have in mind?

From context you must mean something Norway hasn't done or tried to do (otherwise Norway wouldn't be "pretty hypocritical") and if the word hypocritical is to be meaningful (not "something everyone is all the time"), such compromises must exist.

The Kyoto protocol makes me sad.

EDIT: No, wait, perhaps I get it.

You're not contrasting hypocritical with "not hypocritical" as I thought, but rather with other bad traits, right?

So Norway is spending oil income on things like building Tesla's car business and Wärtsilä's electric ship engines, and that's hypocritical, while (name other country) has a large profitable construction business that burns lots of oil on fixed construction sites, and that country is not spending its tax income on subsidising electric companies that take on Komatsu and Caterpillar. The other country is then (in your opinion) somehow bad, but not hypocriticial. And that's the contrast. Is that it?

a) Either produce and consume oil or don't. If you do, you have to accept the ecological impact and you can't push a story about how your country is morally superior. Sorry, you have to find something else on the basis of which you can feel superior.

b) Just be Norway.

c) Just be Norway, but wage war on governments that refuse to buy oil.

I think it is important to decouple two issues:

1) Is it hypocritical by definition? Yes or no.

2) Does it bother me? Yes or no.

I think it is incredibly juvenile to find their push for sustainable consumption domestically to be a problem. Or, alternatively, incredibly juvenile to consider their nation building and wealth building oil exploration to be more of a problem because they tried to stop consuming it themselves. The oil production won't stop whether they were consumers or not, since that is the constant and their domestic behavior is the variable, then why create an argument based on the presence of the variable?

> I mean the East India Company caused (as far as I can tell) a extrema degree of damage of which the echos still noticeable affect all of us today and will so in the future,

That's because you fail to mention the climate catastrophe which causes an extreme degree of damage[0] and will so in the future[1].

[0]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7eyn8/five-million-people-d...

[1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbwpdb/the-climate-change-pa...

Not really, Norway reducing Oil production will most likely not affect the climate change, it might even make it worse due to less environmental friendly produced Oil and much less reinvestment of Oil money into trying to reduce the Oil consumption.

At least currently there are still enough Oil reserves around the World that Norways reduction of Oil production would be fully compensated by other sources.

Maybe this would short term reduce the amount of Oil usage due to hiked prices, but due to now countries less invested into green energy profiting from it instead of Norway it likely would not be better wrt. climate change. Maybe even worse.

Furthermore Oil in all of it's forms is currently so widely integrated into our daily live that "just higher Oil prices" won't help. I mean plastic uses Oil for production and is in much more places than many people are aware of and much less nicely recyclable then many people are aware of. E.g. many clothes contain plastic and in turn oil, if we look at a global scale we probably could even say the large majority of clothes contain plastic. Another example is that even if we produce and use electric cars they contain a lot of plastic and in turn Oil, similar you PC, Phone, Couch, Window Frame, Water Pipes, Internet Connection, etc. etc. And even if we would only allow new E-Cars from tomorrow, there are still a lot of non E-Cars which won't go away anytime soon even if Gas prices double...

So all in all our demand for Oil will hopefully reduce, but won't go away anytime soon. And IMHO this demand being covered by Norway with some of the money earned being reinvested into alternatives if largely preferable over all (realistic/practical) alternatives.

> Not really, Norway reducing Oil production will most likely not affect the climate change, it might even make it worse due to less environmental friendly produced Oil and much less reinvestment of Oil money into trying to reduce the Oil consumption.

I find it interesting, this argument of "If we don't do it, someone else will." It can be used to justify any kind of unethical activities, from arms trade to factory farming, and somehow in that logic the Norwegian oil becomes friendly for the environment.

The article's comparison is only an "absurdly extrema leap of logic" if you buy into that kind of magical thinking that can make responsibility disappear.

Imagine me grabbing your wallet out of your pocket and arguing: "If I didn't steal your wallet, someone else would've done it, and they would've been far less polite about it than me, so in the end you're better off with letting me keep it." I guess you'd be okay with that.

> "If we don't do it, someone else will." It can be used to justify any kind of unethical activities,

No, not really.

> Norwegian oil becomes friendly for the environment.

There is a difference between something being friendly for the environment and blindly doing changes without considering there global implication not being help full and maybe even harmful. The world is not black and white.

> magical thinking

I would call it considering the effects of you actions before acting. Instead of blindly acting based on ideology not matter if it's actually helpful or not for the end goal of the ideology.

> If I didn't steal your wallet, someone else would've done it,

Which is a good example of why you can't reason arbitrary bad things with the argument. Because most likely no on else would have stolen your wallet. There is a very big difference between creating arbitrary hypothetical situations and considering realistic very likely consequences of actions.

This is the philosophy of Yaakov/Justin Fauci.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNqozQ8uaV8

Not really, its considering the global effects of your actions.

The video you link e.g is titled "‘If I Don’t Steal [Your Home] Someone Else Will’ Israeli Settler Justifies Forcible Takeover".

But there are some major differences between that and my arguments mainly I consider realistic consequences of blindly changing the (not so perfect) status quo by reducing Oil production in Norway, while the argument in the video creates a hypothetical in normal situations completely unlikely scenario. Furthermore in the video, it's used to justify something which is normally considered a crime and where you force someone else. While here it's neither about a crime nor about forcing anyone (selling Oil is not a crime and not causing climate change, burning it does. And no one is forced to buy the Oil.), if anything Norway tries to convince people to buy less Oil in total on the long term as far as I known.

And sure there are similarities no one will reduce Oil production (implicitly causing Oil usage) if everyone always argues that then other will increase Oil production.

Or that would be the case if we move it in a hypothetical scenario where everyone would argue that way. But in reality we are in a different scenario where some parties don't use such arguments but base their decisions on completely different factors, which makes it predetermined how they would act in the hypothetical scenario in turn nullifying the idea that everyone is shifting blame onto everyone else, making this a very different situation then the ones you refer to.

And yes, you know try to extend it to the settler arguing that the Israeli governments action are predetermined and as such it's the same. And indeed there is a argument to be made to blame the Israeli government and not the specific settler(s), but you then can blame the settler not for settling but for supporting evilish decisions of their government.

But at this point we side-tracked the discussion to a degree which kills is.

The point I want to make is that there is a major difference between considering likely outcomes of actions and trying to choose the best action in your power (or in this case Norway power) and creating hypothetical scenarios to justify something which in your own moral system is normally considered a crime.

Sure this approaches might sometimes look similar in their outcomes but their are very different in their approach and philosophy.

E.g. in one case you satisfy demand while trying to not increase demand with to low prices while trying to reduce demand in in turn then reduce production in the same degree. I.e. something which iff done right would be generally considered good. While on the other hand you hypocritically try to find excuses for your actions (hypocritically because the person using the argument would probably not fine with their house being stolen).

It is a bizarre analogy.

The commonalities are (1) state capitalism (2) harmful effects.

But the analogy kinda stops there.

"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli...