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Re:Is Norway the New East India Company? by Arnt on Saturday July 24, 2021 @11:49AM (#27941887)
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%.

Re:Is Norway the New East India Company? by dathinab on Saturday July 24, 2021 @02:30PM (#27943343)
ⓐ 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.)

Re:Is Norway the New East India Company? by Arnt on Sunday July 25, 2021 @07:22AM (#27948340)
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?

Re:Is Norway the New East India Company? by levzettelin on Sunday July 25, 2021 @09:36AM (#27949079)
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.