Greenland suspends oil exploration because of climate change
apnews.com
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The premise is Norway suspends oil extraction completely, intensifying an energy crisis in Europe. In response, Russia invades and occupies Norway to force them to keep extracting oil, with the implicit support of the EU.
Stories, when well done, explore interesting concepts and can teach us about how some actions may turn out - yes a lot of writing is lazy and stupid these days, but it's hardly justified to write off all of fiction because of that.
This is backwards; if you want to see characters taking entirely unmotivated actions, Grimm's Fairy Tales is a great place to look. Modern writing is a lot more concerned with justifying what the characters do than traditional stories are.
That said...
> Stories [...] can teach us about how some actions may turn out
True stories can. Fiction feels exactly the same, but it doesn't tell you how the action turns out - it tells you how the narrator decided the action should turn out. This is often unrelated to what would happen in reality.
For the same reason the US occupied Afghanistan for two decades, destroyed Syria and toppled Libya. An attempt to strip Russia's influence out of the Middle East and wider region as a continuation of the eternal great powers conflict. The US has been conflicting with China across Asia, battling over influence, for decades in a similar way.
One of the highest ranking and most decorated generals in US history - four star general Wesley Clark - is on public record stating that this is the exact reason we did it, as told directly to him by his pals in the Pentagon as the plans were being put into action and before we wrecked Syria or Libya (both of which were on the list to come next).
Now the US is leaving Afghanistan and guess who is stepping into the regional great power void: Russia. And there's George W Bush now saying we shouldn't leave Afghanistan, he doesn't want the US to cede regional influence to Russia. Globalist warmongers are gonna be globalist warmongers.
Oil is a very distant consideration next to military dominion and regional influence/control. If the US wanted Iraqi oil, Saddam would have sold it to the US by the millions of barrels per day at any time the US wished it. Hell, Saddam would have sold it under the table at a steep discount. It was very obviously not about the oil. Oil is merely one of many strategic items on the board. Sometimes I think the warmongers in DC prefer the false "they did it for the oil" premise, it's preferable to the truth, that we smashed the US fiscally and got thousands of our soldiers killed, to spar with Russia over influence. But that's the same exact reason we invaded Vietnam, we weren't there for oil either, we were there for the influence/control over the region. We're also not all over Eastern Europe for the oil, either; again, it's the power conflict with Russia.
Don't we also have an obligation to support our allies? I don't think we should have become involved in Afghanistan in the first place, but after we've been there for nearly 20 years, encouraging the Afghans to fight against the Taliban, I'm not happy that we're leaving our allies to die. (Just as we did in Vietnam.)
Russia is a spent force. It's population and military are aging, its resources are stretched; it's more a nuisance than a menace. (This is fine. Britain was, too, after WWII.)
China is the real threat in the region, and it's likely moving into the vacuum. (For reasonable reasons. The Taliban can help secure their western border.)
> Russia is a spent force. It's population and military are aging
> China is the real threat in the region
> "Iraq's sector has remained state-owned and state-guided, and US companies have been forced to compete in open licensing rounds. Various efforts by US Administrations (including the current Trump Administration) to engineer bilateral negotiations and to promote US company interests have come to naught."
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-ne...
They're going all out on going green in every part of society.. except for not stopping pumping oil from the sea bed and then selling it to people for the purpose of combusting it and releasing the co2 into the atmosphere.
The sad thing is that it seems to work really well for them.
Giant kudos to Greenland for resisting this way and showing the norwegians how to do this.
Maybe kidding.
I think the first time folks realized that sending smoke up into the air might actually be harmful is when London started having ash clouds from industrialization, but that's just one sort of pollution.
Humanity actually has a pretty good record for cutting in and regulating things that they know are harmful.
What's upsetting is how much of the oil burned so far, and continuing to be burned today, is completely frivolous and unnecessary. To still be carrying on this way when we still haven't pivoted from fossil fuels as a species, given clear evidence we're headed for global climate disaster, is completely asinine.
We need something like a carbon tax something fierce, it needs to be cost prohibitive to fly across the country by jet for a weekend change of scenery and some instagram selfies.
You are shifting the blame from the entitity who pumps to oil up from the sea bed to the entity which combusts it. Why?
The oil must flow. Look at Venezuela if you believe otherwise.
Norway getting invaded because they removed 2% of the global oil supply is not realistic.
Surely Norway sells its oil to nations manufacturing the very things Norway requires to build its green future.
My problem is with frivolous waste of oil and the externalized costs of its use being placed on future generations enabling such waste.
How so? Would people not stop polluting voluntarily if it's so frivolous?
Instead, there are protests like these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests
A high-ranking coworker of mine is flying out to NYC for a meeting next week. This is a guy who’s been working from home since covid started. Why all of a sudden does he need to fly anywhere? Why can’t another zoom call work?
If and when we have full-fledged businesses on the moon corporate execs are going find a reason to fly there too, just to tell people that’s what they’re doing.
The moral of the story: if you add a carbon tax, don't let it push large numbers of the population downward on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Nobody who loses their job due to climate change policy will give a shit about the planet, unless/until they get another job.
Or was it just going into some pension fund for underproductive bureaucrat?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-sweden-electricity...
98% power comes from renewable energies. Quite impressive.[2] They were in 13th place last year for oil production and about the same as Saudi Arabia if you look at per capita oil production. Per capita they are on par with most middle eastern countries.[3] Only difference is they fund their country via the oil fund not some monarch kleptocracy family.
[2] https://www.regjeringen.no/en/topics/energy/renewable-energy...
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_pro...
This is not the case though. The government for the first time ever withdrew funds from the fund in 2016 while the fund has been around since the 70s
In general oil is really important for the governments budget but not through the fund but taxation instead (both the companies and the highly paid workforce)
So they're using their riches to at least make it appear that they're really good, conscious people.
Why is this ”good PR” and not just doing the sensible for the time being? A day will hopefully come when they will feel like they can stop extracting because of no more need.
Right now most countries have been slower than Norway in modernizing. France is a glowing uranium beacon of hope in emission free electricity but even it has been slower in modernizing the car fleet for example.
Norway manages their oil wealth better than any country manages their wealth. Structurally, their actually prepared for oil ending. They use the cash to provide social safety nets for their citizens. Besides that Norway is quite decent on democratic freedoms, rights and such.
Saudi Arabia is politically medieval. Oil and everything else is owned by the monarchy and aristocracy for their benefit. They rely on religion and tribalism to buffer political rights or social change of any kind. Etc.
Sure. You can reduce every country to their sins and declare that all are equally wretched. Usually, this is cynical viewpoint made up of whataboutisms exonerating anything because everyone and everything is bad.
I ended up leaving the company, in no small part because I disagreed with their oil exploration policy, but it is interesting to see how some of the Alaska Natives, despite seeing their surroundings warming faster than the worldwide averages, despite (or maybe due to) infrastructure crumbling due to permafrost thawing, they're saying "yep, we need money, so we need to drill for more oil for the world to burn".
put yourself into their shoes - all that happens to them because somebody is making huge money while they aren't getting anything, and they can't stop it from happening. Given that, it hard to blame them for wanting at least some of those money.
There'd be less money for all of that if the oil work stopped. I understand that that's problematic.
On the other hand, I believe the government contracting side of ASRC's business has grown at a faster pace than the oil side. I'd sure prefer to see them make a stand and pivot into less damaging areas than oil exploration and extraction. But yeah, I do get why they do it.
Draw of money is strong one, and its also very easy to fool oneself into wanting more to do something for community now and let long term issues be solved later/by next generation.
Or pure greed, politics, power etc. which is something all tribes and nations have in some way.
The untapped reserves are likely worth factors of ten more than their yearly aid from Denmark. They could have used whatever they found to force the issue of independence they've insisted, year by year, they want from the Kingdom. Imagine using that wealth to build out a Norway-in-miniature.
So yes, I believe that qualifies as a huge self-sacrifice.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_exploration_in_the...
> No oil has been found yet around Greenland
The people of Greenland would probably _not_ be so thrilled if there was a number on this like "$1mm per Greenlander is being turned down". But because there's no actual oil on the table yet, and no dollar signs on it, it's relatively easy to stick to principles.
right up until the they do discover oil and then the companies come in, cities are set up, massive amounts of people get employed, the money will flow and it will be Western North Dakota all over again.
They have managed small scale recovery, but nobody here is very confident deep ocean mining of clathrates will ever be economic.