Isn't Norway a bit hypocritical: Amass wealth from providing fossils to other countries polluting the world, then be super environmental locally? Sure, still miles better than most of the other fossil rich countries, but the Netherlands for instance are actively shutting down their gas fields if I am informed correctly..

Relatable, but if the proceeds go from 100% fossil fuel production to less than 100% that seems like an obvious net gain.

Why is that hypocritical? Would it be less hypocritical if they polluted more locally?

I've always wondered if Norway turning all its oil into dematerialized paper securities as fast as possible, is really a better long term investment strategy than just leaving this tangible commodity right where it is, to be tapped when it becomes really scarce at some point decades from now.

> increasingly scarce

Is it increasingly scarce? Proven know oil reserves have been stable since ~2012 and are now about 50% higher than they were back in 1990.

Of course the extraction cost has been going up as well since shale is not economical below a certain market price.

The average amount of energy to extract new reserves has steadily increased. I think ATM it's around 1/8th of oil/energy extracted is needed to extract said oil.

So even if it's not scarce, the factor of how economical it is to grab it is a factor.

Sorry, no source, but I'd read it recently.

If we get to a point oil is rare then we’re screwed as we’ll have burnt too much of it

What happens when the world moves on from oil and it’s no longer a valuable commodity.

It's worth it because it gives Norway huge geopolitical power through their choice of investment.

It also means when push comes to shove invade Norway they have all the oil isn't everyone's top priority.

Someone else could move in and take the oil by force. Not so with paper securities.

> Ask Norway

This... The entire article could have been shortened to those two words.

The philosophy behind Norways management of the oil wealth is that the natural resources are the property of every future generation, not just the one that happens to extract the wealth. So it is invested to last "forever", and max 3% is taken out of the found every year. This had the added benefit of avoiding the "Dutch disease".

Importantly, the goal is NOT to make a better world in general, but to secure income for the future generations while avoiding "clearly very bad stuff". Typical middle of the road stuff. This is a political discussion, and some parties want to "pull the wealth out of the hands of the money-bureaucrats and back under democratic controll" and use it to make a better world, even if means spending a significant chunk of future generations money. But currently the dominating view is that the primary goal of the wealth found should be a stable income, while avoiding the worst companies.

I don't know if this is a satisfying answer to what a private person should do with their inherited wealth. Does she feel a moral obligation for her descendants to also be rich? Maybe she feels some obligations towards those suffering from climate change? Is she afraid of destroying local economy with inflation? Anyway, Norway don't have all the answers.

No it couldn't have? The article is about an oil heiress who has spent her adult life working with and bankrolling various leftist causes, and is a long examination of how that kind of person fits into those causes. As the article puts it:

> When libertarian or right-wing plutocrats buy influence—fossil-fuel executives pushing for deregulation, hedge-funders who want lower taxes—it’s easy enough to understand what they’re up to. But leftist class traitors are harder to pin down. They can always be suspected of performative reputation-laundering, or dilettantism, or dual loyalty. The left is wary of them for having been born into an obscene level of privilege; the right resents them for not having the common sense to shut up and enjoy it. It’s one thing to be a rich liberal—acknowledging your unearned privilege, endeavoring to leave the world a little better than you found it—and another to be a rich anti-capitalist radical, galvanized by the conviction that you are complicit in a historic injustice.

Norway's oil fund, as far as I know, was started to exchange the country's hydrocarbon revenues for less volatile income and, in more recent years, avoid investing in places and companies that it deems unethical. It is still basically about growing investments, and its ethical choices are much more conservative and institutional than those covered in the article. I don't see how anybody could actually read this article and think it's asking a question that Norway's oil fund answers.

It, in fact, is not.

> “She has better politics than anyone else who’s that rich, and she’s better at fund-raising than anyone else with her politics,” Max Berger, who worked on Elizabeth Warren’s Presidential campaign in 2020, told me.

Is all you need to know about the direction of this idiotic culture war piece.

Nope. I read it and found many interesting points on how the ultra rich on the left operate, as well as about this family that I had never heard of. If you want to see it as a culture war piece, then you will see it as a culture war piece, can't really help with that.

Sure they spent it on Norwegian people, but at the same time they're still enabling an unsustainable way of life for the rest of Europe. E.g. the gas and oil-dependence of Germany.