6 days ago
'Oil corrupts everything': Norway blasted as 'object lesson in hypocrisy'
The Norway Paradox, or
Norgeparadoxen
, published last month by the leading Swedish investigative journalist Lisa Röstlund, takes a critical look at Norway's claims to be a forerunner in the green transition while continuing to be a major oil and gas producer.
"It means that oil corrupts the whole country," Röstlund
told Swedish public broadcaster SVT in an interview
.
"Oil seeps into everything. A large part of the welfare bill is paid by the oil fund. Research, art, culture and sport are often sponsored by oil companies, like the new opera house in Oslo, or the Munch Museum," she said.
Röstlund, a journalist for Dagens Nyheter, previously published
Skogslandet
, a prize-winning investigation of Sweden's forestry industry.
The Swedish journalist Lina Röstlund has accused Norway of being "an object lesson in the West's hypocrisy" in a new book. Photo:
In her new book, which is part travelogue, part investigation, she shows how Norwegians at all levels of society turn a collective blind eye to the country's dependence on the oil and gas industry.
"You really notice that very few people raise their voice against oil, even among researchers," she said. "You can talk about the climate crisis and its consequences in general, but no one turns their gaze onto their own industry."
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She paints a picture of a country where the new wind power developments trumpeted as part of the green transition are then used to pump out more oil and gas, where the number of climate deniers per capita is second only to the US, and where the oil fund invests in fracking companies in the US.
Equinor, the state oil company, is continuing to push ahead with new oil and gas developments.
This is despite the International Energy Agency concluding in its 2021 Net-zero by 2050 report that no new oil and gas fields should be approved for development after 2021 if the world is to limit global warming to the safe level of 1.5C.
The book has already received some pushback in Norway. The Norwegian journalist Hilde Sandvik accused Röstlund of "not fully acknowledging the complexity" of Norway's situation.
"Of course it's easy to accuse Norway of having double standards," Sandvik said in the
Norsken, Svensken og Dansken
podcast.
"We've been doing very nicely out of oil for 50 years and we are still living off something that both Europe and the rest of the Nordics are dependent on."
But the book, she said, glossed over the fact that Swedish businesses and consumers, and those in Europe as a whole, are also dependent on Norwegian oil and gas, particularly since the invasion of Ukraine made them reluctant to rely on supplies from Russia.
Author Röstlund does acknowledges this in the introduction her book, recognising that the entire western world remains heavily dependent on fossil fuels, so Norway is by no means uniquely hypocritical.
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"Nonetheless, I ask myself whether the elephant in the room, which is there in all rich countries, is not most conspicuous in Norway, if it does not have the sharpest contours there," she continues.
"The Norwegian elephant in the room is a fantastic object for anyone who wants to study the hypocrisy of the self-congratulating West."
She also pre-empts the criticism that she, like many Swedes, simply feels envious of her country's richer Nordic neighbour.
"Am I writing this book because I am jealous?" she asks in the intro. "Yes, maybe."
