If Norway had been the least bit earnest about all the sanctimonious bleating it has indulged in for the past two decades, it would have strangled such projects in the cradle. This isn’t a question of extending some weary, oil-soaked legacy field; it’s about exploiting new deposits—discovered well after Norway began sermonizing to the world about the moral glow of a post-oil economy. If their pious proclamations meant anything, they could have cut the cord immediately: shut down every platform, capped every well, amputated their own revenue stream in a single decisive stroke. But of course, everyone politely looked away while Oslo cashed its checks.And now? How does the Norwegian government square this with its own green-haloed constituency? Do they whisper soothing bedtime stories to their eco-tinted voters, or has the base begun to sour on the taste of its own medicine? Perhaps the good Norwegians are learning what happens when utopian policy collides with the messy vulgarities of daily life: heating bills, jobs, groceries, reality. Or maybe I’m speculating—but the cracks in the emerald paint are showing.
