[thinkindie]

Norway gets most of its wealth from fossil fuel. While it's not Saudi Arabia nor Venezuela, and they invested in long term sustainability, it's not fair to everyone else to say that they are at 80%EV because they are forward thinkers, but because they have the money to do that.

[rozenmd]

It took forward thinking to dump their wealth into a sovereign wealth fund.

Australia started at a similar point with mineral wealth in the 90s and decided tax cuts for the middle class were a better idea (under Howard/Costello).

[aleph_minus_one]

> It took forward thinking to dump their wealth into a sovereign wealth fund.

Such a proposal can be adopted much more easily if the population is rather small and homogenous.

[jagermo]

100 % agree. They somehow figured out early that its better to sell to the others and stay renewable themselves.

[spwa4]

Yes, like any other argument about Norway, the situation must and shall be considered to be that they are smart and progressive and forward thinking, rather than rich. It's "not" that they have money to burn to do the new fancy thing. It must be forward-thinking policies!

There's a small amount of truth, I'll admit. I guess you can say that Norway's policies are easily a lot smarter than Saudi Arabia's policies. But what is always done is comparing Norway's policies to, say, Spain or France and declare Norway a progressive forward-thinking nation with great and working policies. In reality the opposite is true because France and Spain can't just fix big problems by showering them in money.

[thinkindie]

also France and Spain (and Italy, Germany, UK etc etc) they have bigger population, far more diverse one, far more decentralized issues etc etc.

[ZeroGravitas]

Yes, but you have to somehow insinuate that this is a bad thing without ever clearly stating a thesis of why it's a bad thing.

Otherwise people might think investing in green energy, EVs and heat pumps is a good idea with good return on investment and positive externalities and should be done by any competent government.

[philipallstar]

Any competent government with infinite money they can just dig out of the ground, and dump into the sky via its customers, a small, mostly-homogenous law-abiding population and military cover, at least until recently, mostly provided by the US taxpayer.

Easy.