Whether Norway should stop pumping has become an issue in national politics

You can see why Saudi Arabia wants to go on pumping as much oil as it can. Oil exports account for 87 per cent of the Saudi Government budget and 42 per cent of GDP. The Saudi population, now 35 million, is growing by two-thirds of a million a year, and the country already imports 80 per cent of its food. They’d be starving in a few years if they stopped pumping. Norway, however, is in a much more interesting place. It’s the world’s seventh largest exporter of oil and gas, and those exports account for 42 per cent of the country’s GDP. Per capita income is higher than in the United States, partly thanks to the fossil fuel industry. So, the five million Norwegians do have a major stake in their fossil fuel industry. Indeed, 7 per cent of the population actually works in it. Yet Norwegian attitudes towards carbon dioxide emissions are seriously conflicted, and the question of whether the country should stop pumping has even become an issue in national politics.The Conservative Party, which lost the latest election after eight years in power, never had a big problem with living off the proceeds of fossil fuel exports. When asked in an election debate last week for the party’s preferred date to end production, one Conservative candidate said: “In about 300 years’ time.” The Labour Party, which won the most seats and must now build a left-wing coalition Government, was also careful not to alienate potential supporters who worry about their jobs. Party leader Jonas Gahr Støre promised not to include any party in the new coalition that demands a halt to all exploration or production —  but that leaves some room for maneouvre. Both Labour’s traditional coalition partners, the Socialist Left and the Centre Party, take a more robust approach to the question of curbing Norway’s fossil fuel exports. "Our demand is to stop looking for oil and gas, and stop handing out new permits to companies," said Lars Haltbrekken, climate and energy spokesman for the Socialist Left party.

Nobody wants to shut all oil and gas production down now - that would be far too great a shock to the economy - but just under half the population would be willing to stop exploration now. This is not a view you will encounter very often in Kuwait, Russia or Alberta, but Norway is a very conscientious place where people worry a lot about climate change. Its grid runs almost entirely on hydroelectric power, and 70 per cent of new car purchases this year were all-electric. It helps, too, that Norway has a very strong safety net. It is one of the most generous welfare states in Europe, and its sovereign wealth fund of $1.4 trillion (saved up from past oil revenues) is the biggest in the world. But it’s no crime to be prudent, and that safety net creates the possibility that Norway could pioneer where other fossil-fuel producing countries will eventually have to follow. There is an imaginable compromise that could bridge the gap between Labour and its prospective partners Most of the country’s oil and gas still comes from older offshore fields in the North Sea, but most of the untapped and unexplored reserves are in the Barents Sea, above the Arctic Circle. Drilling up there is a red line for environmentalists, but the outgoing Conservative government refused to stop handing out licenses for it. Labour has made no such commitment, and withholding those licences would be a modest but meaningful step in the right direction: no dramatic costs right now, but an implicit commitment to a longer-term decline in production.

(Gwynne Dyer’s new book is ‘The Shortest History of War’. The views expressed are personal.)