Backbone campaign, April 2015..Wikicommons/Charles Conatzer & the sHellNo! Action Council. Some rights reserved.The prominent climate scientist James Hansen, who comes to Norway on Tuesday, has called climate change a “planetary emergency.” This description reflects the consensus in climate science. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that global warming of over two degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels will lead to a high risk of triggering mass species extinction, widespread ecosystem collapse, and the destruction of the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people. Fossil fuel investments and existing decision-making processes are currently steering us towards a world that will be at least four degrees warmer by 2100.
Such an extreme scenario has direct relevance for Norway’s plans for oil extraction in the Arctic. The Norwegian government recently opened 57 new ‘blocks’ of petroleum exploration acreage in waters that stretch to the edge of the Arctic sea ice in a process known as the ‘23rd licensing round.’ In February 2016, these blocks will, in all probability, be allocated to operators that have applied for exploration permits in the Barents Sea.
This is business-as-usual for Norwegian petroleum policy. But since 1994 – the last time new blocks for exploration were opened in entirely new areas on the Norwegian continental shelf – we have gained far better knowledge about the climate. We now know that at least 70 per cent of the world’s remaining fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground if we are to have a 50 per cent chance of keeping within the two-degree limit.
