Viking Economics (23 page)

As it turned out, Norway’s choice to live up to its highest values also was the pragmatically correct choice for minimizing the terrorist’s impact. The sheer practicality of holding to the values of equality and freedom was ratified once again.

The Norwegians, not usually an emotional people, continued to grieve their losses. The year until the trial was hard for many; during my 2012 study trip I learned of a woman who’d been working in an affected government building whose trauma was so severe she still could not bear to return to her job. I walked slowly through the still-damaged government district, not letting my own tears distract me from noticing the lack of security guards and barriers. Even the
Storting
stood open as ever.

I asked everyone I met, “How has Norway changed since Breivik’s attack?” and everywhere I received a reply that boiled down to this: “Well, it hasn’t really changed. We are still ourselves.”

Breivik was tried and convicted, sentenced to Norway’s maximum imprisonment of twenty-one years with the condition that if he remains a danger to society he can be held longer. The Progress Party, whose rhetoric had been uncomfortably close to the fear that Breivik acted upon, did lose a considerable share of its vote in the next national election. From 2009 to 2013, it dropped from 22.9 percent to 16.3 percent. And even though as a coalition partner in
the new government led by the Conservatives it presses to tighten immigration rules, the government coalition’s 2014 policy statement acknowledges that immigration has contributed to Norway’s economic growth. The statement goes on to say, “Immigration is a source of diversity, new ideas and cultural exchange. Variation contributes to new thinking, innovation, and creativity.”
¹⁷⁵

For their part, the people at the grassroots found a new way to support each other during the prolonged pain of Breivik’s trial. During the proceedings, the murderer claimed that a familiar song among Norwegians, “Children of the Rainbow,” was Marxist brainwashing. The song was a translated version of “My Rainbow Race,” composed by American folksinger Pete Seeger.

A couple of women in a small Norwegian town went to their central market and began to sing that song. Their action, a mix of sadness and determination, was picked up in other towns and spread rapidly across the nation. Soon there were tens of thousands of people in Oslo, gathered in the rain, standing by the trade union headquarters while holding umbrellas and roses, crying, and singing together the Norwegian version of Seeger’s lyrics: “Together shall we live, every sister, brother, / Young children of the rainbow, a fertile land.”

In the spring of 2014, I flew from Iceland to Denmark. The weather was clear. As we approached the Copenhagen airport I looked out the window, alert for seagulls signaling our nearness to land. The objects I saw were white and graceful, but human-made: windmills, with blades slowly turning on tall masts rising from the sea.

On very windy days, Denmark meets all of its electricity needs from wind power and even produces a surplus to export to Germany, another country that is rushing into the twenty-first-century requirement of sustainable energy.
¹⁷⁶
Germany is giving up nuclear and preparing to give up coal; to substitute, it’s been making rapid strides with solar and still needs other sources, including wind power from Denmark.

Norway and Sweden trade renewables with their Danish cousins. The Nordic mountains across the
Skaggarak
have abundant hydropower, but when Norwegians and Swedes need more electricity, they import wind power from Denmark. When it needs to, Denmark imports hydroelectricity from Norway and Sweden.

Norway would like more wind power, so it is taking advantage
of its oil-rig-building expertise to build the world’s largest wind turbine, which will generate enough power for 2,000 homes.
¹⁷⁷

The Danes got a head start on wind, traceable to their people’s movement that opposed nuclear power in the 1970s. With a history of shipbuilding leaving workers’ skills and facilities in good supply, windmills provided an obvious alternative. To kick-start development, the government created an incentive for the grassroots to form local wind energy co-ops, which then proliferated alongside larger projects that were started on the regional and national level.

By 2014, the Danes had 4,737 onshore turbines in a country the size of Maryland, and 519 more offshore. They expect to generate 50 percent of their electricity from wind by 2020.
¹⁷⁸
Additionally they invest in tidal, geothermal, biomass, and solar sources, along with practicing conservation.

In 2014, Copenhagen earned the title of world’s most environmentally advanced capital city. Even though the city expects to add another 100,000 residents, it also expects to be carbon-neutral by 2025.

The stakes are high, according to a consensus of climate scientists, and Nordic leaders tend to believe scientists. In fact, one might argue that one reason for Nordic economic success over the years has been that social democrats believe in the value of evidence-based rationality, and therefore make a strong national investment in research, big-picture analysis, education, planning, and evaluation.

Nordics know they risk their credibility when they deny inconvenient truths. So when scientists predict that climate change will have enormous impact on economic opportunity and constraints, and carbon pollution can destroy much of what supports civilization
as we know it, Nordic governments—sometimes pushed from below—set goals and design alternatives. Both Norway and Sweden fully intend to be carbon-neutral by 2050. By 2013, Sweden was already getting over half of its energy from renewables, while the EU average was 15 percent and the United States even less than that.
¹⁷⁹

Conventional wisdom holds that the GDP and energy consumption have similar curves. When an economy grows, its energy use goes up; when it shrinks, energy use falls. A nation, therefore, cannot reduce energy use and at the same time be prosperous. Swedes and Danes are among those who disagree with conventional wisdom.

Sweden reduced its emissions by over 20 percent in the last twenty-five years. During that same period, the Swedish economy grew by more than 50 percent.
¹⁸⁰
In the 1990s, Denmark also delinked GDP and energy consumption: the GDP continued to grow while energy consumption flattened. Danes believe that “energy efficiency” became the driver of
both
prosperity and sustainability.

Being practical people, the Danes used a number of tools to get their results. They put high taxes on gas for cars, even though they haven’t needed to import oil because of their (modest) stake in the North Atlantic oil fields.

The high tax on gas makes bicycling attractive for many kinds of getting around. Bikes account for half of Copenhagen’s commuting trips to school or work. While walking along Copenhagen streets beside an endless stream of whizzing bicycles, I noticed that
the abundance means few riders bother to lock their bikes when they park them.

Forbes
magazine points out that the Danes’ biking actually contributes to the wealth of Copenhagen. “Researchers found that for every kilometer traveled by bike instead of by car, taxpayers saved 7.8 cents in avoided air pollution, accidents, noise and wear and tear on infrastructure. Cyclists in Copenhagen cover an estimated 1.2 million kilometers each day, saving the city more than $34 million each year.”
¹⁸¹

In transportation policy, I saw four goals in action: sustainability, efficiency, cost-saving, and better health through exercise.

Another tool the government used to promote energy efficiency was to hike the tax on electricity, to the point where Danes pay more for electricity than almost anyone in Europe. That in turn motivates businesses to eliminate energy waste and to innovate, and we know that innovation supports economic development.

At one of Copenhagen’s numerous sidewalk cafes I interviewed Kristian Weise, the director of the economic think tank CEVEA. I was surprised to see such a young man heading the influential and prolific center, but he already had a range of national and international policy experience before he took the job. He told me that when Danes chose to make energy efficiency their new frontier, private enterprise lined up to participate and turn the initiative into profits. The result was a proliferation of businesses and jobs—more prosperity.

Weise noted that conventional economic thinking in Denmark used to be much like that in other countries, where people assume that a bold leap into reduced energy use would hurt the economy. Then Denmark proved the opposite—startling, and radical. He believes that it couldn’t have happened without the visionary
intervention of the state. When the state led, private enterprise followed.

I immediately remembered from my own country the almost overnight conversion of the giant U.S. auto industry from auto-making to weapons manufacture at the beginning of World War II. The state led, private enterprise followed.
And
, with that massive stimulus economy-wide, the United States emerged from the Great Depression.

Weise told me about the tough negotiations among the nations in the European Union on reducing carbon emissions. Governments wanted an overall goal to reach by 2012. The negotiators finally agreed the overall goal would be reducing emissions to 8 percent below the level of 1990, then they went on to quarrel about how much each nation would contribute to that reduction. Caution ruled.

Weise smiled broadly as he told me that, when the negotiation became stalemated, Denmark issued a challenge. The other national representatives should add up the percentages that
they
could contribute to the overall goal and then, the Danish representative said,
his
country would do the rest!
¹⁸²

The boldness that the Danish representative showed in European negotiations over global warming shows up again and again in these advanced democratic countries whose parties’ job is to realize both freedom and equality.

In the 1990s, Denmark had 10 percent unemployment and the
economy was sluggish. The Social Democratic government stimulated the economy while at the same time putting more pressure on the unemployed to use their time off to prepare themselves for the new jobs being created. The government offered free education and training opportunities. The unemployment rate went down.

Weise told me that the Danish Central Bank president then reported to the Social Democratic prime minister that Denmark was doing as well as it could do. Structural unemployment, the official said, is 6 percent. The prime minister suggested lowering that to 5 percent, or even to 4 percent.

In fact, the rate went to 2 percent!

Politicians representing the working class find that it’s a good thing to question neoliberal economic thinking, and overall that has paid off. This gives the politicians confidence, as when Iceland’s leftist government defied the IMF’s advice and made a remarkable recovery from one of the worst financial collapses in history—a stronger recovery than those in austerity-minded Ireland, Spain, Estonia, and the UK.

On energy, however, I found in Iceland serious division on the left regarding future energy development. About one-third of Iceland’s international income comes from fish and another one-third from tourism. Energy presently provides the other third, for example through the hydroelectricity that refines aluminum.

Technological advance means the day may come when Icelandic-generated electricity could be directly exported to Europe. The country’s central highlands are largely uninhabited, abundant with glaciers and untapped hydroelectric potential. But Iceland itself doesn’t need much more electricity because of its small population and the abundance of geothermal energy for heating.

Icelanders who want to develop the water-power potential of the highlands argue that it could reduce European dependence on fossil fuels. In addition, selling the electricity would bring added income to Iceland, upgrading the level of public services it can provide.

On the other hand, internationally famous Icelandic singer Bjørk has joined other environmentalists in defending the central highland. They believe that using the water resources to generate electricity will inevitably harm the largest wilderness remaining in Europe.

As is true for the rest of us, the descendants of the Vikings face tough choices.

Norway is the one of the largest oil exporters on earth. In 2009, petroleum generated 22 percent of Norway’s GDP and accounted for 47 percent of its exports. Norway already had widely distributed prosperity when the oil began to flow in the 1970s, and many Norwegians value the options that come with this new, shared wealth.

They are especially proud that they’ve used their oil money to create the world’s largest sovereign pension fund, held in trust for future generations of Norwegians when the oil runs out. The pension fund by 2015 had grown to $900 billion and was widely invested around the world, with social responsibility and environmental criteria. However, if Norway stopped drilling and left the remaining oil in the ground, the growth of this pot of money would slow down.
¹⁸³

I caught up with Truls Gulowsen, the director of Norwegian
Greenpeace, in Oslo’s Central Railroad station. A rugged-looking young man, Truls was wearing jeans and hiking boots and carrying a large backpack. He was about to start a vacation and was carrying the ticket for his train.

I knew that Greenpeace keeps a stern eye on Statoil, Norway’s biggest player in oil and natural gas, which also buys stakes in oil fields in other countries. It has joined the global norm of multinational oil companies ceaselessly exploring and drilling wherever they can. One of those places is the Arctic, where melting ice has made exploitation more feasible.