Oil ultimatum: – The Left Party’s winning recipe

In 2004, the Liberal Party made a brave choice. The then leader Lars Sponheim chose to issue an ultimatum to his government partner the Conservatives: There should be no oil extraction outside Lofoten. “It will be impossible for us to continue in government if it is in favor of oil drilling in Lofoten,” Sponheim stated in an interview with NTB.

The Liberal Party had only two seats in the Storting, but still gained support. Despite the fact that there was a majority in the Storting for oil extraction in Lofoten, the areas remained untouched.

Misjudgment in the billion class

This recipe was repeated by SV already the following year. Both SV and the Center Party, which at the time had 6.5 per cent support, were against oil extraction in LoVeSe. Despite the fact that the Labor Party had more than twice as much support as the two parties combined, and despite the fact that there was a broad majority for oil extraction in Lofoten, Vesterålen and Senja in the Storting, the areas remained untouched under eight years of red-green rule.

When the bourgeois parties regained power in 2013, the winning recipe was continued. In practice, KrF and the Liberal Party issued an ultimatum, and the Conservatives and the Liberal Party gave in.

– Has completely failed

Today we have come a long way in this debate. The Labor Party has finally turned the question around, and the LoVeSe ball has in practice been put to death. But the climate crisis demands that we increase our level of ambition: We must stop looking for more oil and gas. This is not a strange and narrow MDG position. This spring came the shocking news that the International Energy Agency (IEA), which has previously been the oil lobby’s best friends, now believes that we can not look for any more fossil energy if we are to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goal of avoiding dangerous climate change.

The US administration has argued for the same. John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s special envoy for climate change, also believes that we must stop looking for more fossil energy, and the United States has made progress in stopping oil exploration in the Arctic.

Dazzled by green promises?

Climate scientists have pointed out the same thing for a long time: if we are to be able to avoid catastrophic climate change, then we cannot extract the fossil energy we have already found. To look for even more is to gamble against our children’s future.

Yet it is only MDG which sets an oil exploration ultimatum before this year’s election. According to Liberal Party leader Guri Melby The MDGs “actually stood outside any negotiation”.

Both SV, Rødt and KrF have also rejected MDGs call to stand behind a common demand.

This is difficult to understand. Why have these parties rejected the winning recipe itself for the last 20 years in oil policy? The only way to curb the oil thirst of the largest parties has been to stand together across the blocs, and make extremely tough demands.

Priorities mean something in politics. Climate and environment do not lose only when large parties act as fossil populists and ignore recommendations from professionals. The environment also loses when environmentally committed parties put the most important issue of our time in 2nd, 3rd or 4th place.

The findings will frighten change

The Green Party has never hidden our strategy: The environment must be prioritized first, because the climate and nature crisis is the biggest challenge of our time. All other political victories will erode if we fail to stop the escalating destruction of the basis of life.

Global warming is already causing extreme weather, fires, floods and destruction all over the world, including in our own neighboring countries. It is no longer a distant threat. It’s happening now. The climate crisis is taking lives, destroying crops and tearing away the homes of people in Germany, the United States, Finland and many other countries we “like to compare ourselves with”.