City Adoption Of Environmentally Sustainable Policies In California'S: Fill & Download for Free

The main caveat with the following post is: meet a great deal of enlightened Norwegians who understand precisely what I’m talking about but are quite impotent to change the behavior of the systems in Norway. So, when mentioning Norway, mostly talking about how the systems function not the people…rather, the people are stuck in the same trap as what Adam Curtis discusses in his documentaries…overall though, Norwegians are the victims of their own vanity and globalization more so then most other nations, as the resource curse plagues them…read on.The quality of life in Norway overall is good, the everyday life is fine in general. For example, I went XC skiing today for most of the day and its a weekday, who can complain about that? However, humanity cannot live on bread alone, we need visions and dreams and possibilities…in this realm Norway suffers from a poverty of ideas.The purpose of life or the meaning of life is absolutely horrible as is in most of the world. Sweden has Norway beat by a good deal in terms of purpose of life for the times, as Sweden is working much harder to transition towards an environmentally sustainable society while Norway’s main exports continues to be oil, followed by fish.Relatively speaking, Norway as a nation did not have a firmly rooted intelligentsia or elite class of its own as say Sweden did historically. Norway has sort of gave its intellectual development to Germany and then post World War II, towards Anglo thinking. It’s pretty clear to see this in the textbooks used in the business schools and the expansion of business schools in general. The luster of the uniqueness of Norway, akin to an isolated Amazonian tribe, is continuing to fade away in light of globalization (sad face).Norwegians do not have an end game, refer to them the lost tribe of Scandinavia. Norwegians don’t have an answer to what they will do after oil. Living in Oslo, see a great deal more extravagance than upon my first visit 22 years ago, the transformation that has taken place is as Polanyi talked about back in the 1940’s, in his book, “the great transformation” where societies that have a market, transition into market driven societies.The resource curse of oil has caused Norwegians to become the most environmentally unfriendly nation in Europe per capita, if oil exports are included in their green house gas (GHG) emissions. Another example is, the Brundtland report, which posited transition to sustainable living; the report was written over 30 years ago, but the oil froze the country from moving forward with such visions. Norwegians will point to their hydroelectric and electric car policy as being important in the sustainability movement. However, the hydroelectric industry was not created out of environmental concerns but resource extraction thinking of 100+ years ago. The electric car policy, should have included supporting the fledgling electric car manufacturer, Th!nk. Most Norwegians say “Oh, Th!nk was too early”, those that say that are ignorant, Th!nk had a 4 door vehicle planned, after Ford bought them, Ford murdered the company when their lawyers (and other vehicle manufacturer lawyers) beat the zero emissions laws in California and New York, meaning US auto manufacturers did not have to sell electric cars to gain credit to sell SUV’s. Ford sold Th!nk for 1 dollar to a Swiss holding company after it closed it down.Norway is strikingly different from Sweden in the collaboration between industry and government in terms of launching into new industries. For example, the Norwegian government did not support Th!nk in any sizable way and there are many other examples. The link is to one of Morten Jørgensen’s posts on Quora, he often has a better background on Norway then I do, where maybe I can provide a better comparison between Sweden and Norway on some narrow issues, such as sustainability.When discussing topics with Norwegians and analyzing the culture here regarding sustainability and vision for the future it is a couple of generations behind Sweden. Heavily reinforce the idea that countries such as Saudi Arabia and Norway froze their societies at various rates after the discovery of oil and then inflated the already existing institutions. In Saudi Arabia it was more monarchy and more Wahhabism. In Norway, continued rule of law, continued lack of creative thinking (Norway produces 1/4th of the triadic patents per capita as Sweden, as one example) and more of a focus on 1814 than 2214, holding on to the traditions for traditions sake not because they are useful for the future.The level of naive patriotism in Norway is off the charts, Norwegians have a very difficult time taking criticism of their country…they are still in the orgy of an oil lottery. On the other hand, as an American would be the first to tell you democracy does not exist in the US and the US is leading the planet off a cliff on economic models that are not in touch with the planets capability to support us. So, in Norway, there is a certain degree of loyalty required, a blind faith in the society. There are no meaningful dissidents in Norway that have a world stage anymore, and the domestic ones are largely written off.Most Norwegians I can tolerate for a few minutes more than the average American before becoming tired of their lack of critical thinking and submissive behavior to the identity they were indoctrinated with by the state, and the shitty incentives they get if they fit in, and in turn feel compelled to defend. To expound, social democracies require belief in the system for the majority of the system to function. However, since the social democracies in Scandinavia are all exceeding their ecological carrying capacity (to reiterate, Sweden is doing the most to work on this in terms of shifting worldviews), question the validity of the state, and the existence of humans within it, as I would with any other country that is existing to only perpetuate its unsustainable self. What is our own individual worth or use (I am to blame as much as anyone else) if we are damning future generations of our own species and creating mass genocide among other species today, merely so we can be comfortable?To me the end game of Norway and any other country like it is a waste of our existence, a waste of what the potential of humanity is, and the erasure of the dreams and visions of legends from Norway such as Brundland, Næs, and Heyerdahl. Here in Norway, we have exchanged their visions of a vibrant future for a luxury in the here and now… the feeding of our ego and desires and the servitude to Anglo foreign and energy policy, in exchange for our soul.When confronting Norwegians with facts or ideas that cause them cognitive dissonance or challenge their worldview a common answer is “We are a small nation”, or to make another excuse. Well yeah, but Austria is a small nation to, but it created one man who lead all of the German people, one man who lead all of the Californian people, and one man who greatly influenced the economic orthodoxy of today on a global level (Hayek). Of course, Austria provided greatness in the sense of great tragedies, I just wish Norway would step its goddamn game up and provide a counterbalance :-)EDIT:I have added some dialogue from one of the responders into the main body. Personally, I find the startup culture in Norway is based largely on wishful thinking and feel they have got the overall innovation strategy wrong down wrong as a nation. That is, Norway needs more entrepreneurial state thinking than Stand ford from the point of scaling and exporting.Comments by responder:There are definitely certain truths to parts of this post, but I think it severely lacks nuance.Norway is and has indeed been an oil-dominated economy for the past 20–-30 years, but there has been much focus in recent years in developing new industries ahead, as it is commonly accepted that the oil era is rapidly reaching its end. This is a focus of the current government, and can be seen in the rapid growth of the startup and venture community in the country, in particular in Oslo. The IT industry is booming with most new higher education programs being opened within this field. Norway has a strong engineering tradition, but historically has lacked competence within scaling companies internationally, which has caused most inventions to have bought up and commercialized abroad. In this area we can for sure improve and learn from our neighbors.When it comes to environmental and sustainability focus, Norway might be behind Denmark and Sweden, but change is occurring and in certain areas the country leading as well. The hydro production delivers clean energy, which is exported throughout the year with the exception of a few weeks. Norway is currently the highest adopter of electric and hybrid cars in the world, and is currently a test-bed for EV innovations, business models and infrastructure. The Norwegian Sovereign Wealth fund has gone “green” by focusing on sustainable investments, and requiring companies to track and submit their progress in relation to the UN’s sustainability goals.As for the purpose and meaning of life, this remains an individual thing, but to me most Norwegians find satisfaction from spending time in nature, which can be seen in many parts of the culture as well as history (the cabins, “allmansretten” giving access to the entire wilderness, etc.) This is just based on my personal experience, but many in my community also strongly desire a positive contribution and reduce their negative footprint on the world.In all countries, you’ll always have no problem finding close-minded, fundamentalist, nationalistic, [insert negative attribute] people, but there is always great variation among a populace, so one should refrain from generalizing too much.My response to the above in block.Much thanks for your commentary and giving me a sparring partner. Hopefully we can learn from one another.My point of view starts about 31 years ago after the Brundtland report. I have seen Norway make decade after decade of poor decisions, and now Norway is already paying a price for them. Norway can’t even balance its own budget and needs to draw interest to fund the government’s general expenses to the tune of about 200 billion NOK a year. That is a clear example of Norway subsidizing an economically unsustainable way of life, its bad financial management to use interest revenue to fund general expenses, it should be used for further investment until the export economy is able to generate budget surpluses without oil.Norway could have started a sustainable transition as Sweden did many years ago. However, Norway has suffered a resource curse due to oil by failing to transition from an exporter of raw resources (80 percent) to that of primarily advanced knowledge packaged into stuff, created under increasingly sustainable conditions. Having lived in Sweden and seeing both Swedish and Norwegian business culture first hand its pretty clear Norway is a laggard in sustainable thinking or even exporting advanced goods. Look at your countries main business prize, what does it award? That is a reflection of the business values here if anything.Lets put out some numbers for perspective. In 2016, Norway exported about 350 billion NOK in oil and gas (see link below). That was a very low year, on average its been 500 billion since 2005 or so. In the oil industry there were 185,300 people working in it during 2016. This meant that on average each employee generated almost 1.9 million NOK in revenue EXPORTS. On the other hand, take the IT company EGGS, in 2016 each employee generated about 840,000 NOK in revenue. How much revenue of that was export revenue? EGGS alone will have to more than double the performance per employee in order to just match a bad year in oil export revenue, and all that work you do will need to be exported if you want to keep the Norwegian balance of trade in the positive.Currently, about 20 percent of Norwegian net exports are economically complex goods (the majority being offshore tech, but Norway’s share is shrinking) compared to Denmark and Sweden, which are 45 to 55 percent respectively. atlas.media.mit.edu . Where are the industries coming on line to fill this gap?When speaking to Norwegians, I get a lot of bright eyed and bushy tailed enthusiasm but I am not seeing clear plans, policies or milestone results towards those plans and policies that don’t really even exist. You talk about how its been realized for some time that Norway knows oil is coming to an end. Then show me linkages between Norwegian national industrial and sustainability policies that are designed to increase Norway’s competitive advantage and any results of such policies along the lines of the Swedish. The following link shows what the Norwegian economy is at present. What are some future political risks that Norway can face?Here are a few reports that demonstrate Norway does not really have an after oil plan.Teknologirådet. (2015). Luksusfellen – Omstilling I en oljeøknomi. [The luxury trap – Restrucuring within an oil economy] . Available at: < http://teknologiradet.no/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2015/07/Luksusfellen- endelig_120615_med-forside.pdf >Teknologirådet. (2013). Made in Norway?. Available at: < https://teknologiradet.no/wp-con... >What has changed?Research shows that Norway’s onshore industry has been cut in half from 1990 to 2011 as a percentage of GDP, and what is left is increasingly dependent on the oil industry. I think this post on Quora provides a more in depth explanation of the Norwegian economy and the worldviews held in Norway and some suggestions Norway should take. Why is Norway considered as a MEDC (More Economically Developed Country)?This so called booming IT sector? What is the size of it? How much of it is export based work? What are the projections for exports to scale and what have the results been historically? I do not take Norwegian companies that cannot export seriously as that is a true measure of their competitive advantage otherwise, its hard to separate the influence of cronyism and political lobbying from the balance sheet.Show me net export results of any of the startups or efforts over the last 20 years besides offshore technology that will be able to provide more than 1/4th the revenue Oil produces a year? Why did Norway choose the Stanford model, when small entrepreneurship has not historically driven export revenue for Norway? Why did’nt Norway adopt any thinking from Mariana Mazucaato, i.e., the entrepreneurial state thinking? If this startup culture is so vibrant then why is Norway only producing 1/4 of the triadic patents per capita as Sweden?Tell me about any startup company from Oslo that generates its primary revenues from exports and is able to scale to a billion dollars in export revenues? Norway is going to need about 40 to 80 of those in order to make up for the slack once oil and gas are gone.There is a problem in the Oslo startup culture of founders thinking they are something because they have received funding and have scaled however, they have yet to generate any revenues that justify their valuation (e.g., Kahoot). There is a lot of smoke in Oslo, but not a lot of fire, to reiterate especially in the area of export revenues.I highly disagree with you on the premise meaning of life is an individual thing. It cannot be an individual thing when individuals collectively are ensuring humanity exceeds the carrying capacity of the planet. If a person is able to live within their share of the planet’s carrying capacity then, sure meaning is then up to the indiviudal, however that is far from the case. The planet is in a crisis situation caused by our human impact, to think that we can continue to live the way we do, to maintain our traditions, culture, and beliefs is the same as a typewriter company thinking it can stay relevant in the PC world by making better typewriters. Explain to me why Scandinavians (or any other person from a country that exceeds the planets carrying capacity per person) should be able to determine their own meaning of life? That is, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden all exceed their share of the 1.8 hectares per person by using 5.51, 4.98, and 7.25 hectares per person, respectively. Why should humans be allowed liberty so they can trash the planet?The main weakness of Norway is fully understanding the relationship between societal, environmental and economic sustainability as reflected in industrial, environmental polices, and societal policies failing to integrate the three into a comprehensive after oil plan. The other areas are woldviews held and the culture that makes transition to new worldviews a slow and tedious process, this is part of your curse. If Norway were leaders in Scandinavia in sustainable thinking and innovation then you would be, but for some reason Norwegians have created an echo chamber to tell one another how great everything is, rather than humble down and take responsibility for their and previous leaderships failures.Regarding the Norwegian wealth fund, are you saying it pioneered SDG reporting for companies? As far as I know GRI is a lead partner in UN SDG reporting. How much of the current sovereign funds holdings meet the SDG’s? If so how?These are some of my nuances. Looking forward to hearing yours!Response by the commenter, in block:Good points! I think to a large degree we are on the same page, as I’m also concerned with the oil-dominated economy and sustainability, and I’m currently working with startups and the high-tech industry to make this shift happen. Though, where I think where we differ is on the outlook ahead.It is hard to compare Sweden and Norway’s economy since Norway found oil and Sweden didn’t, which naturally lead to Sweden developing other industries. Oil proved to be an extremely lucrative industry, which shifted Norway’s focus towards the area. Being a welfare state and a democracy politicians were naturally inclined towards this industry, as it allowed them to spend vast amounts on health-care, pension, education, etc, which made them popular and has lead to the highest living standard in the world. The government has tried to solve the sustainability issue through buying environmental quotas abroad and investing in C02 removal capabilities in oil & gas (Mongstad). The backside of this growth has been the fact that the oil wages have been pushing the other wages in the country up, which has made it difficult to remain competitive for on-shore industries and low-skilled work.The welfare state does absolutely have some challenging years ahead, with increasing costs on pensions, healthcare, infrastructure and education. For this reason the past governments have been reducing the pensions quite dramatically, and are working to improve efficiency through technology in the health-sector. It is estimated that much for the Sovereign Wealth Fund will be spent in these transition years ahead, however fortunately for the country this means that for the time being, Norway has a buffer and capital to make investments. Unlike many other oil nations, the country’s economy has managed the latest oil crisis in 2014 quite well and the economy is recovering (Norway GDP Q2 2017).It is too early to pick winners that will replace the oil industry in terms of wealth creation, but the wheels have started turning. Norway already has a leading position in Maritime Industries and HealthTech and to a lesser degree EdTech and telecommunication. In 2010 there hardly was any startup community in the country, in comparison to now where accelerators like Startuplab and Mesh are going strong, higher education programs like Gründerskolen working to train new entrepreneurs, centers of expertise are working to bridge research with business (About NCE) foreign investment is coming in (Founder Institute: World's premier idea-stage accelerator and startup launch program.), seed capital funds are being created (World's happiest country is becoming a startup mecca) and many highly educated workers are focusing increasingly on these industries (https://www.techradar.com/news/w...). What I think can help here is the fact that Norway has one of the highest productivity levels in the world (Norway most productive country in northern Europe: research) and a highly educated population. However, this development of new industries and diversification of the economy will not happen over night, which unfortunately means that Norway will be dependent on the oil sector for more years to come.When I wrote individual meaning, I meant that I can’t speak on behalf of other people, but my impression is that most Norwegians are highly concerned about sustainability, and many are taking action through changes in their lifestyle, and voting for environmental parties. The environmental party is currently running the city of Oslo and are for instance making the city center car-free. In the national government, the environmental party Venstre has been pushing the government in a more sustainable direction, by creating a C02 tax, enforcing EV subsidies and preventing further oil searches. Though I agree that it would be nice to see further leadership in this area.Regarding the Sovereign Wealth Fund and the UN SDG goals, this is a somewhat new development, but they are focusing in particular on the Water Goals. Check out: As its wealth fund goes green, Norway's firms struggle to keep upMy response to the above block quotes.Thank you for the feedback!First I want to delve into the articles that you are using to support your argument.Myth – Norway, the second most productive country in Northern Europe. Source : Norway most productive country in northern Europe: research. The way productivity is measured here is by calculating by the wages earned per hour.I would recommend that you read the following article from Harvard Business Review on Productivity.https://hbr.org/1988/01/no-nonse...Key take away, productivity is not about high wages. Productivity equals units of outputs divided by units of inputs.Although high wages equaling high productivity is largely moot, lets delve into it for a few paragraphs. How do oil subsidies warp those wages into being high? As you said yourself wages are supported by the oil economy directly and for political reasons continued rise of wages in sectors besides oil are subsidized by the oil economy.What is the subsidy? In 2016 (don’t have 2017 numbers), Norway’s oil industry accounted for 48 percent of exports or about 46.7 billion dollars or 360 billion NOK at an exchange rate of 1 dollar to 7.72 NOK . ( source http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu and The World's Trusted Currency Authority ). Additionally, another 225.6 billion NOK was added to the budget in 2017 from the oil fund (I don’t have 2017 export oil export numbers). 360 plus 225.6 billion is 585 billion nok.In the fourth quarter of 2017 there were 2,655,000 people employed in the Norwegian labor force. (or 69.4 percent of the population, which is a few percent over the above number due to the percentage includes unemployed). Source http://www.ssb.no/en/akuSo, lets take those employed people and multiply it by the numbers in your article, 27 hours of work a week times 337 kroner, times 2,655,000 people, times 52 weeks (assuming the 27 hours was averaged out over the year to include vacations). Total wages equal 1,25 trillion NOK however, if we back out the oil money subsidy of government we are down to about 1 trillion NOK, and if we remove both the subsidies and oil exports we are down to 650 billion NOK, which is saying on average worker productivity without the oil subsidies is about 170 kroner an hour, or around half of the number in the article. To be fair, we should remove the 185,000 oil and gas sector employees I mentioned in the previous response from the 2,655,000 million workers. The 650 billion divided among 2,470,000 workers equals 187 kroner an hour, 187 kroner equals about 22 pounds, which in the article you presented would place Norwegian workers dead last on the table, at rank 11, beneath Germany. To reiterate, what people earn is a bad way to calculate productivity, as in Norway’s case due to oil distorting things and Norway being a bubble economy based on oil, it allows myths of “how great we are” and the echo chamber aka runkesirkel to perpetuate.Point two, Norwegian economic performance for one quarter. https://www.focus-economics.com/...I don’t think quoting one quarter of economic performance is a good way to tell the Norwegian economic story. The article talks about GDP growth of 1.7 to 1.8 percent, in 2017 and 2018, respectively (according to one panel).The following shows a trend over the last decade for Norwegian GDP. Norway is off it’s highs from 2008. (Source https://tradingeconomics.com/nor... ) and is making a slow recovery, primarily (around half) based on the export of oil, gas and condensate. What is more interesting is Norway’s exports have dramatically fallen, from highs of 177 billion dollars in 2012, to 112 billion and 97 billion dollars, in 2015 and 2016 respectively (source http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu ). Probably the most use in following the last link is looking at what is being exported and seeing there is not much of a change, or breakout industry that can come anywhere near replacing oil. What is more important is using the tool to look at net exports as you can get a better idea of what sectors have some sort of competitive advantage and when that is done, the story looks a bit dimmer.The idea of Co2 removal or carbon credits is the largest type of environmental white washing I can think of. When systems are designed they should be done in a way where the output is already thought of in advance. Capturing Co2 and purchasing carbon credits is putting a band aide on a bullet wound. One of my opponents for the defense of my thesis was a leader in the carbon capture storage industry, according to him at best its an interim solution. Humanity has reached a point where we need to move post oil asap.If Norway wants to help, it would have transitioned its oil industry into making products from the oil that are not burned in the first place and then implement concepts such as extended producer responsibility to ensure most of the products are re-captured. By doing so, this would have allowed Norway to gain industrial competencies through the value chain and recapture the value and recycle value back into the system. Now the majority of Norwegian oil is burnt into thin air. While CCS might show profitability, making products out of oil does show profitability and as an interim solution makes more sense than carbon capture from an economic point of view.Of course, Norway took the worldview that “we will hire the best global talent in Norway”, where Saudi Arabia said “we will hire the best global talent globally”. Saudi Arabia largely wiped the floor with Norway in regards to plastic pellet production, where now most of the plastic pellets purchased by Norway come from Saudi Arabia or Saudi controlled firms.I would like to see reports on NCE clusters in their overall results in terms of value added. I have read one report covering NCE’s and other NICs (following link). However, there is not enough financial analysis or comparative analysis with other countries regarding return on investment to make a good assessment of what is presented in the study. They receive around 150 MNok a year in funding, if they are effective throw more money at them, if not don’thttps://www.regjeringen.no/conte...To reiterate, the major issue is there are not national level goals in terms of a vision for the future of this country. If there is not a vision its hard to set goals, and milestones. One strong weakness of Norway, is not adopting the living lab thinking say a Finland or Sweden has. That is, going beyond triple helix thinking and adding people to the process. Living lab’s are often used for transitions from one point to the next. Norwegian innovation systems are sort of stuck in a copy of other innovation systems and not setting a unique path all of their own except in the traditional industries of offshore, subsea, maritime and fisheries. 76 percent of research funding goes to those areas but only accounts for about thirteen percent of jobs ( source, Fagerberg, Jan-2. (2014). Innovation and Innovation Policy in the Nordic Countries. Video Presentation)Regarding seed capital funds, Hallingdal-Valdres Sparebank has 1.2 billion NOK is a growth fund. Why does so much sit there? Because that region has a poverty of ideas and a risk model that is too conservative. Norway overall has the most risk adverse venture capital market in Scandinavia, the term sheets are noncompetitive from the perspective of the founder. Competition could help things, how much capital is the Founder Institute bringing to the table and are their term sheets competitive?I would like to see Innovasjon Norway completely re-organized, today it’s two cultures of bankers and innovators mostly fighting each other rather than achieving results. Innovasjon Norway should be result oriented. However, before this can happen there have to be clear national goals for a post oil future.The happiest country on earth article you shared ( http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/06/... ) is largely a puff piece. Growth by 160 percent is great, but it only equals 100 million dollars in startup fundng. The article shows no evidence of a track record in Norway of what investing the money gets investors. There is no meat in this article that any due diligence professional would find meaningful. Listing IOTA as a “Unicorn” is wishful thinking, where is the liquidity? I don’t doubt IOTA has worth but its highly speculative worth at this stage. The main problem with valuing IOTA at such a level is it produces very little social utility, unless that social utility is part of the greater movement of moving monetary policy from political decision making to scientific decision making. What does Erik Harell do for the article? If you read his quote what is he basing that off of? He has failed to monetize yet…the best chance is for Kahoot to hire lobbyists in the US to push through Kahoot to be used in schools, become a rent seeker, as there is no evidence the market is going to support that company. If anything the article feels its there so Thorleifsson can find investors to reduce his risk in Kahoot.The article you provide “Why Norway Wants to be the World’s Next Big Tech Hub” is full of misinformation.(source : https://www.techradar.com/news/w... )Again, it lists Kahoot as a success and its not. It lists Vivaldi as a success, it has never turned a profit, and lost 63 million kroner in 2016.Rold Assev, formerly from Opera, now Startup lab is quoted as saying “Businesses, especially start-ups, in other countries often fall victim to a model of rapid initial growth, before being sold or amalgamated into larger companies, Assev says. However in Norway, thanks to much of the investment into start-ups coming from within the country, rather than from abroad, domestic companies are able to keep their independence, and grow organically to achieve greater levels of success.”What is he talking about? Of the last 11 winners of the Gazelle Prize in Norway, only 3 had export potential and two of those were bought by foreign competitors. Overall, in Norway find it is much more common for startups to sell out at valuations of a few hundred million kroner than try to scale globally. There is a strong lack of ambition here combined with a lack of capability to go global, unless it’s a state run company, one of the larger established firms, or in an established sector.The article goes on to quote Lier from Nordic Impact “We have the DNA to take risks”. That is simply not true based on the track record of up and coming companies coming out of Norway over the last 10 years. The article goes on to quote Nustad, just a brief point here, his efforts with Folk, and sustainability compared to what is going on in Sweden sort of paint the picture of each country.In Sweden there are multi million Euro projects per year, every year, for many years to link competitive advantage with national goals to increase sustainability. In Norway, there is poor collaboration between investors and government on these issues. Instead what you get, is the fishing lobby telling Norway its future after oil via commercials.Overall, what you provided in your response did not really answer my questions regarding exports and instead you gave me mostly articles that are full of errors and opinions from those with vested interests. The articles mostly feel like press releases and not objective reporting.I warn you, if you are basing your opinions off of the “evidence” you provide then you are basing it off of evidence that would be the basis for bubble building. I don’t know much but I know what bubbles look like and how to perform due diligence. No seasoned investor would take Norway as a credible risk from the information you provided. I’m not saying there are not opportunities to invest in Norway just that the arguments you use to support your conclusions are based on a very low level of evidence.It might help you to read a post I made on evidence for academic analysishttp://qr.ae/TU17HyIf you could come back with actual answers to questions in the previous post that would be helpful as well as higher levels of evidence, from Academia for example.

Dramatically. This drought builds upon long term trends stressing California's water system built 1-2 generations ago to accommodate a much less crowded state.Here's what that looks like in terms of aggregate supply and demand for Southern California from a canonical 2012 US Bureau of Reclamation Study (aka something done before the current drought stresses).That's why demand management is such a big deal as Steven McQuinn says. You might be tempted to say that this is "just a So Cal" problem but that neglects the minor fact that San Francisco and the other parts of Silicon Valley supplied by the SF PUC receive a decidedly nontrivial part of their water from the Sierras through the Hetch Hetchy project.We're all in this togetherCalifornia's water supply system connects close to 90% of our state's population through an incredibly complex system combining natural and man made water transfer systems. (There's a few parts of the state in the far North and the Sierra's that are largely hydrologically independent.)That big yellow line running down the middle of California is the big aqueduct you see beside the I-5 in the Central Valley. That aqueduct (formally the State Water Project) was built in the 60's by Governor Jerry Brown's dad Pat Brown and Jerry Brown is currently trying to provide some sensible system upgrades to improve water reliability and restore the Delta ecosystem (cool infographic and project description here: http://gov.ca.gov/docs/Delta_Fact_Sheets_4.30.15.pdf )Why California's water future begins with demand managementThe "Delta Fix" to the State Water Project at best only aspires to improve the reliability of existing water supplies and so barring some Captain Kirk-esque moonshot to beam water down from Alaska, we're going to have to figure out how to live with the water we have.The State Water Project dipped into a historically unprecedented zero percent allocation in 2014. That combined with record low Sierra snowpack prompted Governor Brown to declare California's first ever statewide 25% mandatory reductions a month ago and take aim at unnecessary ornamental lawns. It's not like you can't have pretty landscaping btw. There's tons of drought tolerant California natives out there. california native landscaping - Google SearchLook at the map at the right using the US Bureau of Reclamation's drought watch data. The saving grace so far has been that California has still received fairly healthy Colorado river supplies (note the "less red" along new Mexico and Utah and Colorado -- super scientific I know ;) ).What happens if that supply goes the way of the State Water Project and dries up? Then we're not talking about tearing out ornamental turf. That's when we start to have to consider restricting water use to essential health and human services and the big economic impacts to industry start happening. I'm not trying to scare anyone btw -- just give you all a clear eyed appreciation for the realities we face.And note it's tempting to trivialize all this talk of conservation as neglecting the "80% of water that goes to agricultural use" but it's important to know what that number actually means. Do Californians in cities not go to farmer's markets and eat produce? That's a huge amount of "virtual water" water right there folks and effectively zero of that is included in theThat 80% figure also has human uses as the denominator and ignores the 50% of water statewide on average that goes to "environmental" purposes. Though again the categories are a bit simplistic b/c that includes water used for fish like salmon which have some pretty clear human uses: deliciousness ;)And less whimsically, as John Muir wisely noted while traipsing about in the Sierras one summer with little more than a few loaves of bread, “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” That deep perspective reminds us to stay humble in the face of future water uncertainty, particularly given we only have a rich historical record of water supply for about a century and climate change shifts California's baselines.The (Old?) Normal: are we ready for a Megadrought?Let's remember that we're only in the fourth year of the current drought. Australia recently had one that lasted over a decade. And scientists looking at tree rings and other ecological artifacts tell us that droughts spanning multiple centuries have occurred several times in the last millennium.See A 1,200-year perspective of 21st century drought in southwestern North America for detail.Will 25% urban conservation be enough to ensure our civilization can survive such an occurrence? No. Yet will we have any chance of dealing with a megadrought if we're still messing around with ornamental lawns that serve no useful purpose?The need for Silicon Valley's "pioneering spirit"There's some cool digital tools out there to communicate better with Californians about conservation like Water Smart and a whole bunch of "tattle on your neighbor" water waste reporting tools that pop up in every "hackathon" touching on water.Yet there's huge categories of demand management that could be done an order of magnitude better with modern digital tools that frankly Silicon Valley is blind to because these opportunities are shrouded behind a "pretzel palace of incredible complexity" to use Jerry Brown's memorable phrase for California's administrative architecture.Consider a few opportunities:1) How the governor's 25% statewide allocation is being implementedThere's a raging debate among water management insiders going on about how to allocate that 25% conservation mandate among ~400 of California's urban water utilities. But beyond all the in the weed arguments about fairness with past conservation, evapotranspiration differentials and other local context there's one glaringly obvious data management fact that you can see right on the State's drought website: State Water Resources Control Board.Here's a super simple Tableau dashboard a buddy and I threw together mashing up that recent State Board data with historical usage to provide a more robust picture of conservation trends:California Statewide Water Usage (February SWRCB + UWMP) And here's a blog post diving into all the water management nit grit: Balancing short and long term conservation to meet Governor Brown's 25% urban water use conservation mandateYet can't we do better than tracking statewide water usage via a giant excel spreadsheet thrown up on an FTP server? Why not parse water usage at a individual household rather than aggregate utility level? That data is personally identifiable but as the Sac Bee says commercial corporations aren't people that deserve privacy protection and residential usage could be aggregated at the Census Block level (on the order of thousands of people) and made public using the same logic as the US Census.That's a principled approach using technologies that exist today that could be implemented in a manner of months if not weeks with the right team and leadership from the top.2) Where are California's lawns?Southern California is spending well over $200 million to pay cash rebates to people that tear out their lawns. Yet good data on how many lawns there are across California at a household level are lacking and "you can't manage what you can't measure."A buddy and I started messing around with publicly available aerial and google streeview imagery for my hometown but there's a ton of ways to improve on our super simplistic approach that you can read about here:Dude where's my lawn?There's also a need to have a time series of landscape type so we can get a better idea of the decision calculus of all households that change from ornamental turf to California native landscaping. Google has that going back to 2007 for most of California but doesn't expose historical images through their streetview api.Strikes me that geotagging lawns and classifying landscapes to help the California drought would be a better toy problem for their image processing geniuses than deciding "cat / no cat" on the Youtube.3) Pioneering a new conservation ethicHere's where one and two come together. Everyone in the water management industry knows we can't get the permanent conservation necessary by paying out cash rebates. That'll run into 10+ figure range.No the strategy has always been to use cash rebates to incentivize early adopters and then a phased approach to achieve market transformation.The data gathered in one and two could be mashed up with other sources like home assessed valuation, party registration and maybe even all the social dataThe logic is pretty simple: do what the Obama campaign did with data to personalize outreach to win hearts and minds to California native landscaping.Digital tools like nationbuilder have proven pretty useful for organizing and galvanizing action so why not use them to develop conservation allies in the community and use volunteers like the California Conservation Corps to help plant California native landscaping?California's incredibly complex administrative architectureI've worked in and around California water issues from more organizations at a state, local and federal level than many (even policy savvy) folks know exist. I don't say that to be like "look at me I'm an expert" but rather to note that I've there's still infinities of administrative complexity that baffle me.For instance, I did the financing numbers on the Governor's Delta Fix a few years back and every time I talk to someone who's in the weeds on the Delta there's another key organization or bureaucratic process instrumental to the success or failure of the plan. It often feels like this "advert" about India's civil service:And note I don't mean that to mock California's dedicated civil servants (that'd lead to many an awkward dinner since I'm close friends with and related to a good number). In fact, I'd note that California's water management community has some of the most talented technocrats in the world.Singapore's the darling of the Aspen Ideas, Economist globe trotting good governance crowd. But where was the recycled water technology underpinning their vaunted NeWater system pioneered and scaled? Yup right here in California.Our states water managers have done an incredible job to manage demand with limited resources and working within an administrative architecture that frankly was built on a logic of supply and for another era. California has roughly a thousand water utilities, each with their unique local history and administrative powers.Try to wrap your mind around the differences between a city water department versus a nonprofit water mutual company versus a converted agricultural irrigation district versus a regulated private water company. Then consider that's just retailers and there's wholesale water suppliers like those that import from the Colorado or the State Water Project not to mention water quality regulators and actors from the state and federal government.Then work to grok that there's a slew of quasi-governmental organizational (somewhat?) outside of the formal administrative architecture like the Association of California Water Agencies that provide insurance through a JPA or funding vehicles at the intersection of all of the above... And of course many environmental and agricultural and other advocacy groups are all but de facto members of California's water governance... California’s Game of Thrones: WaterWhen you accept that despite how much you know you've still just been starting at the administrative "map" of California water and not the territory of how things actually get done, that you may have discovered the proverbial elephant as a blind man but are still blind, you can ease your mind and the lesson will be complete young jedi... Then we can proceed to the next step.The Next Frontier in Drought ManagementFirst note working within that legacy administrative framework California's urban water managers have held water usage constant for the past few decades despite adding millions of people to our cities. That's damn near heroic in my book.Of course there's a ton more that needs to be done. Here's two of the more obvious examples that serve as symbols of the larger opportunities for data science to transform how we manage demand:Better data on agricultural groundwater use so we don't just have pictures like this to judge historical trends:Basic water price informationWhat’s the average price of water charged in California? How has that changed in the last month? In this day and age, why can’t that question be a simple database query rather than a five+ figure survey billed out to some overpriced consulting firm that doesn’t even gather a comprehensive dataset?Look I get to Silicon Valley types with all the oodles of opportunity you kids got that water demand management may not sound like the sexiest thing. But it's necessary. Water has been fundamental to civilization since mankind first built cities in ancient Sumeria.And water management has followed epochal shifts in public administration from the Roman aqueducts that still stand today to the progressive era that not only gave us the public utilities but the civil service system that defines government administration today.California's next gold rush: good governmentWhat story will you want to tell your grandkids? About the great pivot your startup made to create some service that was cool for half a day but made you a million bucks in an aquihire?Or about how you helped transform California's water management to safeguard the California dream for the next generation? Since at least the Post WWII boom, lawns have been an integral part of many California's dream of a better life and that's simply no longer sustainable.Here's our opportunity to not just help California better manage demand but to take the pioneering spirit that's built Hollywood and Silicon Valley and use it to transform how we tackle public problems... pioneer a whole new California dream if you will...Silicon Valley types like to say things like "software is eating the world" but ponder this: where are the barriers that have been holding back the digital revolution for decades? Like say where is data managed in giant excel spreadsheets on FTF servers straight outta 1995...Hint we've been talking about the big ones (politics, bureaucracy...) this whole time... Now imagine what might be possible if those weren't walls but instead wind... ;)Anyway, enough talk for one day. Gotta get back to the water data mines.Hit me up @patwater if you're down to make some plays.Cheers,PAPatrick