Opening up the Arctic to oil companies is ‘shortsighted and stupid’, says leading Norwegian author as he leads campaign to sue the government

Norway’s best-known author has lashed out at “the shortsightedness and stupidity” of plans to expand oil exploration into the Arctic, as campaigners prepare to sue the government for placing future generations at risk from climate change.

Karl Ove Knausgaard, whose bestselling memoir has been a global literary sensation, is fronting a campaign to mount a legal challenge against moves by Norway to open up the Arctic to oil companies.



Norway is one of the richest countries in the world – it’s all about greed, and it’s a fucking disgrace. Karl Ove Knausgaard

Oil and gas extraction in the Arctic has nothing to do with worthwhile goals such as alleviating poverty, Knausgaard said. “Norway is one of the richest countries in the world – it’s all about greed, and it’s a fucking disgrace.”

The environment was the single most important issue of our time, he said, and his feeling of helplessness in the face of environmental destruction made him “just turn away from it and try to think about something else”. But Arctic oil exploration was different, he said.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Karl Ove Knausgaard. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for The Guardian

“The Arctic is one of the few places left on the planet that still is unexploited, it’s a very sensitive area, and I never believed that my government actually would do such a thing. We need to make them stop, and we still can do that. … The shortsightedness and the stupidity of it just makes me want to cry.”

A petition launched by a senior barrister has gathered the signatures of 200 leading cultural figures and environmental organisations, who see it as a first step towards winning broad public support and raising the money needed for a court case in the autumn. The campaign aims to make use of a recent change to the constitution which obligates the state to take action to ensure natural resources are managed “on the basis of comprehensive long-term considerations”, including safeguarding the environment for future generations.

“Persisting with business-as-usual extraction [of oil] on the Norwegian continental shelf contradicts the precautionary principle and climate scientists’ warnings,” the petition states. “Opening new areas of the Arctic for oil exploration would make Norway one of the frontrunners in a fossil-fuelled race towards an uninhabitable planet.”

The Norwegian government in January announced the first expansion of oil exploration into entirely new areas for 20 years, opening a licensing process in the Norwegian Sea, Barents Sea and waters that stretch some 40 miles further north to the edge of the Arctic sea ice. New and attractive exploration sites are important to long-term value creation and to maintaining the oil industry’s contribution to Norway’s welfare society, the government said when it announced the plan.

Although the price of oil collapsed on world markets last year, forcing oil companies to scale back their drilling plans, there is expected to be considerable interest in licences to exploit Arctic minerals, seen as lucrative assets for the longer term. The Arctic has been heralded as the next big frontier for oil exploration, with the region estimated to hold some 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30% of its undiscovered gas.

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Environmentalists received a setback this month when Shell won conditional approval for its Arctic exploration plans from the US regulator. Norway’s government insists that oil exploration is subject to stringent health, safety and environmental requirements.

Lars Andreas Lunde, environment secretary in Norway’s right-wing coalition government, said discharge permits for oil activities were granted by the Norwegian Environment Agency, and objections would be heard by the environment ministry. “This should ensure that no permits are granted unless the environmental challenges related to a specific activity are sufficiently dealt with and not putting the Arctic environment at risk,” he said.

Oil continues to make a huge contribution to Norway’s prosperity – investment income from the country’s $916bn fund set up to manage oil profits is comfortably more than total public spending. But there are fears that reliance on oil is too great, and the government is actively trying to expand other sectors of the economy. It has also pledged to cut greenhouse gases emissions by 40% by 2030, a goal critics say sits uncomfortably besides aggressive exploration for oil and gas.

The campaign by Norwegian environmentalists aims to mirror similar legal challenges in the Netherlands and in the US, where lawsuits have attempted to hold governments to account over climate change. In April, the Dutch Urgenda foundation launched the first case in the world to use human rights and tort law to hold a government responsible for failing to reduce carbon emissions fast enough.



“Where do we draw the line if not in the Arctic?”said Åsne Seierstad, the bestselling Norwegian author and another signatory to the petition. “No economic policy is more short-term than relying on profits from the very areas that are worst affected from climate change.”