Norway's Gov't Raises Bus Tickets, Virtue-Signalling their Way into a Man-Made Climate Crisis
And thus the insanity progresses, slowly at first, and then all of a sudden
As indicated a few days ago, Norway is apparently at the forefront of where the rubber (virtue-signalling climate change™ policies) meets the road (a.k.a. reality): last week, I notified you about the impending double-whammy in terms of stupid politicking—price hikes for public transport services™ due to insane gov’ climate mandates™—which may induce a massive crisis:
As the above-linked report indicated that the gov’t may revise the 2025 budget, well, here’s how that turned out (spoiler alert: the gov’t didn’t lift a finger).
Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine.
Public Transportation Crisis Across the Country: Progress Party Wants a Return [sic] to Diesel Buses
The government is not putting more money on the table to cover the extra costs of emission-free buses.
By Nils Fridtjof Skumsvoll and Eline Molvær Løndal, NRK, 19 May 2025 [source]
On Thursday [15 May 2025], Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg (Labour Party) presented this year’s revised national budget.
County governors [orig. Fylkesordførere] across the country hoped [note a sound political proposition] for the longest time for money to stem the tide of a predicted public transport crisis, but the extra money did not materialise.
One of the reasons why public transport services are now being affected is the requirement for emission-free buses [that’s a krav, i.e., a gov’t mandate, which—unlike many other things in these debates, is man-made], a measure Frp has little sympathy for.
‘We support good environmental solutions that work, but we don’t want to be part of symbolic politics that cost more than they bring’, says Thorleif Fluer Vikre.
He is county leader and group leader of Telemark Progress Party [that would be the right-wingâ„¢ libertarian/populist faction].
In 2024 and 2025, several counties will have new contracts with public transport companies. The contracts will run for the next ten years.
The cost of the tenders has increased abnormally—up to 60 per cent in some places.
This is the case in Vikre’s own county, Telemark.
‘If you demand zero emissions, you must also pay for it’
Vikre thinks the demand for zero-emission buses is hopeless, and believes that travellers are now being harmed by [what is sold as] an environmental measure he believes does not work.
‘Climate policy madness,’ says the Progress Party politician.
He is disappointed that the government did not come up with extra money to cover the extra costs that may affect public transport services from north to south.
This is hair-raising. If you demand zero emissions, you also have to pay for it. The consequence is fewer buses and that people have to choose the car.
If it had been up to him, diesel buses would be on the roads for a long time to come:
You need more time to become climate and emissions neutral [this is the problem: even (sic) allegedly realisticâ„¢ politicosâ„¢ are buying into this nonsense].
[NRK] But Norway has committed to cutting emissions. Does the government have a choice?
Yes, they do. They can do the wise thing and [could] choose the emissions that are cheapest to cut. Not the emissions that are most expensive.
What do you think about going back to diesel buses?
Agreed. It is much better for the climate [sic] with diesel buses that run, as opposed to EV buses that don’t.—73%
TF! So we’re supposed to backtrack? We’ll never make it to zero emissions like that.—27%
NB that this poll does not show what the population thinks about the question. The result shows what those who have chosen to vote think, and is not a representative survey [so, do one?].
More people than the Progress Party are reacting to the fact that no extra money is being set aside for the country’s public transport [here follow brief statements by the main political parties (and I’ll spare us all the pictures)].
Sigbjørn Gjelsvik (Centre Party), chairman of the Transportation Committee:
It’s much better for the climate to have a diesel bus running than an electric bus standing still. If routes are cut, more people will lose an alternative to the car for everyday journeys.
Arild Hermstad (Greens), party leader
First the government comes up with climate requirements for the counties, but when public transport is struggling with high costs, there is no money for the transition [that’s kinda the Green party’s mantra: repeat the question and refuse to answer it].
MÃmir Kristjánsson (R), Member of Parliament
Emission-free buses are good, but the money must come from the state. It’s unwise to switch to emission-free vehicles before you have the money to do so. Then you end up closing down routes [well put, captain obvious].
Frank Sve (Progress Party), transport policy spokesperson
We can’t afford symbolic climate requirements in the public sector. It increases costs dramatically and affects patrons who get more expensive and poorer public services [since Norwegians are subjects and not citizens, the rabble may well STFU, though]
Hadle Bjuland (Christian Democratic Party), transport policy spokesperson
Public transport services through town and country must be accessible [perhaps also inclusiveâ„¢?]. The state should cover all threshold costs for new renewable transport solutions to make emission-free public transport possible.
Guri Melby (Venstre [Liberals]), party leader
Støre and Stoltenberg are leaving hard-pressed county councils to set tough priorities. This is likely to result in them having to cut back on public transport services [well, to me, this is clearly by design as bleeding the subsidiary administrative levels dry will permit the gov’t to centralise authority].
Liv Kari Eskeland (Høyre [Conservatives]), Member of Parliament
For the Conservatives, it is important to find good solutions to the situation described by the counties. We are committed to having good public transport solutions throughout the country [boilerplate blablabla].
Lars Haltbrekken (SV [Socialist Left]), Deputy Chairman
The government is not taking the highly pressurised situation of public transport seriously. They must recognise their responsibility and empower the counties and municipalities to implement the green transition [clearly, the Socialist Left have a plan…]
Disappointments
Counties will need more than NOK 1 billion [more than US$ 100m] extra to maintain current public transport services next year [since that’s what it’ll take to keep existing services™, anything less than 1b crowns = cutbacks].
This is according to the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities (KS). The chairman of the organisation, Gunn Marit Helgesen, is disappointed that the government is not listening to the warning calls:
Many county mayors and local politicians across the country are now disappointed [this stance will be followed by desperation as the public will experience cuts before too long].
In the revised national budget, the government has proposed an increase in discretionary income for municipalities of up to NOK 4.9 billion next year.
According to the Local Government Proposition for 2026, in practice it is up to NOK 2 billion.
‘The question is how much free income [sic; there’s no such thing, but meant is discretionary spending ability] there is when there are several other services that also cost money, such as schools and roads’, says Helgesen.
Trust in the Storting [Parliament]
It’s very disappointing that the government’s proposal doesn’t help to avoid a public transport crisis throughout the country.
This is according to Ole Ueland (Høyre [Conservatives]), chairman of the county governors’ conference:
As announced, the consequences will lead to route cuts and price increases, which in turn will affect public transport travellers [ticket prices already increased by about 10% in 2024 over 2023 levels].
We now have to trust that the government’s partner parties SV [Socialist Left] and Sp [Centre Party] can find funding for this in the budget negotiations in the Storting [good luck, for any trust in gov’t is misplaced].
‘At the Heart of Climate Policy’ [no irony there]
Cecilie Knibe Kroglund (Ap), State Secretary in the Ministry of Transport and Communications, refers to previous responses on the matter [and doesn’t add a word to her statement from last week, which I’ll reproduce here in full]:
The Government is well aware that many county councils are in a demanding financial situation, and we fully understand that public transport in particular is now under pressure [you sure do: the gov’t is the reason for this situation].
We know that many counties are experiencing increased costs related to new tenders, electrification, driver shortages, and general price increases, and in light of this, the government has already proposed several appropriation increases to strengthen the counties’ finances [oh, look, more gov’t money will further decrease the independence of local/regional gov’t].
In its consideration of the new review of the state budget for 2024 and the supplementary number to the state budget for 2025, Storting [Norway’s parliament] decided to increase discretionary spending by NOK 700 million [about US$ 70m] in 2024 and a further NOK 700 million as a permanent increase from 2025. This was in addition to the real growth of NOK 1.65 billion proposed in Prop. 1 S for 2025.
In addition, we are making targeted investments in public transport in urban areas [fine, but that’s not the issue here: the counties represent rural Norway, and most problems discussed above are found there]. In the 2025 budget, NOK 7.7 billion has been set aside for the urban growth agreements and other subsidy schemes. These funds are used for operations and investments in local public transport, helping to achieve the zero-growth target and ensure good mobility solutions in urban areas.
Emission cuts in the transport sector are central to climate policy [note the BS: transportation is a blip relative to, say, manufacturing or construction, to say nothing about the oil and gas industry or the military, for that matter]. The introduction of requirements can be an effective tool for ensuring that operators choose climate-friendly solutions when these are competitive compared with fossil-fuelled solutions [we’ve seen this before: the gov’t will make ICE cars so prohibitively expensive that people will ‘choose™ climate-friendly solutions’].
The government introduced zero-emission requirements in public procurement of city buses from 2024. Even before the government introduced this requirement, the market share for zero-emission city buses was almost 80% of sales of new city buses [so, basically, the gov’t admits that the new requirement is basically useless; they want to speed up the adoption of EV buses].
The requirements set by the government for zero-emission vehicles and ferries must be able to work in practice. Therefore, the requirements have been introduced together with a set of exemptions.
For vehicles, exemptions from the zero-emission requirement are granted if, among other things, the primary need for the procurement cannot be met by zero-emission vehicles and if sufficient charging infrastructure is not available.
Bottom Lines
There you have it: even (sic) in climate-friendly™ and oil-rich Norway, the left-wing (!) gov’t will not budge when it comes to rising prices for public services (sic) to fulfil their own man-made obligations.
The gov’t will rather have the population—already taxed highly—suffer a bit more for the sake of the climate™.
Hence, people will be paying extra.
As to myself, I frequently travel by bus and train (in the summer half-year as my little farm in the countryside is merely accessible by a road that in winter may be blocked due to snowfall in the mountains for days), but even now, it’s cheaper to take the car.
The situation will get worse before too long, though, and if the gov’t insists on these climate aims, people will pay more; the main problem is that Western publics have been bamboozled so long, and have grown decadent to an unimaginable degree, that I do wonder what it’ll take before they proclaim: here I stand, I can’t go further.
Apparently, we’re not quite ‘there’ (yet).
But give it a bit more time—in the next decade, oil and esp. gas exports will decline significantly, thus depriving the gov’t of much-needed income.
There’s a national election coming up in September 2025, and I suspect that the next gov’t will be cutting the bloated budget (as of 2024, 64% of GDP were due to state activities), yelling ‘there is no alternative’ from the top of their lungs.
Already, Norwegians are resorting to cheaper holiday destinations, putting their second homes on sale (with few buyers), and are trying to get by.
Sounds like first-world problems, for sure, but it’s also a canary in the coal mine.
Before too long, the ripple effects will render many of these notions irrelevant before long.
We should, perhaps, spend more time on considering what’s likely going to happen next.
I've got a couple of solutions for my "Västra brödrafolk":
In mountainous areas, put up mechanical derricks and water-wheels, connected to a system of pull-cars. The derricks and water-wheels powers drive-trains to which the cars are connected. That way, people can go up and down with zero carbon footprints.
In the towns and cities, horse-drawn trams can be put to good use. The slower speed means fewer accidents, and electricity consumption will be virtually zero. Also, the horses can work during winter if correctly attired and fed.
For long-distance travel, a network of helium-filled woodgas-powered dirigbles can be set up at low cost.
Sure, it'll all be slower than planes, train and automobiles, but think of all the jobs created and the positive effects on the climate!