Oslo to End Private Property Rights
In a daring move, the ostensibly right™-of-centre city gov't doubles down on left™ policies, monkeys with data™, and stands poised to abrogate ownership rights turning them into privileges
Yesterday, we explored the curious mind of the allegedly right-of-centre Oslo City Council to mandate emissions-free construction machinery to combat™ Climate Change™. Read part one here:
This, of course, is little more than a kind of side-show of the Cult of Climatology™ making massive inroads in the most likely places:
Among well-meaning yet supremely moronic Scandinavians.
Today, we’ll explore the many inanities (and I’ll serve you yet another example of just how shitty legacy media reporting™ is).
Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine.
Will Force Builders to Have Electric Construction Sites [sic]
As the first municipality in the country, Oslo will also forcibly electrify private and state-owned construction sites. Obos maintains that it will result in more expensive homes.
‘Emissions from construction sites account for large greenhouse gas emissions in our city’, says Environment and Transport Councillor Marit Kristine Vea (Venstre [Liberal Party]).
On Thursday [9 Sept. 2025], the city council will send the regulations on mandatory electrification out for consultation.
Obos [Norway’s largest private construction company] has previously said that it will make homes several hundred thousand kroner more expensive.
But the measure is absolutely necessary, according to the city council [i.e., TINA, as in ‘there is no alternative’].
[infobox] These are the requirements
The Oslo City Council proposes to require that large construction and building sites must use emission-free or biogas-powered construction machinery.
The regulations will be sent out for consultation on 4 September and will finally be adopted by the Oslo City Council [i.e., the consultation™ is a charade].
Smaller projects such as houses under 200 square meters are exempt.
At least 30 per cent of energy use must be emissions-free by 2027.
The requirement will be tightened to 90 per cent in 2030.
Exceptions are possible in the event of technical or economic obstacles.
Expected emission reduction of 30-40,000 tons of CO2 per year by 2030.
‘When we are going to cut emissions by 95 per cent, we also have to take action on this’, says Marit Vea [no need to provide any insights, let alone data, as to what the baseline is, what the overall emissions per sector are, and how much of a cut these 30-40K tons are].
‘Petty’
Madness, believes the Progress Party and second candidate for Oslo in the general election, Simen Velle:
In order to achieve its ambitious climate goals, the Liberal Party's city council has lost touch with the reality. Sending the bill for outrageously expensive climate measures to ordinary Norwegians trying to enter the housing market is petty.
Whether the zero-emission requirement will make homes much more expensive is controversial [what’s controversial about that? It all comes down to cost differentials between diesel-powered vs. EV machinery; also, just because private contractors say so doesn’t make it that]. We will come back to that.
To Cut 95 Per Cent
The climate targets have been adopted by a broad majority in the Oslo City Council—against the votes of the Liberal Party [which should tell you all that’s required about the proposal—it’s either mandated from other™ actors or politicos™ are habitually lying (my money is on both)].
Emissions are to be reduced by 95 per cent by 2030—in just five years [which is impossible].
The City Council points out that the construction sector is the third largest source of direct greenhouse gas emissions in Oslo [more obfuscatory lingo: ‘direct’ indicates that there’s also indirect emissions, but we don’t get any information about these].
Only road traffic and waste incineration emit more.
[I’ll interrupt the flow here because that’s a big, fat, stinkin’ LIE, that is, if one steps into reality for a change and checks out the official™ data for Oslo municipality as provided by the Norwegian Environmental Agency:
To me, ‘energy generation’ (Energiforsyning) is a tad bigger than whichever category under which ‘construction machinery’ is subsumed; although I don’t know for sure, I consider it to be categorised under ‘manufacturing, oil, and gas (Industri, olje og gass), which is absent from the 2023 data™ (more on this in a moment); look at the brown sliver, which is ‘heating’ (Oppvarming), which constitutes around 38K tons of CO2 emissions equivalents per year and is thus in the ballpark of emissions savings™ as projected by the City Council’s mandate for EV construction machinery.
About these data, by the way, you need to know the following (which I took verbatim from their website under the sub-header ‘About these data’):
The accounts include the direct, physical emissions that occur within the geographical boundaries of the municipality. This means that greenhouse gas emissions from the exhaust pipe of a diesel car will be included under the road traffic sector, but only the emissions that occur while the car is driving within the geographical boundaries of the municipality. Emissions in connection with the production of the car at various factories will be placed in the 'industry, oil and gas' sector in the municipalities where the factories are geographically located. Emissions that physically occur abroad will not be included in the municipally distributed accounts [it would be nice if taxation worked that way, too, but, alas!, that’s not how the IRS’ of the world work].
The greenhouse gases CO2, methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) are included in the accounts [funny that, esp. since water vapour is not included here—although, in the words of Wikipedia (which I’m citing as repository of officially endorsed reality™), it ‘is the most important greenhouse gas overall, being responsible for 41–67% of the greenhouse effect,[32][33]’—. [we note that these official accounts data are, by definition, some 41-67% off]. The emission figures are shown in the unit CO2 equivalents [i.e., these data are models]. This is a unit of measurement used to compare the warming effect of different greenhouse gases on the atmosphere and to clarify which emissions contribute most to global warming.
In all, Oslo Municipality’s official emissions clock in at around/just shy of 1m tons of CO2 (equivalents), hence if the new ordinance shall reduce that amount by 30-40K, we’re talking an official reduction of emissions by 3-4%.— provided one disregards emissions that occur™ outside the city limits and/or abroad: if you believe the good Marit Vea, then, I may have a bridge to sell to you, but first I’d like you to meet my very trustworthy business partner, a Nigerian prince.]
The requirement for emission-free construction sites must finally be adopted by the Oslo City Council.
Gradual Introduction
The City Council proposes to introduce the requirement gradually [of course, because doing so overnight means a full stop to all construction].
From 2027, at least 30 per cent of energy use [note the sleight-of-hand: we’re not talking simply about electric excavators or trucks, but energy as a catch-all] must be emission-free [terms and conditions apply: everything outside the city limits won’t be counted, and neither are ‘embodied’ emissions, or child labour in the Congo, for that matter].
The requirement will be tightened to 90 per cent in 2030.
According to Marit Vea, the requirement for emission-free construction sites will be one of the most powerful single measures to reduce emissions [remember, we’re talking a 3-4% reduction, i.e., low single-digits—overall]—second only to carbon capture at Klemetsrud [no time to get into the weeds of this boondoggle, but have a look at their self-celebratory press release from 2022 upon securing gov’t funding]:
We know that big things are going to be built in Oslo, lots of housing in the future too. So these emissions will not go away unless we change the machinery fleet and stop using diesel and petrol-powered machines.
Setting Demands on Ourselves
Both the previous [red-green] and current [right-of-centre] city councils have been drivers for emission-free construction sites. Since 2019, this has been rewarded in the tenders for the municipality’s own projects [fine if the developer writes this into their tenders].
On 1 January 2025, this became a requirement when the municipality itself builds.
As a result, 85 per cent of the energy use [sic] is emissions-free when Oslo builds schools, kindergartens, and nursing homes [ah, how nice—all the good stuff is built emissions-free in the sense outlined above: as long as construction materials and whatever happens outside the city limits (such as, e.g., making of cement) is discounted].
In April, the [outgoing Labour Party gov’t] government gave Norwegian municipalities the opportunity to impose the same on private and state developers:
We will facilitate the possibility for ambitious municipalities to limit emissions from construction and civil engineering activities in order to achieve their climate goals
Thus Minister for Climate and the Environment, Andreas Bjelland Eriksen (Labour Party). [what the gov’t is saying is—we’re curtailing property rights].
More Expensive Homes
Several people have warned that a requirement for electric excavators, cranes, and asphalt pavers would make it more expensive to build homes.
Among them are the Norwegian Federation of Mechanical Contractors (MEF), the Norwegian Housing Construction Association (NBBL), the Norwegian Housing Industry Association (NHO) and Norway’s largest housing developer Obos.
‘For all practical purposes, such a requirement would increase the cost of a home in Oslo by somewhere between 150,000 and 300,000 kroner. And that is a conservative estimate’, Obos CEO Daniel Kjørberg Siraj told NRK [of course private businesses will say that—and happily pass costs onto the consumers].
Several have criticised the statements, including Grønn Byggallianse [trans. Green Construction Alliance] and Bellona [an environmentalist-activist think tank that, hilariously, claims to not take any public funds, that is, except for funding from various EU institutions, Norway’s Research Council, and the Norwegian Nuclear Safety Agency, as even (sic) Wikipedia notes].
‘Obos is pure scaremongering to avoid taking action on its emissions’, says Bellona’s head of industry Christian Eriksen.
Prices are Plummeting
The Conservative and Liberal City Councillors also believe that the fears are exaggerated:
Oslo Municipality itself has been setting these requirements for quite some time now. And we see that the prices for electric solutions are plummeting.
We are also giving the business community the opportunity to adapt with a predictable timeline.
Thus Environment Councillor Marit Vea [who also stated that due to these mandates imposed in 2019, prices went up before the came down a bit years later—and now we’d have to account for inflation since 2019: as per Statistics Norway, the CPI/inflation (averaged annual values) amounts to 20% until 2024, i.e., we’re talking 5% annual inflation (that is, officially™, and I disbelieve all these official data, and so should you); if, as a thought experiment, we presume roughly comparable inflation trends as in the US—via Shadowstats.com—we’d have to double these official figures].
City Councillor Eirik Lae Solberg (H) has faith in the construction industry:
The industry itself is doing a lot of good in adopting new technology. Several are already phasing in zero-emission solutions.
Several Hundred Thousand Crowns More Expensive
Obos CEO Daniel K. Siraj stands his ground. He tells NRK that a phasing in to 90 per cent emission-free in four and a half years is quite fast [well, since he’s presumably a Very Smart Cookie, he could have foreseen this from around 2019, yet his company hasn’t moved all that much, that is, other than foul-mouthing complaints (however much I sympathise with these sentiments, I also realise that such Big Businesses also, and habitually, lie)]:
Our position on this matter has not changed. Electric construction sites with emission-free construction machinery is a requirement that has a very high cost in relation to the effect [yet here, he’s correct as per the gov’t’s own data highlighted above]
In fact, these mandates will result in up to several hundred thousand crowns more for a single apartment due to the extended construction time and larger machinery.
He says that Obos, as an industry leader, has both a great responsibility and clear goals to reduce emissions:
For us, it is about taking the measures that have the greatest climate effect while not making the homes more expensive than people can afford to pay [and this prices ‘are what the market can bear’ argument highlights yet another omitted factoid here: commercial banks lend not in relation to costs but in relation to customers’ abilities to pay, which tells us yet another crucial fact: not only is construction/housing increasingly mis-priced, but so are mortgages, interest rates, and, by extension, industrial/manufacturing activities].
According to Obos, it is not the construction itself, but the use of materials that contributes to the greatest emissions, for example the type of concrete used [which, let’s remind everyone, comes from beyond the city limits and isn’t accounted for in the emissions data™].
Gov’t Will Assist Industry
The Green Building Alliance supports the plan for a gradual and predictable introduction of the requirement, even though they believe the pace of introduction is debatable.
A number of businesses from the construction, civil engineering, and real estate sectors are members:
‘Several of our members have requested emission-free construction sites. We will assist the industry in showing how the requirement can be met’, says communications manager Morten Nordskag.
He adds that the alliance is calling for measures [that means handouts] from the city council that reward environmentally-oriented developers who take the lead.
Bottom Lines
Thus ends what once was a reality-based social order: by its elected™ officials imposing maddeningly, and insultingly stupid, mandates that are based on wishful thinking.
Two years ago, I penned a very long essay, which I suggest you might find interesting:
I opened it citing Nobel Prize winner Kary Mullis:
Scientists don’t believe, they have evidence.
Thus Kary Mullis, as cited by Celia Farber in her amazing Serious Adverse Events (Chelsea Green, 2023, p. 129).
The evidence—as provided by Norway’s Environmental Agency is spotty at best, and faulty by design.
I doubt other, comparable agencies have better data.
The point of these websites, glossy publications, and breath-less reporting™, though, isn’t for internet-based sleuths to dig through these data and highlight potential flaws.
That’s at best a side-show distraction.
The over-arching point is—to confer what looks, to most casual observers, like legitimacy.
It suffices that the more or less disinterested public sees these data, grunts, and mutters, ‘well, it’s all there in these data, isn’t it?’, and moves on to doom-scroll further.
Yet, I maintain—if we were to make informed decisions as citizens, we can’t do that.
Which is why I think this is all by design, and that design has the aim to demoralise people into acquiescence (best case) or at least helpless despair (good enough), as in, can’t change it anyways, hence I better conform.
There’s probably no better example than the stupid things the Scandinavians are doing.
Thus, to consider that Europeans once ruled the world becomes an ever more strange factoid, isn’t it?
Collateral damages of these mandates include—the abrogation of property rights as we know it, which is a good third, if not more, of one of the West’s historical foundations.
What a strange new world this is.
If these mandates are imposed and enforced, the remainder—life and liberty—will inevitably follow down the drain.
And it won’t take as long as the erosion, and subsequent removal, of property rights.
What is that quote about the inmates running the asylum? And now the moronic.
So... Norwegians will instead invest and build in Sweden and Denmark rather than Oslo? Fine by me I guess.
Electrified buildings sites - they already are, unless it's the heavy machinery we're talking about! But the XX-chromosomes driving this issue don't realise that electrical power comes from hydro-electric dams built using millions of tons of concrete, the production of which is very CO2-intensive, or windmills and we know well the very negative envronmental impact of those, or oil/coal-powered plants, or nuclear reactors in Sweden and Finland.
But she looks like the kind of woman who answers "From the wall-socket" when asked where electiricty comes from.
It's really hard not to start arguing for a new eugenics programme and revoking universal franchise these days.