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Norway should set an example for the world by pumping oil and gas revenues into helping other countries meet climate change goals

The Paris Agreement is unfair in many ways. One of the biggest inequities is that the 2016 global framework on climate change requires poor countries to help solve a problem created by rich countries. Those nations used up most of the atmosphere‘s capacity for storing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

There‘s a way to address this that‘s been proposed in Norway, one of the world‘s top oil producers for the past half century thanks to its massive North Sea petroleum deposits. The idea surfaced last November in a newspaper article by three titans of the nation‘s energy industry. They are Auke Lont, the CEO of Norwegian state-owned grid operator Statnett; Harald Norvik, the former CEO of the state-owned oil giant Equinor, previously known as Statoil; and Peter Mellbye, another ex–senior executive of Statoil.

The business leaders argue that Norway ought to quit pocketing its oil profits and start giving the money to countries that need help meeting their Paris Agreement climate change goals. As economists, we find the message concrete, simple, and compelling: a little more oil money to the world, a little less to the Norwegian state, and a better climate. Other petroleum powers should follow suit to help cover the $10 trillion a year…