THE BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD: Norway (Part 13)

The following continues the serialization of the final chapter in SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity:

            f. Norway, the Next Best Place in the World

 

Week 3 in Oslo was enjoyable. Norway has for the past five years now been selected as the best place to live. (Niger was the worst.) Yes, it is far too cold, although, apparently, when I was there, 15 degrees F warmer than normally. It was still, though, too cold, and this was only November.

Prices are very high for everything, and their best restaurants charge ridiculous amounts for very pedestrian cuisine. I noted that their newscasters surely sounded like they were speaking English in reverse. Serious climate warming can only help this country, but, then, with sea level rise (as much as 250 feet can occur over a long period of time) both Oslo and Bergen would go underwater.

Why, then, is Norway so terrific?  There is no homeless, nor insects, true peace of mind (you can actually walk the parks at night), and everything works. The bathrooms and airports (when you want to leave Bergen, there is no check--in desk--you must use those scary looking machines, but someone is there to help you) are well engineered, elevators arrive within 10 seconds (if not already there—in London, the average wait is more than a minute), cities and public lavatories that are really clean, with soft paper towels, and a transportation system that is frequent and dependable. The people are attractive and nice, with no obvious obesity problem. 

Hydropower supplies their electricity, oil has been a godsend, plus, they have vast quantities of natural gas yet to tap. I gave several PowerPoint talks on THE BLUE REVOLUTION and NEXT GENERATION FISHERIES, for, many decades from now, when they run out of fossil fuel and have overfished their still OK stocks, the open ocean will need to be their future, something they have not needed to think about. I think I planted a seed for their future.

Then, on to Bergen, another fine city. In a special summit with Chile, Norway and the USA, we created the Bergen Declaration for Next Generation Fisheries. A century from now, some historian will discover this document and trace the relative abundance of seafood to this international agreement. 

Bergen rained about 8 inches in a 24 hour period and then snowed 4 inches, but the one day we were free, the sky was sunny, the snowfall looked majestic and the various touristy sites educational, enjoyable and almost free. Yes, Norway deserves its high world ranking.

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The Dow Jones Industrials jumped 165 to 10,151, while world markets were mostly up. Gold went up a buck a troy ounce to $1238 and crude oil snuck up to $75/barrel.

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There are now five storms:

1.  Hurricane Danielle is up to 110 MPH, but is moving north, then will turn east.

2.  Tropical Storm Earl is up to 60 MPH, but will become a Category 3 hurricane and shows signs of generally following the movement of Danielle, but will do this closer to the Eastern Seaboard.

3.  Then following is a third disturbance showing all the same signs as Danielle and Earl.

4.  Tropical Storm Frank is at 45 MPH, weakening and meandering towards Baha.

5.  A new disturbance has popped up between the Philippines and China, and will strengthen before making landfall north of Hong Kong.

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