Ethical Investment.

Jesus Christ, I know that I rave about Norway all the time, but seriously, that country is the shit! (AND, it has the rainiest city in the world! WOOT!!!!) Ahem. Back to the business at hand:

It has a _shitload_ of money care of North Sea Oil Revenues. But, typical of Norway, the government is being careful about where it's going to invest it.

Norway has amassed a fortune of more than $300 billion over the last decade, thanks to its profits from oil exports....

Norway’s investment choices have become a focus of attention in the last nine months over the exclusion of Wal-Mart, the American retailer whose big-box stores do not exist in this pristine country.

... Public pension funds on both sides of the Atlantic commonly avoid investing in certain companies on social or ethical grounds. But it is rare for a sovereign state to make such judgments, and rarer still for one to do it in the pointed, public way that Norway has.

Among the first companies to run afoul of Norway’s standards were makers of cluster bombs and nuclear weapons or related components — a list that includes General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman, in addition to Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Then last June, Norway added Wal-Mart Stores to its blacklist, alleging that the retailer was guilty of tolerating child-labor violations by its suppliers in the developing world and obstructing unions at home. The fund sold off more than $400 million worth of Wal-Mart shares.

Fascinating stuff. Needless to say, Norway has copped a lot of shit about this. Firstly, the US hate it, and - not surprisingly - so do the companies themselves. Both have mounted very detailed cases as to how and why Norway has got in wrong in declining to invest in the Freeport Grasberg Mine, for example.

Personally, I think 99% of those objections are total bullshit. It's not like the fund controllers are rolling a dice here - there's a very strict system outlining this behaviour.

More compelling, however, are the 'slippery slope' arguments. So Norway won't trade with Walmart, but they will trade with Saudi Arabia; an undemocratic regime with some of the worst, legislated treatment of women in the world today.

These kind of arguments about hypocrisy are something that regularly emerge around issues of environmental or ethical action. If Australia can't reduce the world's greenhouse emissions, why should we bother reducing our own? If Al Gore loves the environment so much, why does he live in a mansion? If Africa's leaders are going to steal money, or Iraqis will inconveniently insist on getting blown up, why should we help them?

The problem with accusations like this, is that they don't work on proactive things, because they posit a world where a small difference is no difference. By continuing to trade with Saudi Arabia, Norway does not make the workers of Walmart any worse, nor are they encouraging Freeport to fuck up another developing country's environment.

However, by refusing to trade with either Freeport, or Walmart, they are encouraging those companies to do something about their shoddy, ethically bankrupt practices. Yes, they probably should stop trading with Saudi, and they may very well in the future.

But whether they do or not, this doesn't make their other efforts obsolete; it doesn't affect them either way.

This is something right wingers frequently seem to have trouble understanding. Every week they seem to accuse Tim Flannery, Kevin Rudd, or whowever, of being a sell-out because they do different things in different areas of their lives. Such multiplicity, however, never seems to be a problem for heroes of the right, like Alexander Downer, or more recently John Howard - who changed his seemingly very strongly held opinions about the rightness of WorkChoices for something a little different this week.

It's ironic, because in a world where so many right-wingers live, where the market will sort out everything, and the poor, drug addicts, and indigenous people who have shit lives are in that position wholly through their own lack of hard work and gumption, individuals obviously wield an enormous amount of power, and thus their actions have a huge influence.

But not if they want to reduce carbon emissions, or bring ethics to the market.

Oh well. I think what Norway is doing is fantastic, and if our government had money like this to play with, instead of the a frigging massive foreign trade deficit that seems to rarely get mentioned, I would love it if we did the same.