During the winter of 2000, truckers blocked the main roads in and out of the Norwegian capital Oslo. The main cause was low profitability in the business, and the reason for that was claimed to be a steady increase in the environmental...
moreDuring the winter of 2000, truckers blocked the main roads in and out of the Norwegian capital Oslo. The main cause was low profitability in the business, and the reason for that was claimed to be a steady increase in the environmental tax on diesel oil the preceding five years. As a consequence, politicians removed the tax. When doing so, some politicians neglected the philosophical ground of being for their parties, and a majority of them ignored Kyoto Treaty obligations and stated preferences for green taxes. In this paper, I claim that all this happened because voters, media and policy makers created and firmly believed in an illusion. Rather than discussing causes, focus was on action forms, events, and attitudes. A surprisingly simple simulation model solves the apparent paradox. To justify the claims made, we rely on a thorough survey of newspaper articles. Figure 1 shows the development in taxes on diesel oil the years prior to the trucker actions.