CEI Invites Norway to Join Cooler Heads Coalition

Washington, DC, March 10, 2000 – “The Norwegian Parliament’s decision yesterday to proceed with natural gas-fired power plants is a major setback for the Kyoto Protocol,” said Myron Ebell, Director of Global Warming Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute “The Norwegian people have chosen their own energy needs over global warming alarmism. The resignation of Norway’s government is a clear signal to other European leaders that reducing energy consumption to comply with Kyoto will have a high political cost.”

“We invite the new government of Norway to become associate members of the Cooler Heads Coalition,” Ebell continued. The Cooler Heads Coalition includes two dozen non-profit and membership organizations that question the scientific theory of catastrophic global warming. Ebell chairs the coalition, which is a sub-group of the National Consumer Coalition.

The Norwegian government resigned Friday after a vote of no confidence in parliament. The centrist ruling coalition had insisted that no new power plants be built until technological advances make it possible to produce power without also producing carbon dioxide.

Parties on the right and the left voted in parliament to go ahead with natural gas-fired plants in order to meet the growing energy demands of the nation. This will increase Norway’s carbon dioxide emissions and make it much more difficult to reach Norway’s emission caps under the Kyoto Protocol. Currently, hydro-electric power supplies nearly all of Norway’s electricity.

According to Environmental News Service, a Norwegian daily newspaper, Dagsavisen, reported that the government “had set up a ‘secret’ expert group to explore the possibility of electricity rationing if consumption could not be reduced through energy conservation or voluntary reduction.”

“When the people of a country have the opportunity to weigh their energy needs versus the unproven theory of manmade global warming, it appears that common sense prevails. This is the first government to fall because of its fanatical commitment to the global warming treaty, but it won’t be the last,” concluded Ebell.

CEI, a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group founded in 1984, is dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. For more information, please contact Emily McGee, director of media relations, at 202-331-1010, ext. 209.