Calls for Stormont environment minister to quit over CO2 ad ban

Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent
The Guardian, Tuesday 10 February 2009

Northern Ireland's environment minister, climate change sceptic Sammy Wilson, faced resignation calls last night after he banned government climate change adverts from local television.
Wilson blocked the broadcasting of the Act on CO2 ads because he believed it was green "propaganda". The Democratic Unionist MLA is renowned for being a vocal climate-change sceptic. The Greens said the minister's action in banning the adverts had made a laughing stock out of Northern Ireland.
The adverts, which were to be broadcast on Ulster Television, urge the public to reduce energy consumption and cut carbon dioxide output by switching to energy efficient lightbulbs and not leaving televisions on standby.
Wilson said he would not allow this "insidious New Labour propaganda campaign" to be imposed on the Northern Ireland public. The ads were "giving people the impression that by turning off the standby light on their TV they could save the world from melting glaciers and being submerged in 40ft of water", he said, which was "patent nonsense".
Wilson said he wrote to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change to say that the Act on CO2 campaign "was not welcome", was contrary to his personal views, and that he did "not wish for climate change messages to be promoted by other Whitehall departments here".
He has also warned that future ecological messages could only be promoted in Northern Ireland with his permission.
This has led the Northern Ireland assembly's only Green party member, Brian Wilson, to put forward a motion calling for the minister's removal. The North Down MLA said: "Our environment minister is being grossly irresponsible in refusing to encourage energy efficiency."
The SDLP backs that call. A spokesman, Tommy Gallager, said: "It is one thing for Sammy Wilson to hold weird views on climate change ... it is another when he uses his position to pursue causes which are in conflict with the objectives of the department he is supposed to be leading and with the DUP's manifesto commitments."