"All it took for a boom in clean transport was a pop star, forward-thinking policy and a dash of civil disobedience."
"If you had a radio or watched MTV in the 1980s, chances are that the song “Take on Me” by the Norweigian synth-pop band A-ha is seared into your brain.
So sing along, “taaaake oooon meeee,” as we look at how the members of A-ha helped to lead a movement in the 1990s that persuaded Norweigian leaders to embrace electric vehicles, and how those early steps set the stage for Norway to become today’s global leader in EV market share.
Norway’s EV success got a flurry of attention this week with an ad from General Motors, broadcast during the Super Bowl, in which Will Ferrell boils over with a sense of rivalry about how badly Norway is beating the United States at getting people to drive EVs. Much has been written about the ad, and about how GM’s pivot to EVs follows a checkered history on environmental issues.
But for me, the best thing about the ad is that it calls attention to one of the most remarkable energy transition stories in the world: how a small country in Northern Europe (with fewer people than Wisconsin) has succeeded at making the transition to clean transportation to an extent that no other nation comes close to matching."
Dan Gearino reports for Inside Climate News February 11, 2021.
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