GCCbak

=<div>this not complete
<div>txt capt 519</div><div>=</div><div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/04/12/ipcc-report-global-climate-coalition/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://theintercept.com/2022/04/12/ipcc-report-global-climate-coalition/</a></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">OF THE PRIMARY reports that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change publishes every four to six years, the mitigation report, focused on what can be done and what’s holding climate action back, only gets more important with every cycle. While the latest <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box;">mitigation </a><a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box;">report</a> states clearly that politics and corporate power are the only real impediments to action — not a lack of scientific evidence, technological or policy options, or even money — IPCC authors <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/05/ipcc-report-scientists-climate-crisis-fossil-fuels" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box;">declined to engage</a> with this problem both in the press conference for the report and in the report’s <a href="https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6wg3/pdf/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_SummaryForPolicymakers.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box;">summary for policymakers</a>. Now, a week after the report’s release, here comes a paper revealing that the IPCC itself has been the target of U.S. vested interests since its inception.</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div data-reactid="180" style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;">In 1988, climate scientist James Hansen gave <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/24/us/global-warming-has-begun-expert-tells-senate.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">a stark warning</a> to the U.S. Senate, testifying, “It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.” Later that year, the IPCC was formed to bring the world’s climate scientists together to help inform governments, the media, and the public about climate change. Just one year before all this action on the “greenhouse effect,” global leaders had effectively joined forces to address the hole in the ozone layer, adopting the <a href="https://www.unep.org/ozonaction/who-we-are/about-montreal-protocol" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Montreal Protocol</a> and agreeing to a mandatory phaseout of the chemicals associated with ozone depletion. Greenhouse gas-emitting industries were very concerned that they would be targeted next. Almost immediately, what environmental sociologists call the “climate countermovement” began to form in response.one key entity in that movement was the Global Climate Coalition, which emerged in 1989 as a project of the National Association of Manufacturers, with founding members from the coal, electric utility, oil and gas, automotive, and rail sectors. Many scholars have noted the influential role the GCC played in obstructing climate policy in the 1990s, but the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2022.2058815" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box;">first peer-reviewed paper</a> on the group, published this week, reveals that the original and lasting intention of the GCC was to push for voluntary efforts only and torpedo international momentum toward setting mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions.</div><div data-reactid="191" style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;">Casting doubt on the science was part of that strategy from the beginning — the paper points to a 1994 communications strategy, for example, that suggested industry spokespeople downplay IPCC findings with following talking point: “The IPCC reports no evidence that directly links manmade GHG emissions to changes in global average temperatures.” Also common, though, were the delay tactics we still see today, particularly the economic argument against acting on the climate crisis and the jingoistic argument that America shouldn’t allow the rest of the world to tell it what to do.“People have been very stuck on this idea that the industry strategy went from climate denial to delay,” said the paper’s author, Brown University environmental sociologist Robert Brulle. “That’s historically inaccurate. It was always about delay, and the PR guys viewed casting doubt on climate science as one of their key talking points, but not the only one and not the central one.”Leaning on economic and cultural arguments came naturally for the public relations teams working on climate. Those arguments were <a href="https://rigged.ghost.io/start/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">first developed</a> to help companies like <a href="https://rigged.ghost.io/ivy-lee-the-godfather/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Standard Oil</a> and <a href="https://rigged.ghost.io/edward-bernays-the-freudian-slip/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">American Tobacco</a> stave off regulation at the turn of the 20th century and have been deployed consistently, and effectively, ever since.</div><div data-reactid="195" style="font-size: small; box-sizing: border-box;">Brulle points to the GCC’s involvement in the passage of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC — the framework underpinning the annual Conference of the Parties meetings of global leaders to discuss international climate commitments — as a prime example of how industries have suggested voluntary action as a way to preempt government regulation. “They supported that because it was toothless. It was all about the need to further study the problem and for corporations and governments to take voluntary action.”Melissa Aronczyk, a media studies scholar at Rutgers University, also documented the influence that the GCC and its primary PR person, E. Bruce Harrison, had on the UNFCCC process in “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-strategic-nature-9780190055356?cc=us&lang=en&" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and the Politics of American Environmentalism</a>,” a new book written with Maria Espinoza. “Harrison was invited as communications counsel to the CEOs who were participating at that Earth Summit in Rio [de Janeiro] in 1992,” Aronczyk explained. That was the summit at which global leaders drafted and adopted the UNFCCC. Notably, the U.N.-appointed organizer of that conference was Maurice Strong, a former oilman who believed that no effective climate treaty could be passed without buy-in from corporate interests....Because business communities had been invited to the conference and because they knew that their buy-in was so important, they planned extensively in the lead-up to the conference to be able to present what they call their own sustainable development charter. It was a nonbinding, nonlegal document that proposed a voluntary, self-regulating approach,” Aronczyk said. “And as you can imagine, this charter did not contain anything that would have really transformed how companies did business. … But it paid a lot of lip service to the idea of going green, and because they got out in front of the actual conference, they were really able to put that document forward and stave off other kinds of more binding legislation.”The GCC worked to steer the Conference of the Parties and the IPCC in this direction as well. Many of the source documents Brulle cites in his paper, including Harrison’s 1994-1995 communications plan for the GCC, show this strategy explicitly. “The economic consequences of future actions by the COP are likely to attract more attention than statements about scientific uncertainties,” Harrison’s plan reads. “Especially if the economic stakes can be made apparent to ‘people on Main Street.’” It goes on to lay out specific messages that GCC members should emphasize to the press, politicians, and the public, including: “Voluntary programs for reducing [greenhouse gas] emissions are allowing industry to balance economics and environmental performance without impairing competitiveness.”What’s also painfully obvious in these documents is just how close the international process came to forcing action on climate in the 1990s — the decade in which it would have had the most impact. The 1994-95 GCC communications plan shows that the group and the industries it represented were losing the fight and that momentum was building for a binding international treaty that would mandate emissions reductions. “Dozens of U.N. agencies, international organizations and special interest groups are driving events — regardless of economic costs and remaining scientific uncertainties — toward a conclusion inimical to the interests of the GCC and the U.S. economy,” the plan reads.</div><div data-reactid="201" style="font-size: small; box-sizing: border-box;">A few pages later it notes, “The window for influencing U.S. decisions on future U.N. actions is relatively narrow. During the next 18-24 months there will be a number of critical decision points as the Parties to the FCCC advance toward the COP’s 1997 deadline for elaborating new policies and measures.”The 1997 Conference of the Parties was, of course, when the <a href="https://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Kyoto Protocol</a> was introduced; the international agreement mandated emissions reductions for certain countries, something the Clinton administration had already indicated it supported. It was a make-or-break moment for industries concerned about the impact that mandatory emissions reductions would have on their bottom line, and the GCC redoubled its efforts.First it targeted key U.S. politicians. Working with Sens. Chuck Hagel and Robert Byrd, Brulle writes, the group rounded up support for an amendment to set strict criteria for any international climate accord. “This effort contributed to the passage of the Byrd-Hagel Amendment in July 1997,” Brulle writes. “This amendment required that any climate accord would have to include [emissions] reductions by developing countries and could not result in serious harm to the U.S. economy. These provisions damaged the credibility of the U.S. because it showed a lack of consensus among the different branches of government about an international climate accord.”That argument stands in stark contrast to the fossil fuel industry’s narrative today, which holds that out-of-touch climate elitists are trying to force emissions reductions on countries that deserve to use fossil fuels to develop. Passage of the Byrd-Hagel amendment was the GCC’s first big victory after its success in shaping the UNFCCC. In the wake of that victory, GCC members poured $13 million into a PR campaign centered on the argument that the international accord would raise gasoline prices and harm the economy. The tag line of the anti-Kyoto campaign was “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kxk_c3BcE8" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">It’s not global and it won’t work.</a>”“They get a map of the globe and they start cutting out the countries that don’t have to comply,” Brulle said. “And then they hold up this map with all of these holes in it, and they said, ‘This is unfair. It won’t work and it’s not fair.’ And that’s what they ran on. And guess what? It works! It was very effective. And you still hear that today when folks argue against climate policy by saying, ‘What about China? What about India?’”The group also commissioned third-party economists and policy analysts to bolster its argument that mandatory emissions cuts would spell death for the American economy. “It was very much, play up the economic impact, play up the threat to the ‘American way of life,’” Brulle said. “When you can attack the science, do that, but always, always play up the economics.”That’s particularly interesting in the context of recent research in which some of the same economists the GCC hired have admitted that their models were deeply flawed. The paper “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09644016.2021.1947636" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Weaponizing Economics</a>,” published last year by Stanford University researcher Ben Franta, shows that the economists working for the GCC and other anti-climate policy groups in the 1990s were using models that inflated the cost of climate policy while ignoring entirely the economic benefit of avoiding climate impacts.Franta found that the same small group of economists was being routinely commissioned not only by the GCC but also the American Petroleum Institute (a founding GCC member) and various conservative think tanks; every time a policy was proposed that would limit carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions, this same model would get trotted out, and industry spokespeople and politicians would warn that acting on climate change would put companies out of business and cost the average American family thousands of dollars.“Eventually their analyses became conventional wisdom,” Franta said. “The scientific merchants of doubt ultimately failed; their power waned. But this, the economics part, their power did not really wane in the same way. And you know, the implications are larger. I mean, it’s a fraudulent economic product. And now we have economists who worked on those models saying, by their own admission, that this analysis that showed it would be too expensive to act on climate is not true. And this has been going on for decades. So now the question is, what do we do about this?”Brulle’s recent findings make it that much more concerning that the IPCC allowed mentions of obstructionism and vested interests to be scrubbed from its summary for policymakers. “That document was like Star Wars without Darth Vader,” he said. “This research gives us a history of what actually happened. It puts Darth Vader back in the story.”</div></div><div>---</div><div>GCC comes up a fair bit in press around FF ceo: ref from unearthed/GP</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a420404">https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a420404</a></div><div>
</div><div>TOC 9 pp dobrainsky</div><h2 class="svelte-18a56tg" style="">2001 State Department Briefing for Global Climate Coalition Meeting</h2><div class="toc svelte-1jbyb2o" style="padding: 8px 0px;"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p1/a420370" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><div class="note svelte-7s5eti hover" style="cursor: pointer; margin: 4px 0px;"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p1/a420370" style="text-decoration: inherit;"></a><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p1/a420370" style="text-decoration: inherit;">"GCC members are completely supportive of the Administration's position on climate change and the rejection of the Kyoto Protocol." p. 1</a></div><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p1/a420374" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><div class="note svelte-7s5eti" style="cursor: pointer; margin: 4px 0px;"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p1/a420374" style="text-decoration: inherit;"></a><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p1/a420374" style="text-decoration: inherit;"></a><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p1/a420374" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p1/a420374" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p1/a420374" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p1/a420374" style="text-decoration: inherit;">"In general GCC favors voluntary actions, flexible market-based mechanisms and the development of cost-effective technologies." p. 1</a></div><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a420384" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><div class="note svelte-7s5eti" style="cursor: pointer; margin: 4px 0px;"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a420384" style="text-decoration: inherit;"></a><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a420384" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a420384" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a420384" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a420384" style="text-decoration: inherit;">"Climate change is a serious problem." p. 3</a></div><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a420404" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><div class="note svelte-7s5eti" style="cursor: pointer; margin: 4px 0px;"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a420404" style="text-decoration: inherit;"></a><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a420404" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a420404" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a420404" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a420404" style="text-decoration: inherit;">"POTUS rejected Kyoto, in part, based on input from you." p. 3</a></div><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a473775" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><div class="note svelte-7s5eti" style="cursor: pointer; margin: 4px 0px;"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a473775" style="text-decoration: inherit;"></a><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a473775" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a473775" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a473775" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a473775" style="text-decoration: inherit;">"Interested in hearing from you ..." p. 3</a></div><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p6/a420473" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><div class="note svelte-7s5eti" style="cursor: pointer; margin: 4px 0px;"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p6/a420473" style="text-decoration: inherit;"></a><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p6/a420473" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p6/a420473" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p6/a420473" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p6/a420473" style="text-decoration: inherit;">Meeting will take place at API headquarters p. 6</a></div><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420474" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><div class="note svelte-7s5eti" style="cursor: pointer; margin: 4px 0px;"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420474" style="text-decoration: inherit;"></a><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420474" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420474" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420474" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420474" style="text-decoration: inherit;">GCC says it will encourage members to voluntarily "research, develop and deploy cost-effective technologies that are environmentally sound and energy efficient." p. 7</a></div><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420477" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><div class="note svelte-7s5eti" style="cursor: pointer; margin: 4px 0px;"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420477" style="text-decoration: inherit;"></a><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420477" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420477" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420477" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420477" style="text-decoration: inherit;">"GCC will continue to encourage an open and factual public dialogue on global climate change, including... the potential impact humans have upon the climate." p. 7</a></div><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420475" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><div class="note svelte-7s5eti" style="cursor: pointer; margin: 4px 0px;"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420475" style="text-decoration: inherit;"></a><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420475" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420475" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420475" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420475" style="text-decoration: inherit;">"GCC will continue to encourage an open and factual public dialogue on global climate change..." p. 7</a></div><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420484" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><div class="note svelte-7s5eti" style="cursor: pointer; margin: 4px 0px;"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420484" style="text-decoration: inherit;"></a><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420484" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420484" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420484" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p7/a420484" style="text-decoration: inherit;">"The GCC favors legislative approaches that lend important support to ongoing research and development efforts to produce new environmentally sound and energy efficient technologies to address greenhouse gas emissions here at home and abroad." p. 7</a></div><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p8/a420497" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><div class="note svelte-7s5eti" style="cursor: pointer; margin: 4px 0px;"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p8/a420497" style="text-decoration: inherit;"></a><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p8/a420497" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p8/a420497" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p8/a420497" style="text-decoration: inherit;" /><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p8/a420497" style="text-decoration: inherit;">"The government of the United States of America has a critical responsibility to ensure that all assessment and scientific information it provides to the citizens is of the highest quality and subjected to scientific peer review that uses transparent processes and provides independent replication." p. 8</a></div></div><div>new<a href="https://theecologist.org/2018/oct/08/why-did-george-w-bush-pull-out-kyoto-protocol" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://theecologist.org/2018/oct/08/why-did-george-w-bush-pull-out-kyoto-protocol</a>Despite the huge amount of fossil fuel funding upon which <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">George W. Bush</a> was elected president in 2001, insiders in the monopoly-dominated oil industry remained unsure that he would fight for them - and against climate scientists.Bush had suggested during his candidacy that CO2 should be treated as a pollutant and, therefore, subject to regulation under the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act%28United_States%29" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">Clean Air Act</a> - even if the international Kyoto Agreement was not economically favourable for America.Bush’s fence-sitting was strategic: swing states such as Florida were environmentally conscious and speaking out would likely give Democrat presidential candidate <a href="http://www.algore.com/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; background-color: transparent; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">Al Gore</a> the advantage.But, optimistic environmentalists remained hopeful while wary oil-men were worried that it demonstrated a willingness to agree to the broad principles of the treaty.A Rumoured SpeechShortly after his inauguration, a rumour circulated that Bush planned to include a line reinforcing his earlier pledge in a forthcoming speech.Word of the speech reached the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/competitive-enterprise-institute" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">Competitive Enterprise Institute</a> (CEI), a Koch- and Exxon-funded think tank that helped donate to Bush’s presidential campaign. CEI set to work. As their founder and president, <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/global-warming-deniers-well-funded-99775" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">Fred Smith later </a><a href="http://www.newsweek.com/global-warming-deniers-well-funded-99775" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">told Newsweek</a>: “We alerted anyone we thought could have influence and get the line, if it was in the speech, out.”Despite the think tank’s best efforts, Environmental Protection Agency administrator <a href="http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/christine-todd-whitman" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; background-color: transparent; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">Christine Todd Whitman</a> testified, on 27 February 2001 at a Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works subcommittee, that she was in favour of regulating CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act.A week later, she signed a joint statement at the G8 Environment Ministers Meeting which said: “We commit ourselves to strive to reach agreement on outstanding political issues and to ensure in a cost-effective manner the environmental integrity of the Kyoto Protocol.”The President’s PositionAt this, the denial machine set in motion.<a href="https://twitter.com/haleybarbour" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;"> Haley Barbour</a>, a lobbyist for a utility firm that stood to lose if greenhouse gases were regulated, urged Vice President <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/dick-cheney-9246063" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">Dick Cheney </a>in a March 1 memo to persuade Bush not to align with the “eco-extremism” of those who saw carbon dioxide as a pollutant.A group of far-right Republican senators wrote an open letter to their new president. In light of Whitman’s testimony, they asked that Bush clarify his position on climate change, “in particular the Kyoto Protocol, and the regulation of carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act.”Aware of the rising tide against her, Whitman went to the Oval Office to fight her case on the morning of March 13. But, Bush had already composed his response, shortly to be sent via Cheney to the senators, which he read to her.“I do not believe,” read the letter, “that the government should impose on power plants mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide, which is not a ‘pollutant’ under the Clean Air Act.”Information from the Department of Energy had shown that consumers’ energy bills might be affected, and that this warranted a re-evaluation of his earlier pledge, “especially… given the incomplete state of scientific knowledge of the causes of and solution to global climate change.”Polluter Pull-OutWhitman left defeated, just as the puppeteer Cheney arrived to hand-deliver the President’s response to the senators.By the end of the month, the world’s biggest polluter had pulled out of Kyoto.Whitman, who later said the decision was “the equivalent to ‘flipping the bird’ frankly to the rest of the world,” was the one to deliver the news. “We have no interest in implementing that treaty,” the former New Jersey Governor told assembled journalists.Though the terms of the treaty would be finalised in Bonn that July, they would be made all but useless, with the world’s largest polluter out of the game.Years later, freedom of information disclosures revealed the industry’s input to this decision.A briefing note prepared for Paula Dobrianksy, Under-Secretary of State for Global Affairs, ahead of her meeting with Glenn Kelly of the Exxon-bankrolled Global Climate Coalition, states: “POTUS [President of the United States] rejected Kyoto, in part, based on input from you… Interested in hearing from you, what type of international alternatives to Kyoto would you support?”This AuthorBrendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/impact-of-market-forces-on-addictive-substances-and-behaviours-9780198753261?cc=gb&lang=en&" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">The web of influence</a> of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article first appeared at <a href="https://www.desmog.co.uk/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; background-color: transparent; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(183, 0, 123); border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial;">Desmog.uk</a>.
<div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style=""><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/exxon-denial-and-deception.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/exxon-denial-and-deception.pdf</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">may 2002 47 pp  GCC Kyoto</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">p6</div><div style="font-size: small;">This report, Denial and Deception: A Chronicle of ExxonMobil’s Efforts to Corrupt the Global Warming Debate, details more than a decade of deliberate and persistent efforts by ExxonMobil and its front groups to derail the evolving global warming treaty and the scientific consensus that urgently supports the international agreement. The report also delves into emerging ties between the ExxonMobil agenda and the damaging global warming legacy of the Bush administration. Since the early 1990s, Exxon and Mobil have taken leading roles in industry efforts to cast doubt over climate science. With the now defunct Global Climate Coalition front group and others, ExxonMobil has claimed that the scientists are getting it wrong on global warming and the role of fossil fuels. This ongoing effort was spawned by the revelations of the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1990, which pointed to strong and growing evidence of temperature rise, sea level rise and other changes resulting from rising emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases. That report stressed the need for a 60 to 80 percent cut in CO2 emissions just to stabilize rising atmospheric concentrations of this greenhouse gas. This call for emission cuts was received by Exxon, Mobil and others as a direct attack on their core business. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">ExxonMobil’s campaign to slow the progress of scientific validation of global warming started with the use of paid skeptic scientists to publicly rebut scientific advances. Exxon has also actively engaged in manipulation of international scientific assessments. In 1998, Exxon was involved in developing a $6 million American Petroleum Institute communications plan for a two-year campaign intended to reshape the climate debate – where the ultimate victory was the defeat of the Kyoto Protocol, and making those promoting it appear ‘out of touch with reality’.iii The latest attack on climate science was revealed this year in a secret ExxonMobil memo to President Bush. The memo asked for the removal of Dr. Robert Watson, the Chair of IPCC. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">The Bush administration climate team and its allies executed ExxonMobil’s will in mid-April of 2002. In addition to this latest tale of the working relationship between ExxonMobil and Bush, this report delves into some of what is known of the company’s close history with George W. Bush dating back to Bush’s days as Governor of Texas. In 1997, then Governor Bush consulted Exxon and Marathon oil to draft a proposal to deal with Texas’s debilitating air pollution problem from so called “grandfathered” facilities, those that do not pass modern pollution regulations, but are allowed to continue to operate. Rather like asking the fox to design the chicken coop, the resulting proposed regulations were not surprisingly voluntary and full of loopholes. Eventually the secret consultations between Exxon and Governor Bush were revealed and the plan was thrown out. This report also tracks ExxonMobil’s broad array of political dirty tricks aimed at slowing the progress of global warming policy agreements. From the funding and dissemination of “chicken little” economic scare reports on global warming policy to anti-global warming treaty advertising on television and in newspapers, ExxonMobil has carried this war on the climate treaty from international negotiations to Capitol Hill—around the world and back again. ExxonMobil’s use of divisive tactical rhetoric is best exemplified by its two faced argument on the role of developing countries in the climate treaty. While arguing in the U.S. policy arena that America should reject a treaty that does not conscript developing countries to act, Exxon simultaneously has lobbied developing countries not to support the treaty saying that they will be economically harmed by it. In the lead up to 1997 Kyoto climate negotiations, Exxon and Mobil, through the Global Climate Coalition and other front groups, were heavily pushing the message in the United States that developing countries were..</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">p10 [bogus accuweather study]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="font-size: small;">, drawing its data from only three U.S. cities. Although the study was unsupportable scientifically, it gained considerable media and public attention when it was heavily promoted by the GCC. The IPCC Second Assessment Report was released in December of 1995. It concluded that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on the global climate” and that “significant reductions in net greenhouse gas emissions are technically possible and can be economically feasible.”15</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;"> The president of the American Petroleum Institute at the time, Charles DiBona, called the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report “inflammatory,” because it stated that “the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate.”16 It is notable that oil producing countries such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia tried to delay the report’s release because of this “strong language”, and argued against the use of the words “appreciable,” “notable,” “measurable,” and “detectable” in place of “discernable.”17 Also in 1995, the GCC attempted to orchestrate a character assassination of an IPCC scientist, Dr. Benjamin Santer. It accused Santer of “scientific cleansing” – claiming in the press that he had secretly and substantially altered the 1995 IPCC report. Other scientists came to Santer’s defense and confirmed that the allegations were false.18 1997: In the lead up to the negotiations in Kyoto, Japan Mobil ran a series of advertisements in major U.S. newspapers regarding climate change. One of the most extreme appeared in The Washington Post one month before Kyoto: “Science: What We Know and Don’t Know.” It featured a large pie chart purporting to show that human activities are responsible for only 3 to 4 percent of total CO2 emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere. While this is true, it is highly misleading as it conceals the fact that overall CO2 levels have increased about 30 percent due mainly to the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. British Petroleum withdrew from the Global Climate Coalition in 1997, distancing itself from Exxon, Mobil and other corporations that continued to refute the</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">p11</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">This would be achieved by recruiting and training five “independent” scientists – “new faces… without a long history of visibility in the climate debate” to participate in media outreach. The American Petroleum Institute aimed to “maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours, with Congress, the media and other key audiences” and admitted shamelessly that it would target teachers and students, in order to “begin to erect a barrier against further efforts to impose Kyoto-like measures in the future.”21 (See appendix for full text of memo.) On 25 April 1998, The New York Times reported that the American Petroleum Institute intended to “spend millions of dollars to convince the public that the [Kyoto Protocol] is based on shaky science…” and to give global warming skeptics “the logistical and moral support they have been lacking.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="font-size: small;">...In June 1998, prior to the climate negotiations session in Bonn, Germany, the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) distributed a pamphlet to diplomats, entitled “Climate Change: The Case Against Scientific Certainty.” In this document, the GCC argued that: “While it is certain that the Protocol would impose enormous burdens on America’s economy, there is no scientific certainty that human activity affects global climate.” Perennial skeptic, TV journalist John Stossel, is named in the strategy document to get a major national story run “examining the scientific underpinnings of the Kyoto treaty.” Potential funding sources for the strategy were identified as the American Petroleum Institute, U.S. Business Roundtable, Edison Electric Institute, and the National Mining Association and all of its corporate members. Among the potential “fund allocators” were Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), Frontiers for Freedom and the George C. Marshall Institute.23 It is clear that the disclosure of this plan by The New York Times did not impede its progress.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">...</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">p13</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">On 11 March 2002, in a speech given at Stanford University, Sir John Browne, Chairman and CEO of British Petroleum, explained why his company broke ranks with other oil corporations in 1997 and decided to face up to climate change: First, it was clear that reputable science could not be ignored. The science wasn’t complete – but science is never complete…. But they knew enough to say that there were long-term risks and that precautionary action was necessary if we were to avoid the greater risk - of the evidence mounting to the point where draconian action was unavoidable.46...</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">p15</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">ExxonMobil - Funding the Skeptics One of the most high profile skeptics in the climate change debate, S. Fred Singer, has recently denied receiving any oil company money, and claimed that his consulting for oil companies was solely “on the subject of oil pricing, some 20 years ago….”59 Yet Exxon’s own documents60 show that in 1998, the company gave a grant of $10,000 to the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), of which Singer is the founding president, and another $65,000 to the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which promotes and supports Singer’s work.61 In addition, in the past Singer has acknowledged receiving funding from Exxon.62 According to the Wall Street Journal63, </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">ExxonMobil also funds the ultra-conservative and anti-environmentalist Frontiers of Freedom Institute, of which Singer is a staff member. Frontiers of Freedom was cited in the American Petroleum Institute (API) 1998 Global Science Communications Action Plan as a possible organization to help operationalize their anti-Kyoto strategy, to be funded by API and others in the fossil fuel industry.64 Singer has a history of public attacks on the integrity of the IPCC process.65 </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">He has fabricated quotes from the former chair of the IPCC, Dr. Bert Bolin, in an attempt to suggest that Dr. Bolin had changed his mind about climate change.66 Singer was also the mastermind behind a Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) project that took fifty Republican students from the United States, trained in the skeptics’ arguments, to the climate negotiations in Bonn in 2001, to demonstrate in favor of Bush’s abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol.67 CFACT was also listed in the 1998 API plan mentioned above. Throughout the years, Singer, a seemingly professional generic skeptic, has argued against an international treaty to ban whaling, and against action on acid rain, ozone depletion and clean air. He has stated that most people would survive a nuclear war and that resultant climatic changes would be minor and short-lived. He has also argued that the lung cancer risk from second-hand smoke was statistically insignificant.68 (See appendix for details.) However, aside from one technical comment, Singer has been unable to publish his work in any peer-reviewed scientific journals for at least 15 years.69</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">...</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">Sallie Baliunas has published several reports which attempt to show that human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels play no role in global warming, that science does not support the prospect of dangerous climate change70, and that scientific findings do not support federal regulation of emissions.71 The Global Climate Coalition (of which Exxon and Mobil were prominent members) hired her to go on a media tour in 1994 to refute the science of global climate change.72 She was also a “co-author” of the paper which imitated the National Academy of Sciences format, and was the basis for the 1998 “Oregon Petition” with signatures from “17,000 scientists” dismissing the scientific consensus on climate change.73 Other prominent skeptics funded by Exxon include Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling, and Sherwood Idso. 74 </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">All are veterans of the 1991 coal-industry funded skeptic campaign coordinated by the Information Council on the Environment (ICE). According to strategy papers developed for the campaign, the ICE campaign sought to “re-position global warming as theory (not fact)” and attempted to target “older, less educated males from larger households who are not typically information seekers” and “younger, lower income women.”75 </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">In 1998, Exxon gave a grant of $15,000 to The Cato Institute’s Environment and Natural Resources program, of which Patrick Michaels is a senior fellow. Michaels argues in four directions: global warming is not happening, science that detects global warming is flawed, industry-funded science is viable and objective, and global warming will be good for the planet and humankind. Contradicting his claims that global warming is not occurring, in 1998 Michaels wrote that: “The earth’s climate is not necessarily changing in a deleterious fashion…. These changes may bear, at least in part, a fingerprint of human activity.”76 Exxon also funds the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, which published Robert Balling’s 1992 book on climate change, The Heated Debate. 77 Balling has argued that climate change, when or if it occurs, will be beneficial, particularly for the United States. “Do something to stimulate plant growth in areas prone to degradation of graze lands: burn fossil fuels and help to increase atmospheric CO2 levels....</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">The pastures of the world, along with the animals (and people) depending on those ecosystems, will be in your debt!”78 Sherwood Idso is the scientific advisor for the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change in Arizona, which received a $10,000 grant from Exxon in 1998. Idso’s past contribution to the climate debate was a 1991 coal industry funded video The Greening of Planet Earth – which claims that global warming is good for humanity. It was the subject of congressional hearings in the early 1990s.79</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">p19 Kytoto</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">...Administration.” The op-ed stated that “the unrealistic and economically damaging Kyoto process needs to be rethought.”99 Meanwhile, ExxonMobil and its oil industry colleagues were lobbying Capitol Hill and the White House as well. Following Bush’s March 2001 statement regarding his formal opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, the Chief Executive of the American Petroleum Institute wrote a letter of support and congratulations to the Chair of the Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee, Congressman Joe Barton, thanking him for the “strong leadership” he had demonstrated on the issue. The letter indicated that Barton had asked the API for its view on the status of the international negotiations to implement the Kyoto Protocol on 26 March 2001, days before Bush’s rejection of the treaty. The letter re-stated the usual skeptic’s arguments against Kyoto (the economic implications and lack of developing countries participation), much of the language echoing that of both Bush (“the Kyoto Protocol represents a fundamentally flawed approach…”) and of Exxon’s statements (“the long term challenge of potential climate change”) (emphases added). Like ExxonMobil, the API still calls for more research to reduce “the scientific gaps and uncertainties surrounding the potential of human impacts on the climate.”100 The U.S. Council on International Business (USCIB), of which ExxonMobil is a member, wrote to Bush on 11 April 2001, after his withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, suggesting that “the U.S. should move quickly to chart a path forward that will avoid the Kyoto protocol’s unrealistic targets, timetables and lack of developing country participation.”101...</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">p21</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">Influencing U.S. Energy Policy </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">Documents obtained by the National Resources Defense Council110 thus far, through the Freedom of Information Act, regarding the Bush-Cheney Energy Task Force indicate that there were many conversations with industry, including ExxonMobil, regarding the formulation of U.S. energy policy in early 2001. Because numerous documents have been withheld to date, the extent to which ExxonMobil influenced the Bush-Cheney energy plan has yet to be determined. The American Petroleum Institute was the lead organization in the energy task force brought together by Vice President Dick Cheney to formulate an energy plan. Lee Raymond, CEO and Chairman of ExxonMobil, was a member of the API board at the time. . Under pressure from the U.S. media, ExxonMobil admitted that it was involved in the drafting of the Bush-Cheney energy plan, and at least one direct consultation between Raymond and Cheney’s office has been disclosed.111 </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">The resultant plan calls for increasing domestic supplies of oil and gas, and opening federal lands for drilling, thus giving renewed support to the coal and nuclear power industries. Bush Echoes ExxonMobil The similarities between ExxonMobil’s statements and the words coming out of Bush’s mouth are uncanny and likely not coincidental. In April 2001, ExxonMobil paid for advertisements that described the Kyoto Protocol as “fundamentally flawed” and “fatally politicized.” After Bush rejected the treaty, he described the Kyoto Protocol as “fatally flawed in fundamental ways.”112 Bush’s reasons for withdrawing the United States from the Kyoto Protocol reflected ExxonMobil’s arguments of the past decade. Bush rejected the treaty because113: • The emissions targets set forth in the protocol are not scientifically justified; • The Kyoto Protocol is “fatally flawed” and “ineffective;” • It would hurt the U.S. economy and mean massive job losses; • The largest developing countries are exempt – even though his father approved their initial exemption in the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Rio Earth Summit. Despite Dahan’s claim that “It is ridiculous to suggest that our contributions could buy influence on U.S. government policy,”114 immediately following his speech in London (October 2001), Dahan boasted to the Financial Times that the Bush alternative to the Kyoto Protocol “will not be very different from what you are hearing from us.”115 In fact, he was right. Below are ExxonMobil’s recommendations for a “sounder climate policy,” followed by the Bush plan as announced on 14 February 2002....</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">p23</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">Political Dirty Tricks </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">On the One Hand: Developing Country Commitments and the Byrd-Hagel Resolution Although developing countries emit only a fraction of global greenhouse gases, and the historical burden for emissions rests on the industrialized world, ExxonMobil continues to argue that the Kyoto Protocol excludes developing countries such as China and India, and that developing countries should make the same binding commitments to immediate reductions in emissions as the industrialized world. However, the Kyoto Protocol is a crucial and significant first step towards tackling global warming, which does include developing countries. Under the Kyoto Protocol, developing countries are allowed some increases in emissions in the short term, and more time to bring their emissions under control, in keeping with an international treaty signed in 1992, that included the United States. At the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, all nations agreed to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The first President Bush signed this convention, and the U.S. Senate ratified it, making it U.S. law. Under the UNFCCC, all parties agreed that the developed countries – those responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions since the dawn of the industrial age – would take the lead in reducing emissions. Once developed countries, such as the United States, have made progress on reducing their own emissions, developing countries will be required to reduce emissions as well. However, until the United States takes the lead and starts to set an example, we cannot expect developing nations to make commitments to reduce emissions.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">[mobil ad]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">That is why it is incumbent on all nations to participate in the solution even in the short term.”126 • After the vote, Mobil took out further advertisements expressing support for the concerns raised by the Senate vote over the equity of a climate treaty that excluded developing countries and might result in “serious harm to the economy of the United States.” It suggested that “when the Congress speaks this forcefully, the American public as well as the administration should take notice.”127 • </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">In the run up to the Senate vote, the American Petroleum Institute signed a U.S. newspaper advertisement on 23 June 1997, addressed to President Clinton and stating API’s support for the anti-Kyoto resolution by Byrd and Hagel.128 Hagel had close links with the API at this time; he spoke at its conference in November that year, just prior to Lee Raymond, who quoted Hagel’s resolution in his speech.129 • </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">The U.S. Business Roundtable (BRT) ran a $1 million advertising campaign on climate change in June 1997, urging the Clinton administration not to rush into policy commitments without fully understanding the consequences. This campaign included full-page advertisements in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, signed by both Exxon and Mobil.130 The BRT also sent a letter to Senator Hagel on 8 July 1997, supporting his upcoming senate resolution, on the basis that “the science is less than compelling.”131 On the Other Hand, Developing Countries Should Not Commit In October 1997, just prior to the international climate negotiations in Kyoto, Japan, Exxon CEO Lee Raymond urged Asian governments at the World Petroleum Congress in Beijing to continue to fight emissions regulations for at least the next two decades. Having previously argued that the lack of developing country participation was unfair to the United States, he now threatened that developing countries would lose foreign investment if binding targets were agreed upon at Kyoto:...</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">p28</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">ExxonMobil Behind the Curve In addition to these voices, other fossil fuel companies have called for the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. On 7 November 2001, Greg Bourne, the President of British Petroleum for South Australia and Australasia, called on the Australian government to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. He said that the Australian economy would suffer if the nation did not commit to ratification.158 Bourne said that “the world is going to have to change its energy use pattern” and that postponing this change will make the transition more difficult, and “cause too much social upheaval.” Further, in contrast to ExxonMobil’s charge that the Kyoto Protocol will bring massive unemployment, Bourne’s “own belief is that there will be many more jobs created by changes into a newer economy than there will be lost.”159...</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">[in in early December 2001, Robert A.G. Monks, founder of the leading U.S. corporate-governance consulting firm, Institutional Shareholder Services, Inc., announced the introduction of a shareholder resolution calling for ExxonMobil’s board to rein in Lee Raymond, charging that Raymond’s “increasingly extreme position on global warming and other environmental and social issues was harming the company’s reputation and share values.”162 In March 2002, ExxonMobil shareholders gained an important victory when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruled in support of two shareholder resolutions in the corporation’s proxy for 2002. The resolutions, which were filed by 56 investor groups which are concerned about ExxonMobil’s position on climate change, call for executive compensation to be linked to the company’s social and environmental performance, and for the publication of a report on the company’s efforts to develop renewable energy technologies. ExxonMobil had challenged the resolutions at the SEC.163]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">p30</div><div style="font-size: small;">Global Climate Coalition (GCC) “Over the past decade, the Global Climate Coalition has spent millions of dollars to defuse the global warming issue, lobbying members of Congress to thwart any corrective action, conducting economic studies that conclude that any such measures would irreparably harm the economy, and sponsoring skeptics on speaking tours to question whether global warming is the crisis other scientists say it is.”173 The GCC was established in 1989 and, for more than a decade, was the most outspoken and confrontational lobby group battling emissions reduction commitments. It invested enormous resources into fullscale attacks on international climate agreement, waging extensive, multi-million dollar dis-information campaigns.174 </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="font-size: small;">Both Exxon and Mobil were board members of the GCC and supported the organization.175 It was recently reported that during the 1990s, Exxon and Mobil spent approximately $1 billion financing the GCC, though accurate figures may never be known.176 In 1997, British Petroleum (BP) left the GCC after admitting that climate change required action. During the period 1999-2000, there was a large-scale defection of companies such as Ford, Texaco and General Motors, but ExxonMobil remained. ExxonMobil was the last to leave the GCC, and left only because the coalition stopped listing corporations as member, accepting only trade associations.177 The GCC folded in early 2002, declaring that President Bush and the Senate were enacting their agenda and thus it had achieved its goals.178 </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">American Petroleum Institute (API) </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">ExxonMobil is a financial supporter of the API and sits on the board. Lee Raymond, CEO of ExxonMobil, was the chair of the API from 1995-1997.179 U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has been a member of its board of directors, and the API remained a member of the Global Climate Coalition until the GCC folded in early 2002.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) The ICC is an industry lobby group that has active at many sessions of the Kyoto negotiations. At the 6th Conference of the Parties (COP 6) in The Hague, Netherlands, in November 2000, ExxonMobil’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Brian Flannery, was registered as a representative of the ICC and was one of the group’s main spokespeople. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association (IPIECA) Exxon and Mobil were both members of the IPIECA in 1996 when it attempted to influence the December climate talks with dire economic forecasts resulting from emissions reductions. ExxonMobil remains a member. U.S. Business Round Table (BRT) The BRT is made up of CEOs from more than 200 large corporations, including ExxonMobil. The climate agenda it pushes calls for global agreements that include developing countries, voluntary agreements for industry, “flexible policies,” and tradable emissions permits between countries. Tax and regulatory measures are strongly opposed. Its 1997 position statement proposed that “a climate policy which fails to include all nations should be opposed,” despite the fact that in 1992, parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, including the United States, agreed that developed countries should act first.180 </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">Global Climate Information Project (GCIP) In the run up to the international climate change negotiations in Kyoto, Japan in 1997, this industry coalition ran a $13 million advertising campaign in the U.S. press, and U.S. national and local television and radio stations that opposed U.S. commitments to the upcoming global warming agreement, claiming that developing countries were not included and the treaty would harm the U.S. economy.181 It was sponsored by the GCC and by API while Lee Raymond was chair. U.S. Council on International Business (USCIB) ExxonMobil is a member of this corporate lobby group which actively lobbied for President George W. Bush’s rejection of the Kyoto Protocol.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">...Pushing ExxonMobil’s Economic Agenda 1996: </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">In 1996, the American Petroleum Institute commissioned and funded an economic model to predict the costs of reducing carbon emissions. The model – produced by U.S. consulting firm Charles River Associates – predicted that any commitment to legally binding emissions targets within the next decade would entail large costs.182 This model failed to compare these potential Kyoto Protocol implementation costs with economic costs of inaction or delay on climate protection, nor the costs of past and future climate change impacts on humans and the environment. Furthermore, it did not incorporate the economic benefits that would result from new markets and jobs created through emissions reduction policies and the development and use of renewable energy and more energy efficient technologies. The author of the model, David Montgomery, spoke at a briefing organized by the U.S. Council for International Business and chaired by the head of the International Chamber of Commerce (ExxonMobil is a member of both organizations) at the UN climate negotiations in Geneva, December 1996. He was quoted widely in the media throughout that year.183</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;"> At the December 1996 climate talks, the IPIECA circulated a briefing paper which concluded that: “Current proposals for near term (10-20 years) emissions reductions in developed countries, which imply curbs on fossil fuel based energy use, would result in substantial costs that would inhibit economic growth and negatively affect trade, investment, competitiveness, employment and lifestyles.”184 Exxon and Mobil were both members of the IPIECA at the time.185 1997: In February of 1997, 2000 top economists (including six Nobel Laureates) signed a statement affirming that many potential climate protection policies “would slow climate change without harming American living standards, and these measures may in fact improve U.S. productivity in the long run.” They urged the United States to play a leadership role at the Kyoto negotiations.186...</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">p35</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">However, experience in the United States, Europe, Japan and elsewhere has demonstrated that government policy is the most important factor in determining the success of renewable energy technologies. Furthermore, policies that create a market for these technologies encourage private investment in renewables research and development (R&D) and production capability, and enable the experience in installation, operation and maintenance, and the economies of scale that can significantly reduce the costs of renewable energy.209 If a corporation of ExxonMobil’s size – one of the world’s largest – were to shift significant investment out of fossil fuels and into renewable energy, it could play an important role in further reducing the costs of renewable energy.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;"> Unfortunately, ExxonMobil dismisses non-fossil fuel sources of energy such as renewables, despite the growing investments in these technologies by other major international oil companies including British Petroleum (BP) and Royal Dutch/Shell. But, rather than investing in renewable energy, ExxonMobil is investing more and more money in oil and gas. ExxonMobil is not interested in developing renewables, but in finding alternative ways to use fossil fuels. Its “solutions” to climate change range from “cleaner fuels,” to advanced drilling techniques, to increased energy efficiency of their operations, to tree planting. None of these actions will reduce carbon dioxide emissions. “Cleaner fuels” such as low-sulfur diesel reduce some airborne pollutants, but do not reduce the emissions that cause global warming. Hydrogen fuelcell vehicles offer great future potential – but the energy generated will be carbon-free only if the hydrogen fuel is produced with renewable energy. It is no surprise then that the fuel cell vehicle ExxonMobil is working to develop, in coordination with auto manufacturers, will use gasoline to produce the hydrogen fuel. In 2001, ExxonMobil earned $15.3 billion in profits...</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;">By contrast, BP and Shell have both agreed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars each on their renewable energy divisions. Both companies have stressed that they want to turn what could be a regulatory burden into an eventual profit. “The element of profit stems from our belief that commercial mechanisms, such as those included in the [Kyoto] protocol, are the way to solve problems like global warming,” says BP spokesman Roddy Kennedy.212 BP and Shell spend a fraction on renewables of what they spend exploring and developing fossil fuels, and a mere fraction of what they could spend on renewables. Yet the divide between these companies and ExxonMobil is enormous. </div></div><div>is sci for sale singer:
<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GCC tries to caPITALIZE</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/global-climate-coalition-collection/1994-nightline-press-office/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/global-climate-coalition-collection/1994-nightline-press-office/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This 1994 <a href="http://www.climateinvestigations.org/global-climate-coalition-documents" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Global Climate Coalition</a> (GCC) letter to journalists encouraged coverage of ABC’s Nightline piece, “<a href="http://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/1994-nightline-special-science-for-sale/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Is Science for Sale?</a>” The special covered the work and funding of climate science deniers <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5453342-1993-4-Climate-Watch.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">often cited</a> by the GCC. The industry-funded GCC opposed greenhouse gas regulations through<a href="https://www.webcitation.org/6edhgApV3" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> direct engagement</a> and collaboration with<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160118231100/http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html?pagewanted=all&r=2" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> affiliated climate deniers</a> from 1989 to 2002. Its membership spanned across the automotive, utility, manufacturing, petroleum, and mining industries.
In this 1994 letter, GCC’s media representative Donald Rheem pitched a story to journalists about Al Gore attempting to influence that segment of Nightline. Rheem explained that Gore called Ted Koppel, the show’s host, and suggested that he “might want to look into connections between scientists who scoff at the so-called greenhouse effect… and the coal industry.”
Rheem stated that the immediate need to take action on climate change was untrue, “…environmental special interest groups have tried to convince the public and policy makers that the scientific community is certain of a future threat of a disastrous increase in global temperatures and on the need to take drastic actions now … Neither assertion is true, and it is important that as reporters and scientists enter this public debate, they are not vilified for their participation.”
This document is part of the private collection of Nicky Sundt, a Washington-based climate change science, policy and communications expert.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div></div><div></div><div>719 new docs?</div><div>
</div><div>We’ve all heard the dodgy arguments: ‘the science is uncertain’, ‘climate change is natural, not down to humans’, ‘science has been hijacked by politics’… But how did they become part of public discourse?Well, a new cache of meeting minutes, briefings, and emails from fossil fuel industry group the Global Climate Coalition offers some clues.The newly released documents show how the GCC, which counted fossil fuel giants Exxon, Shell, and Peabody among its members, used its financial clout and political connections to cast doubt on mainstream climate science until its disbandment in 2002.That's despite actually internally acknowledging Big Oil's products drove climate change in the mid-90s.1994: "There is no basis for the design of effective policy action that would eliminate the potential for climate change.”1995: "... the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on the climate is well-established and cannot be denied.”1999: "Those who are worried about global warming can cool down." As Geoffrey Supran, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, told DeSmog, the docs show “that when it comes to the fossil fuel industry's rhetoric on climate change and energy, we take them at face value at our peril.”<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://desmogblog.cmail19.com/t/t-l-bjrhdg-jdldtjdit-e/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Read the full story here.</a> Want more? Check out our special series, <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://desmogblog.cmail19.com/t/t-l-bjrhdg-jdldtjdit-s/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">The Global Climate Coalition Files</a>.</div><div></div><div>ref</div><div>
</div><div><div>desmog no lnx docs</div><div>
</div><div>We’ve all heard the dodgy arguments: ‘the science is uncertain’, ‘climate change is natural, not down to humans’, ‘science has been hijacked by politics’… Now a new cache of documents sheds light on the origins of the disinformation.  </div><div>
</div><div>In another verse of a now familiar refrain, a fossil fuel industry group in the 1990s publicly promoted arguments to undermine confidence in climate science while internally acknowledging their products were driving up temperatures.  </div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>How Big Oil Tried to Capture the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</div><div>
</div><div>Global Climate Coalition: Documents Reveal How Secretive Fossil Fuel Lobby Group Manipulated UN Climate Programs</div><div>A cache of meeting minutes, briefings, and emails uncovered by the Climate Investigations Center shows how industry group the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) used its financial clout and political connections to cast doubt on mainstream climate science until its disbandment in 2002. The GCC would for decades cast doubt on the veracity of climate science and strategically spread the message that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was a politicised body, to discourage regulatory reform that would hit coalition members’ profits. </div><div>
</div><div>The documents show that the group, which counted fossil fuel giants Exxon, Shell, and Peabody among its members, knowingly pushed misinformation on climate change even as the GCC internally acknowledged humans’ impact on the climate “cannot be denied”. Some of those same companies have been the recent targets of lawsuits seeking damages for climate change impacts.</div><div>
</div><div>“These documents are another stain on the fossil fuel industry's track-record as a disingenuous rogue agent in climate science and politics,” Geoffrey Supran, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University researching climate science denial, told DeSmog. “They further illustrate the sophisticated combination of inside- and outside-lobbying used by the fossil fuel industry to protect their status quo business operations.”  </div><div>
</div><div>Peddling Denial</div><div>Within the GCC, the Science and Technology Assessment Committee (STAC) took responsibility for assessing contemporary climate science and formulating strategic arguments to undermine it. The STAC was chaired by Mobil Oil’s Lenny Bernstein. Mobil, Exxon, and Texaco (now part of Chevron) all contributed five staffers to the committee.</div><div>
</div><div>An internal 1994 document outlining “issues and options” for the GCC to consider regarding “potential global climate change” shows the group’s outright climate science denial. </div><div>
</div><div>The document concludes that “the claim that serious impacts from climate change have occurred or will occur in the future has not been proven” and “consequently, there is no basis for the design of effective policy action that would eliminate the potential for climate change.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>In the same document, the GCC cites the work of infamous academics known for spreading climate science denial including Richard Linzen, Patrick Michaels, and Robert Balling. The document asserts that these academics’ arguments disputing mainstream climate science  “have received far less attention than they deserve”.</div><div>
</div><div>A small-format pamphlet that the GCC distributed to the public in 1995 entitled “Climate Change: Your Passport to the Facts” states that:</div><div>
</div><div>“While many warnings have reached the popular press about the consequences of a potential man-made warming of the Earth's atmosphere during the next 100 years, there remains no scientific evidence that such a dangerous warming will actually occur.”</div><div>
</div><div>A year-end briefing from 1995 also says: “The warming that has occurred to date is primarily at night and is within the range of natural variability. Some statistically significant 'climate changes' have been reported in some regions, but no credible scientific evidence exists which shows that these changes have been caused by human activity.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>GCC Knew</div><div>In that same year, however, the documents show that internally the GCC was beginning to accept anthropogenic global warming. </div><div>
</div><div>A note on a draft GCC primer on climate science from 1995 by Bernstein says “the scientific basis for the greenhouse effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on the climate is well-established and cannot be denied.” Sections on “contrarian” science were subsequently removed from the report. </div><div>
</div><div>But that didn’t mean the GCC had completely abandoned its climate science denial. Meeting minutes from 1996 suggested research by climate science deniers “may be dealt with in a future paper.” </div><div>
</div><div>Find all the documents in Climate Investigation Centre’s Global Climate Coalition Index</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>And in 1996, an overview of GCC work emphasised natural variation over human causes of climate change. While the document accepted that warming was occurring, “it is an open question however as to what the cause of this warming has been,” the document stated. The document also emphasised uncertainties in climate models — an argument the GCC would make in public many times.</div><div>
</div><div>This determination to focus on scientific uncertainties continued in a GCC conference call in April 1996, where members offered to write briefings on scientific inadequacies on five topics — models, sea level rise, solar variability, carbon dioxide, and temperature record and measurement.</div><div>
</div><div>Despite growing internal acceptance of humans affecting the climate, as late as 1999 the GCC was publicly promoting the argument that anthropogenic climate change was uncertain and overstated. </div><div>
</div><div>In a public ‘Climate Watch Brief’ newsletter, the GCC ended on two quotes suggesting anthropogenic climate change was an overblown idea. One, from astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas, succinctly summarises GCC’s position: those worried about global warming, she says, can “cool down”. </div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Politicisation</div><div>The GCC’s disinformation strategy extended beyond casting aspersions on the science to the process of gathering evidence for the major IPCC reports, the documents show.</div><div>
</div><div>Porter Womeldorff, an Illinois Power Company employee and co-chair of the STAC, suggested the group focus on the politicisation of the IPCC process.</div><div>
</div><div>And that’s exactly what the GCC did. In an internal document from 1996, the GCC boasted that its criticism of the IPCC’s processes had been picked up more widely by the mainstream media: </div><div>
</div><div>“Publications which have joined in questioning the IPCC approach to conforming technical reports to summaries include the NYTimes, Wall St. Journal, Energy Daily, and Nature.”</div><div>
</div><div>This followed a 1995 report that noted with glee a Nature editorial taking aim at the IPCC for a press-release that the erstwhile journal considered to be needlessly attention seeking.</div><div>
</div><div>Harvard’s Supran, who recently testified to the European Parliament about Exxon’s history of climate science denial, told DeSmog that the documents “help fill in pieces of the historical jigsaw of climate deception by the fossil fuel industry”.</div><div>
</div><div>“History teaches us that when it comes to the fossil fuel industry's rhetoric on climate change and energy, we take them at face value at our peril.”</div></div><div></div><div>
</div><div><div class="field-label" style="text-transform: uppercase; display: inline; font-family: " open="open" sans="sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px">TAGS: </div><div class="field-items" style="display: inline; font-family: " open="open" sans="sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px"><div class="field-item even" style="display: inline-block; margin-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/2126" style="">global climate coalition</a></div><div class="field-item odd" style="display: inline-block; margin-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/tags/national-association-of-manufacturers" style="">national association of manufacturers</a></div><div class="field-item even" style="display: inline-block; margin-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/15236" style="">ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM)</a></div><div class="field-item odd" style="display: inline-block; margin-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/19238" style="">George W. Bush Administration</a></div><div class="field-item even" style="display: inline-block; margin-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/728" style="">kyoto protocol</a></div><div class="field-item odd" style="display: inline-block; margin-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/676" style="">IPCC</a></div></div></div><div><div class="field-items" style="display: inline; font-family: " open="open" sans="sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px">
</div></div><div><div class="field-items" style="display: inline; font-family: " open="open" sans="sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px">
</div></div><div>new retrospective desmog 619</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/04/25/global-climate-coalition-documents-secretive-fossil-fuel-lobby-un-programs">https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/04/25/global-climate-coalition-documents-secretive-fossil-fuel-lobby-un-programs</a></div><div>
</div><div>...</div><div> fossil fuel–backed industry group was able to influence the process behind the United Nations climate assessments for decades, using lobbyists and industry-funded scientists to manipulate international negotiations, a cache of recently discovered documents reveals.The documents include hundreds of briefings, meeting minutes, notes, and correspondence from the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/global-climate-coalition" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Global Climate Coalition (GCC)</a>. They were <a href="https://climateinvestigations.org/global-climate-coalition-documents" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">released Thursday by the Climate Investigations Center</a> in collaboration with DeSmog and Climate Liability News. The documents date from 1989 and continue through 2002, when the lobbying group disbanded as its fossil fuel industry backers succumbed to public pressure to disavow its tactics.The documents show how the GCC influenced international negotiations, manipulated the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) process, and undertook a disinformation campaign designed to cast doubt on mainstream climate science.The GCC was initially part of the <a href="https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2019/02/26/national-association-manufacturers-oil-climate-liability/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">National Association of Manufacturers</a> (NAM), before becoming its own <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5798254-GCC-IRS-1023.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">entity</a> in 1995. NAM <a href="https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2019/02/26/national-association-manufacturers-oil-climate-liability/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">has a long history</a> of defending portions of its membership, including tobacco companies that were facing an onslaught of liability litigation, with aggressive tactics that include discrediting science, attacking scientists, and misleading the public.<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5674022-1989-GcC-Membership.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Founding members</a> of the GCC were mainly fossil fuel producers and utilities, including oil majors <a href="https://climateinvestigations.org/shell-oil-climate-documents/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Shell</a>, Texaco (now <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/THE-CHEVRON-TEXACO-MERGER-An-oil-giant-2870161.php" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">a part of Chevron</a>), and Amoco (now <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoco" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">part of BP</a>); oil refiner and retailers ARCO (now a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARCO" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">subsidiary of Marathon Petroleum</a>) and Phillips Petroleum; coal miners <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKzBsAE7_lw" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">BHP-Utah International</a> and <a href="https://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/06/13114/peabody-coal-bankruptcy-reveals-extensive-funding-climate-denial-network" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Peabody</a>; and utilities <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/aep-names-mcmanus-senior-vice-president-environmental-services-300619593.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">American Electric Power</a> and <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/PG%26E" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Pacific Gas and Electric</a>.Other companies, including Exxon, joined later — and the international oil giant would go on to be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/jun/08/usnews.climatechange" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">a key player</a> in the group.Revealed in the documents is a decades-long campaign that continued until 2002, intended to protect its members’ interests by denying and casting doubt on climate science. Internally, the group acknowledged the dangers of climate change and the scientific consensus that it is overwhelmingly driven by the burning of fossil fuels <a href="http://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/global-climate-coalition-collection/global-climate-coalition-draft-primer/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">as early as 1995</a>.The campaign reached the highest levels of U.S. government, with the State Department giving the GCC credit for leading President George W. Bush to reject the landmark Kyoto Protocol in 2001. An internal <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4407192-Global-Climate-Coalition-Meeting-2001.html#document/p3/a420404" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">State Department briefing</a>, prepared for a meeting with the GCC later that year and included in the documents published Thursday, shows officials were instructed to tell coalition representatives that Bush’s decision was “in part, based on input from you.”The Kyoto Protocol, agreed upon in 1997, was the first large-scale international agreement to commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. was one of only three UN members that did not ratify the treaty (Canada later withdrew).
<h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;">Influencing the UN’s Panel of Climate Scientists</h3>The GCC took a particular interest in the operations of the UN’s official scientific advisory body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which produces the international climate assessments that form the basis for global climate policy and negotiations.GCC representatives <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5631463-AIAM-051494.html#document/p91/a494375" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">regularly met with IPCC scientists</a> to lobby the panel to accept industry language in its reports, the documents show. Tax returns show hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5689215-AIAM-052205.html#document/p6/a477832" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">an “IPCC Tracker Fund”</a> to monitor and lobby the IPCC’s meetings.In one instance detailed in the documents, the GCC boasted its suggested language was <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5631463-AIAM-051494.html#document/p85/a475758" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">“accepted almost in its entirety”</a>after intensive lobbying by its representatives and after “assistance from several countries.”
The GCC also publicly <a href="http://www.colby.edu/sts/controversy/pages/ipcc_controversy.htm" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">questioned the validity</a> of the IPCC’s peer-review process and launched public attacks on its scientists, while simultaneously using the IPCC’s status as a respected scientific body to <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5025898-AIAM-Scientific-Uncertainties-IPCC-Part-2.html#document/p26/a464201" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">promote the credentials</a> of its own climate science denial research.The GCC went beyond targeting climate science. In 1995, Exxon gave a presentation to the GCC on<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3215116-Purported-Impact-of-Climate-Change-on-Human-Health.html#document/p1" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;"> how to counter the evidence </a>linking climate change to human health impacts.In 1997, the GCC wanted to <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5453334-1996-11-25-GCC-Board-of-Directors-Strategy-Memo.html#document/p5/a477438" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">expand its reach with a network of state and local committees</a> that would educate the public about their views on climate change and serve as liaisons to other business and public interest groups with similar views. This plan was implemented, the <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5453388-1997-GCC-Coordinating-Council-Participants-and.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">documents show</a>, with the help of <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/koch-industries-inc" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Koch Industries</a>, the U.S.’s largest private energy company, which is an infamous <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/koch-family-foundations" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">funder of climate science denial </a>across the globe.<h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;">The Collapse of the GCC</h3>By the mid-1990s, however, the GCC’s aggressive tactics and continuing effort to cast doubt on accepted climate science had started to become a problem for some of its members. Nine corporations left the GCC from 1996 to 2000: two automakers, one chemical manufacturer, one utility, and five oil companies.BP was the first major oil company to leave in 1997, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=PKweBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">stating that</a> “the time to consider the policy dimensions of climate change is not when the link between greenhouse gases and climate change is conclusively proven, but when the possibility cannot be discounted and is taken seriously by the society of which we are part. We in BP have reached that point.”[pix]<h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;">Additional Takeaways: Infiltrating UN Climate Negotiations, Embracing Climate Deniers Publicly But Not Privately</h3>The documents published Thursday on the <a href="http://climateinvestigations.org/global-climate-coalition-documents" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Climate Investigation Center’s Climate Files archive</a>, also show:<ul style="margin: 1.5em 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 30px;"><li dir="ltr">The GCC stacked UN meetings with its members. Some attended meetings transparently, registering as GCC members, while others registered with other NGOs. Often GCC members<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5754078-July-1996-COP-2-NGOs.html#document/p7/a492504" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;"> outnumbered</a> delegates from developing nations at the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings.</li><li dir="ltr">The GCC coordinated to monitor IPCC meetings. After IPCC meetings, GCC notes reveal attendees met to discuss strategies for exploiting scientific uncertainties in IPCC climate models and amplifying scientific differences of opinion. On at least one occasion, a<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5689215-AIAM-052205.html#document/p6/a477832" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;"> contractor</a> for the Electric Power Research Institute planned to keep tabs on IPCCproceedings.  </li><li dir="ltr">The GCC internally refuted climate deniers, yet continued to publicly cite their work: Exxon scientist Lenny Bernstein, who co-chaired the GCC’s committee on science and technology assessment, called the work of climate deniers <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/richard-lindzen" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Richard Lindzen</a> and <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/patrick-michaels" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Patrick Michaels</a> “not convincing” in a draft document in 1995. The final copy of that document included no mention of Bernstein’s comments and the GCC continued to cite the two — as well as other known deniers — through at least 1998.</li><li dir="ltr">The GCC aggressively attempted to control media coverage of climate change: Press releases were sent to reporters praising media coverage featuring climate deniers and correcting those that did not. One<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5628174-To-Tell-the-Whole-Story-on-Global-Climate-Change.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;"> document</a> encouraged reporters to contact the GCC for “balance in the global climate change debate.”</li></ul></div><div>==</div></div>