Global Climate Coalition

The Global Climate Coalition (GCC) (1989–2001) was an international lobbyist group of businesses that opposed action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and publicly challenged the science behind global warming. The GCC was the largest industry group active in climate policy and the most prominent industry advocate in international climate negotiations. The GCC was involved in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, and played a role in blocking ratification by the United States. The coalition knew it could not deny the scientific consensus, but sought to sow doubt over the scientific consensus on climate change and create manufactured controversy. The GCC dissolved in 2001 after membership declined in the face of improved understanding of the role of greenhouse gases in climate change and of public criticism.

Founding

The Global Climate Coalition (GCC) was formed in 1989 as a project under the auspices of the National Association of Manufacturers.: On the organizational level, the three major US automobile companies, as well as the American Automobile Manufacturers Association (AAMA) worked largely through the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), which was formed in 1989, initially under the auspices of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), but reorganized as an independent entity in 1992. The GCC was formed to represent the interests of the major producers and users of fossil fuels, to oppose regulation to mitigate global warming,: In 1989, ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute (which was twice chaired by Lee Raymond) formed the Global Climate Coalition. The Coalition's mission was to oppose policy action on climate change. ExxonMobil and the Coalition argued that global warming was a natural phenomenon and that human actions were not contributing to it. and to challenge the science behind global warming. Context for the founding of the GCC from 1988 included the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and NASA climatologist James Hansen's congressional testimony that climate change was occurring. The government affairs' offices of five or six corporations recognized that they had been inadequately organized for the Montreal Protocol, the international treaty that phased out ozone depleting chlorofluorocarbons, and the Clean Air Act in the United States, and recognized that fossil fuels would be targeted for regulation.

According to GCC's mission statement on the home page of its website, GCC was established: "to coordinate business participation in the international policy debate on the issue of global climate change and global warming," and GCC's executive director in a 1993 press release said GCC was organized "as the leading voice for industry on the global climate change issue."

GCC reorganized independently in 1992, with the first chairman of the board of directors being the director of government relations for the Phillips Petroleum Company. Exxon, later ExxonMobil, was a founding member, and a founding member of the GCC's board of directors; the energy giant also had a leadership role in coalition. The American Petroleum Institute (API) was a leading member of the coalition. API's executive vice president was a chairman of the coalition's board of directors. Other GCC founding members included the National Coal Association, United States Chamber of Commerce, American Forest & Paper Association, and Edison Electric Institute. GCC's executive director John Shlaes was previously the director of government relations at the Edison Electric Institute. GCC was run by Ruder Finn, a public relations firm. GCC's comprehensive PR campaign was designed by E. Bruce Harrison, who had been creating campaigns for the US industry against environmental legislation from the 1970s.

GCC was the largest industry group active in climate policy. About 40 companies and industry associations were GCC members. Considering member corporations, member trade associations, and business represented by member trade associations, GCC represented over 230,000 businesses. Industry sectors represented included: aluminium, paper, transportation, power generation, petroleum, chemical, and small businesses. All major oil companies were members until 1996 (Shell left in 1998). GCC members were from industries that would have been adversely effected by limitations on fossil fuel consumption. GCC was funded by membership dues.

Advocacy activities

GCC was one of the most powerful lobbyist groups against action to mitigate global warming. It was the most prominent industry advocate in international climate negotiations, and led a campaign opposed to policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The GCC was one of the most powerful non-governmental organizations representing business interests in climate policy, according to Kal Raustiala, professor at the UCLA School of Law.

GCC's advocacy activities included lobbying government officials, grassroots lobbying through press releases and advertising, participation in international climate conferences, criticism of the processes of international climate organizations, critiques of climate models, and personal attacks on scientists and environmentalists. Policy positions advocated by the coalition included denial of anthropogenic climate change, emphasizing the uncertainty in climatology, advocating for additional research, highlighting the benefits and downplaying the risks of climate change, stressing the priority of economic development, defending national sovereignty, and opposition to the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

GCC sent delegations to all of the major international climate conventions. Only nations and non-profits may send official delegates to the United Nations Climate Change conferences. GCC registered with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as a non-governmental organization, and executives from GCC members attended official UN conferences as GCC delegates.

In 1990, after US president, George H. W. Bush, addressed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) urging caution in responding to global warming, and offering no new proposals, GCC said Bush's speech was "very strong" and concurred with the priorities of economic development and additional research. GCC sent 30 attendees to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where it lobbied to keep targets and timetables out of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. In December, 1992 GCC's executive director wrote in a letter to ''The New York Times'': "...there is considerable debate on whether or not man-made greenhouse gases (produced primarily by burning fossil fuels) are triggering a dangerous 'global warming' trend." In 1992 GCC distributed a half-hour video entitled '' The Greening of Planet Earth'', to hundreds of journalists, the White House, and several Middle Eastern oil-producing countries, which suggested that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide could boost crop yields and solve world hunger.

In 1993, after then US president Bill Clinton pledged "to reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases to their 1990 levels by the year 2000," GCC's executive director said it "could jeopardize the economic health of the nation." GCC's lobbying was key to the defeat in the United States Senate of Clinton's 1993 BTU tax proposal. In 1994, after United States Secretary of Energy Hazel R. O'Leary said the 1992 UNFCCC needed to be strengthened, and that voluntary carbon dioxide reductions may not be enough, GCC said it was: "disturbed by the implication that the President's voluntary climate action plan, which is just getting under way, will be inadequate and that more stringent measures may be needed domestically."

GCC did not fund original scientific research and its climate claims relied largely on the ''World Climate Review'' and its successor the ''World Climate Report'' edited by Patrick Michaels and funded by the Western Fuels Association. GCC promoted the views of climate deniers such as Michaels, Fred Singer, and Richard Lindzen. In 1996, GCC published a report entitled ''Global warming and extreme weather: fact vs. fiction'' written by Robert E. Davis.

GCC members questioned the efficacy of climate change denial and shifted their message to highlighting the economic costs of proposed greenhouse gas emission regulations and the limited effectiveness of proposals exempting developing nations. In 1995, after the United Nations Climate Change conference in Berlin agreed to negotiate greenhouse gas emission limits, GCC's executive director said the agreement gave "developing countries like China, India and Mexico a free ride" and would "change the relations between sovereign countries and the United Nations. This could have very significant implications. It could be a way of capping our economy." At a Washington, D.C. press conference on the eve of the second United Nations Climate Change conference in Geneva, GCC's executive director said, "The time for decision is not yet now." At the conference in Geneva, GCC issued a statement that said it was too early to determine the causes of global warming. GCC representatives lobbied scientists at the September, 1996 IPCC conference in Mexico City.

After actor Leonardo DiCaprio, chairman of Earth Day 2000, interviewed Clinton for ABC News, GCC sent out an e-mail that said that DiCaprio's first car was a Jeep Grand Cherokee and that his current car was a Chevrolet Tahoe.

''Predicting Future Climate Change: A Primer''

In 1995, GCC assembled an advisory committee of scientific and technical experts to compile an internal-only, 17-page report on climate science entitled ''Predicting Future Climate Change: A Primer'', which said: "The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied." In early 1996, GCC's operating committee asked the advisory committee to redact the sections that rebutted contrarian arguments, and accepted the report and distributed it to members. The draft document was disclosed in a 2007 lawsuit filed by the auto industry against California's efforts to regulate automotive greenhouse gas emissions.

According to ''The New York Times'', the primer demonstrated that "even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted." According to the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2015, the primer was: "remarkable for indisputably showing that, while some fossil fuel companies' deception about climate science has continued to the present day, at least two decades ago the companies' own scientific experts were internally alerting them about the realities and implications of climate change."

IPCC Second Assessment Report

GCC was an industry participant in the review process of the IPCC Second Assessment Report. In 1996, prior to the publication of the Second Assessment Report, GCC distributed a report entitled ''The IPCC: Institutionalized Scientific Cleansing'' to reporters, US Congressmen, and scientists. The coalition report said that Benjamin D. Santer, the lead author of Chapter 8 in the assessment, entitled "Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes," had altered the text, after acceptance by the Working Group, and without approval of the authors, to strike content characterizing the uncertainty of the science. Frederick Seitz repeated GCC's charges in a letter to the ''Wall Street Journal'' published June 12, 1996. The coalition ran newspaper advertisements that said: "unless the management of the IPCC promptly undertakes to republish the printed versions ... the IPCC's credibility will have been lost."

Santer and his co-authors said the edits were integrations of comments from peer review as per agreed IPCC processes.

Opposition to Kyoto Protocol

GCC was the main industry group in the United States opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, which committed signatories to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The coalition "was the leading industry group working in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol," according to Greenpeace, and led opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, according to the ''Los Angeles Times.''

Prior to 1997, GCC spent about $1 million annually lobbying against limits on emissions; before Kyoto, GCC annual revenue peaked around $1.5 million; GCC spent $13 million on advertising in opposition to the Kyoto treaty.: Using the same media team of Goddard Claussen that produced the Harry and Louise ads, the Global Climate Coalition, an association of industry groups and some unions, has already run $13 million in television advertisements against the agreement. The coalition funded the Global Climate Information Project and hired the advertising firm that produced the 1993–1994 Harry and Louise advertising campaign which opposed Clinton's health care initiative. The advertisements said, "the UN Climate Treaty isn't Global...and it won't work" and "Americans will pay the price...50 cents more for every gallon of gasoline."

GCC opposed the signing of the Kyoto Protocol by Clinton. GCC was influential in the withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol by the administration of President George W. Bush. According to briefing notes prepared by the United States Department of State for the under-secretary of state, Bush's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol was "in part based on input from" GCC.: In briefing papers given before meetings to the US under-secretary of state, Paula Dobriansky, between 2001 and 2004, the administration is found thanking Exxon executives for the company's "active involvement" in helping to determine climate change policy, and also seeking its advice on what climate change policies the company might find acceptable. "Potus resident of the United Statesrejected Kyoto in part based on input from you he Global Climate Coalition" says one briefing note before Ms Dobriansky's meeting with the GCC, the main anti-Kyoto US industry group, which was dominated by Exxon. GCC lobbying was key to the July, 1997 unanimous passage in the United States Senate of the Byrd–Hagel Resolution, which reflected the coalition's position that restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions must include developing countries. GCC's chairman told a US congressional committee that mandatory greenhouse gas emissions limits were: "an unjustified rush to judgement." The coalition sent 50 delegates to the third Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Kyoto. On December 11, 1997, the day the Kyoto delegates reached agreement on legally binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions, GCC's chairman said the agreement would be defeated by the US Senate. In 2001, GCC's executive director compared the Kyoto Protocol to the ''RMS Titanic''.

Membership decline and dissolution

GCC's challenge to science prompted a backlash from environmental groups. Environmentalists described GCC as a "club for polluters" and called for members to withdraw their support. "Abandonment of the Global Climate Coalition by leading companies is partly in response to the mounting evidence that the world is indeed getting warmer," according to environmentalist Lester R. Brown. In 1998, Green Party delegates to the European Parliament introduced an unsuccessful proposal that the World Meteorological Organization name hurricanes after GCC members. Defections weakened the coalition. In 1996, British Petroleum resigned and later announced support for the Kyoto Protocol and commitment to greenhouse gas emission reductions. In 1997, Royal Dutch Shell withdrew after criticism from European environmental groups. In 1999, Ford Motor Company was the first US company to withdraw; the ''New York Times'' described the departure as "the latest sign of divisions within heavy industry over how to respond to global warming." DuPont left the coalition in 1997 and Shell USA (then known as Shell Oil Company) left in 1998. In 2000, GCC corporate members were the targets of a national student-run university divestiture campaign. Between December, 1999 and early March, 2000, Texaco, the Southern Company, General Motors and Daimler-Chrysler withdrew. Some former coalition members joined the Business Environmental Leadership Council within the Pew Center on Global Climate Change which represented diverse stakeholders, including business interests, with a commitment to peer-reviewed scientific research and accepted the need for emissions restrictions to address climate change.

In 2000, GCC restructured as an association of trade associations; membership was limited to trade associations, and individual corporations were represented through their trade association. Brown called the restructuring "a thinly veiled effort to conceal the real issue – the loss of so many key corporate members."

In 2001, after US President George W. Bush withdrew the US from the Kyoto process, GCC disbanded. Absent the participation of the US, the effectiveness of the Kyoto process was limited. GCC said on its website that its mission had been successfully achieved, writing "At this point, both Congress and the Administration agree that the U.S. should not accept the mandatory cuts in emissions required by the protocol."

Reception

In 2015, the Union of Concerned Scientists compared GCC's role in the public policy debate on climate change to the roles in the public policy debate on tobacco safety of the Tobacco Institute, the tobacco industry's lobbyist group, and the Council for Tobacco Research, which promoted misleading science. Environmentalist Bill McKibben said that, by promoting doubt about the science, "throughout the 1990s, even as other nations took action, the fossil fuel industry's Global Climate Coalition managed to make American journalists treat the accelerating warming as a he-said-she-said story." According to the ''Los Angeles Times'', GCC members integrated projections from climate models into their operational planning while publicly criticising the models.: O’Keefe said no one in the coalition denied the existence of global warming, but there was uncertainty about how well the models could project its future impact. What coalition members felt certain about, he said, was that any government-mandated emission reductions would have “a clear negative impact,” including unemployment, higher energy prices and a drop in the U.S. standard of living. When it came to their own investments, though, coalition members relied on scientific projections — from rising sea levels to thawing permafrost — to design and protect multibillion-dollar investments in pipelines, gas developments and offshore oil rigs.

Former Vice President Al Gore described the oil companies' blocking campaign as "the most serious crime of the post-World War Two era".

Members

Membership notes

References

Bibliography

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External links

GCC homepage
- No longer active as of March 2006
internet archive version
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Climate change denial
Defunct climate change organizations
Environmental organizations established in 1989
Environmental organizations disestablished in 2001
International business organizations
Organizations based in Washington, D.C.
Organizations of environmentalism skeptics and critics