On this day, July 28 1990, journalist John Gribbin (author of several books about climate change published in the 1970s and 1980s) had a nice snippet to help us build the picture of the international efforts to scupper climate action, back in the crucial 1988 to 1992 period.;
“last month, when members of the George C. Marshall Institute, a privately funded think tank based in Washington DC, were flown in to present their maverick views on climate change, it came as no surprise to find that the room at the Hyde Park Hotel in which they gave their talks… had actually been booked by British Coal’ (John Gribbin, Why caution is wrong on global warming’.
New Scientist, 127, 28 July 1990, p. 18)
The “George C. Marshall Institute” had been set up in 1984 to slow down environmental regulation (slippery slope to Pol Pot and Stalin, don’t you know) for a while. They became an early and important node of organised climate resistance. They were – and this is gonna shock you – funded by fossil fuel companies.
You can read more about these ass-hats in Oreskes and Conway’s “The Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.”
Why this matters.
The transatlantic links have not weakened. They have, in fact, strengthened.
What happened next?
The UK accelerated the decline off its coal industry, and imported lots of natural gas. This made it seem like they were making progress on emissions reductions. So that’s nice.