Thirty years ago, on this day, June 26th, 1996 another GCC flak letter (see also 30 May).
This controversial issue also resulted in two letters (dated 30 May and 26 June), being sent to me, one from the Global Climate Coalition (John Schlaes) and the other from The Climate Council (Donald Pearlman). Copies of these were also sent to ten key members of the US Congress as well as the Advisor for Science and Technology and Assistant to the US President (John Gibson), and the Assistant Secretary of State (Eileen Clausen).”
Bolin 2007, page 130
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 362ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context for this was that industries that feel threatened by potential or actual regulation by states, local, federal, national, whatever, will usually fight back by supporting or inventing politicians who will fight their corner. And they will flood the public domain, newspapers and then later, radio, television and the internet, with arguments against regulation. It’s been explained and exposed many times.
One particularly good exposure, in my opinion, is Nancy Oreskes and Stephen Conway’s, Merchants of Doubt. You’ve also got on climate, two books by Ross Gelbspan, “The Heat Is On” and “Boiling Point.”
And so it came to pass with climate in 1989 something called the Global Climate Coalition was created. Sounds cuddly, doesn’t it? But it is actually opposition to national and international action on climate change via the usual mechanisms of group public letters signed by the CEOs of a bunch of companies, incredibly dodgy economic modelling that “proves” the sky will fall, divisive rhetoric, targeting of vulnerable politicians who have elections coming up, threats of funding their opponents, classic carrot and stick.
The specific context was that by this time, the attacks had moved to the scientists with the IPCC second assessment report. And they wheeled out a bunch of decrepit Relevance Deprivation Syndrome suffering physicists to try and create confusion. It worked.
What I think we can learn is this: is that evil organisations doing evil things have to contend with people who have slivers of morality.
What happened next: the Global Climate Coalition also attacked, of course, the Kyoto Protocol. Then in 2002 it splintered even further and lost more members, especially Ford; the gig was up. And in any case, the Global Climate Coalition was able to declare victory. They had stopped there being any robust international or national response to climate and secured their profits for another few decades.
You’d compare it with the greenhouse mafia in Australia, but it was wider, better funded, more organised.
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
June 26, 1975 – Denialist Richard Scorer being stupid
June 26, 1986 – Australian Environment Council schooled on climate
June 26, 1986 – “our children will grow old in a world that fragmenting and disintegrating.”
June 26, 1988 – it’s SHOWTIME for climate…
June 26, 1991 “environment is not flavor of the month any more”
June 26, 1992 – BCA versus reality (BCA wins in the short-term) –