NYT Reports on Global Climate Coalition & ACCCE “Clean Coal” Lobbying Blitz
Today the New York Times reported that the Global Climate Coalition who represents industries with financial or profit interests in fossil fuels ignored scientists within its own studies about the nature of human-generated CO2 that leads to global warming.
Quote from NYT article:
“The coalition was financed by fees from large corporations and trade groups representing the oil, coal and auto industries, among others. In 1997, the year an international climate agreement that came to be known as the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated, its budget totaled $1.68 million, according to tax records obtained by environmental groups.
Throughout the 1990s, when the coalition conducted a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign challenging the merits of an international agreement, policy makers and pundits were fiercely debating whether humans could dangerously warm the planet. Today, with general agreement on the basics of warming, the debate has largely moved on to the question of how extensively to respond to rising temperatures.”
Full Article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
Related - the Center for Public Integrity has a great in-depth article about the ACCCE - an industry lobbying group with an annual budget of 45M who intends to keep “clean coal” PR in the face of the public and policy makers. The group supports “coal abundance”and is responsible for the image of the lump of coal with the orange power cord in it. They continue a mantra of technology solutions for carbon capture - although the logic of storing CO2 from coal fired plants in massive amounts underground seems like just another strained illogical bandaid. The full article is extremely informative - http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/climate_change/articles/entry/1280