People who follow climate change issues closely know the story, and know the players: Activists, led by groups like Forecast the Facts and stoked with rage over industry-backed groups pushing climate denial, launch a successful pressure campaign to drive the industry donors away.
This is the scenario playing out today, as titans of Silicon
Valley part ways with the American Legislative
Exchange Council, or ALEC. Within a 24-hour period last month,
Facebook, Google, and Yahoo all announced they would quit their memberships in
the controversial group, which tees up model state-level legislation favoring a
spectrum of libertarian/conservative causes.
Microsoft had proceeded them out the door this summer.
Occidental Petroleum followed them last Friday.
All cited ALEC's climate-denying tendencies as a principal factor in their withdrawal. Google's Chairman, Eric Schmitt, stuck the knife in when he explained to a radio interviewer what ALEC was doing on climate change with his company's money: "They're just literally lying."
'Breaking up via
text'
Lisa Nelson, ALEC's newly-minted CEO, told the National Journal they were blindsided by the
departures. Expressing her disappointment as if from the pages of a John Hughes
script, she said, "It's like breaking up via text with you girlfriend when
you're 16."
We've been here before. In the late 1990's, the Global Climate
Coalition catalyzed widespread resistance to action on climate change. Starting
in 1989 and with backing from Washington, D.C., trade association heavyweights
like the American Petroleum Institute and the National Mining Association, GCC
collected a Who's Who list of corporate members.
In 1997, the eight-year-old GCC turned its attention to the
Kyoto Protocol. The global pact was widely praised for at least taking a stab
at reducing worldwide CO2 emissions, but it was panned for exempting developing
nations, including carbon-belching giants like China and India.
Dead on arrival
Thanks in part to GCC's aggressive lobbying and advertising,
Kyoto was D.O.A. in the U.S. Senate. A non-binding Senate resolution opposing
ratification of the treaty passed 95-0. Then-Sen. Chuck Hagel, now Obama's
Defense Secretary, co-sponsored the measure. The Clinton Administration never
presented Kyoto for Senate approval, and the George W. Bush administration
barely let the word "Kyoto" part its collective lips.
Meanwhile, lobbyists at the GCC were hard at work: The Los Angeles Times reported that GCC in 1997 dropped $13
million on anti-Kyoto advertising. Their Global Climate Information Project
relied on ad work done by the Goddard Claussen firm, legendary in the ad world
for their "Harry and Louise" ads that helped
kill the Clinton-era healthcare effort.
By 2000, adverse publicity accusing GCC of being a polluters'
front group began to erode its value to corporations. The advocacy group Ozone
Action led the charge, prompting DuPont, BP, Ford Motor Co., Southern Co. and
others to leave GCC.
Claiming victory
GCC announced it was restructuring itself to return to its
trade-association roots. After laboring for another two years, the Coalition
was "de-activated" in 2002.
Inevitably, both GCC and its foes claimed victory. The Coalition
said the thwarting of U.S. participation in Kyoto was its "mission
accomplished" moment. Kert Davies of Greenpeace hailed GCC's
demise as "last stronghold to prevent progress on global warming. Now
President Bush and Exxon stand alone."
Frank Maisano, who served as GCC's primary spokesman, told The Daily Climate that he thinks the Coalition made a
mistake by disbanding. "It was a victim of its own success," he said.
"The membership thought they had the right people in the White House, and
that they didn't have to worry about (climate) anymore."
Since then, documents released in a lawsuit showed that GCC
ignored its own science advisors in its manufacture of climate doubt. While their
scientists' guidance said climate change was both real and human caused, GCC
issued public documents calling climate models "imperfect at best"
and said they produced "highly inaccurate projections."
Peter Dykstra is publisher of The Daily Climate and
Environmental Health News. He can be contacted or followed on Twitter at @pdykstra. The
Daily Climate is an independent, foundation-funded news service covering
energy, the environment and climate change. Find us on Twitter@TheDailyClimate or email editor Douglas Fischer at
dfischer [at] DailyClimate.org.
EDITOR’S NOTE (and disclosure): I worked with Peter when he was at
Greenpeace USA’s DC office and I was national organizing director for the
Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes (known now as the Center for Health
and Environmental Justice). One of the things we collaborated on was exposing the funding of major national conservation groups (e.g. Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife Federation) by notorious toxic polluters. That was back in the 1980's so the concept he discusses in this article goes back quite a ways. - WC