Follow Up Flag: Follow up
Flag Status: Flagged

Key concepts: Global Climate Coalition, Viridian class
enemies, repeated laughter at the discomfiture of our opponents

Attention Conservation Notice: contains violent partisan attacks. Over 1,100 words.

Links:
http://www.ozone.org/mr022800.html http://www.texaco.com/she/index.html http://www.campaignexxonmobil.org/learn/misinform.htm

Nifty, blood-swollen piece of Greenhouse inflatable street theater:
http://www.ozone.org/mosquito.html

Source: Reuters

"Tuesday February 29, 6:49 pm Eastern Time

"Texaco quits anti-Kyoto climate change group

"By Andrew Kelly

"HOUSTON, Feb 29 (Reuters) == In the first such defection by a major U.S. oil company, Texaco Inc. said Tuesday it was leaving the Global Climate Coalition, a business group which opposes the Kyoto treaty's approach to fighting global warming. (...)

"Texaco's exit follows hard on the heels of auto giants Ford Motor Co. and Daimler Chrysler AG which also recently quit the group but said they remained opposed to the mandatory curbs in greenhouse gas emissions set out in the Kyoto treaty.

"Among other major oil companies, the European-based Royal Dutch/Shell Group and BP Amoco left the group in 1997 and 1998 respectively.

"Environmentalists have hailed the latest round of defections, even though the companies say they remain opposed to Kyoto.

"'It seems like lying about global warming has finally fallen out of fashion in corporate America,' said Christopher Ball of the Ozone Action group in Washington D.C."

(((Great soundbite there, Christopher, but Greenhouse denial will almost surely be as long-lived as Holocaust denial. Consider the 140-year-long denial of the scientific facts of evolution. These latter two denial operations are thriving enterprises today, and unlike the GCC, they don't even enjoy lavish corporate funding. Even if Washington DC is directly washed away on live TV by some Greenhouse cataclysm, there won't be any lack of climate cranks eager to blame it all on lesbians.)))

"Ball said companies which remain members, such as Exxon Mobil Corp, Chevron Corp. and General Motors Corp. would face growing public pressure to stop funding the group." (((Yes. See http://www.campaignexxonmobil.org, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, Common Cause, http://www.heatisonline.org/disinformation.cfm == a lot of work there, but none of these orgs possess the $6 million a year that the GCC has been dropping on American domestic campaigns and denial agitpropaganda.)))

"Frank Maisano, spokesman for the Global Climate Coalition, said it was ironic that companies were leaving the group while continuing to voice support for its goals but said the coalition would remain strong and viable.

"'We still have the same messages when it comes to the Kyoto protocol. We still have the same messages when it comes to the solutions for dealing with climate change,' he said."

(((They still have "the same message" because they are a one-trick pony. The GCC is a remarkably narrow, parochial operation, whose heart beats firmly in the Heartland Babbitry of the American Buchananite ultra-right. The only thing "global" about the GCC is the global climatic havoc it has wreaked while pitchforking Kyoto regulators away from the bottom lines of American coal companies. As a pro-business NGO, the GCC is strictly a Beltway-based operation; its only true victory has taken place inside the Republican-dominated US Senate, where it forked over enough cash to stymie debate on the Kyoto treaty. Oil companies, however, are genuinely multinational enterprises. They are feeling the political Greenhouse heat in their European constituencies, and besides, they can read a thermometer and they are getting nervous.)))

Source: Texaco greenwash PR
http://www.texaco.com/she/index.html

"February 25, 2000

"Mr. Glenn Kelly

Executive Director
Global Climate Coalition
1275 K Street NW, Suite 880 Washington, DC 20005

"Dear Mr. Kelly,

"This is to inform you that we have decided not to renew our membership in the Global Climate Coalition. For the reasons set forth below, we believe that Texaco can and should speak for itself or through broader-based organizations on the important subject of climate change.

"As you know, Texaco shares society's concern over the issue of climate change. As a global energy company operating in over 150 countries, protection of the environment must be among our core values. We understand our responsibility to current and future generations to conduct our business accordingly. (...)

"As a global company, however, we recognize that the debate over climate change goes well beyond the matter of the U.S. economy. We also believe that protracted debate about the adequacy of the science is something Texaco wishes to move beyond. Indeed, we believe the issue of global climate change is related to the broader question about the best and most responsible environmental behaviors we as a Company should maintain, consistent with our values. These are questions we must consider with a broader range of stakeholders.

"Texaco will continue to be involved in the effort constantly to improve and broaden our environmental stewardship.

"Sincerely,

J. R. Metzger

Vice President and
Chief Technology Officer"

(((My prediction for the future of the GCC is threefold. First, Kyoto will never pass a Republican Senate, and Kyoto wouldn't solve the carbon crisis even if it did pass, so the GCC might as well declare victory there and move on to new ground. The dirt-stained GCC nameplate will be abandoned. The operatives will move into other, more sophisticated, better-financed operations with similarly deceptive names.

(((There will be twofold pro-carbon activism: first, move into the fertile new realm of anti-WTO sentiment, and tie the carbon issue firmly to American sovereignty: "Who voted for Kyoto?" The second approach, however, is even more ingenious: simply suborn and bribe the UN's environmental delegates in the way that they once did the US Senate. After all, the UN, like other multinational bodies, is every bit as corrupt as the merely national Senate is. There's every reason for coal enthusiasts to finally and truly go global, network with the major carbon powers such as China and OPEC, seize the initiative by putting real political money on the table, and write and pass a new, Kyoto-style, global regulatory regime that mandates the use of carbon worldwide. Then they'll no longer have to worry about market competition or the looming threat of clean energy. The carbon clique already has enough cash to simply buy the debt-strapped mess we have that passes for a world government. Accomplish that, and they can live henceforth by pure fiat.

(((Part three will be the carbon amnesty agitation, after the global climate is demonstrably broken. The world will be a very different, and far uglier place then. Some kind of accounting will take place, but that's by no means the end of the story. You'll hear every slick excuse you heard in the Czech lustrations and the South African Truth Commission trials. It will come with the full, practiced, loathsome, unctuous spin that has made the GCC so notoriously vile that even oil companies can't stand them. Only instead of lurking in semi-stealth as they do today, they'll have to yell into the courthouse microphones as the wind howls and the thunder flashes.)))