This document is the Global Climate Coalition’s (GCC) November 1993 Climate Watch Bulletin (Volume 1 Issue 12). The bulletins were a part of GCC’s larger mission to oppose greenhouse gas regulations and contest the scientific validity of anthropogenic climate change through direct engagement and collaboration with affiliated climate deniers. Its membership spanned across the automotive, utility, manufacturing, petroleum, and mining industries. The bulletins generally updated readers on climate change policy and science developments.

This issue, written roughly a year after the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Rio Earth Summit, is focused on President Clinton’s response to the emergence of an international body for climate governance. The Clinton Plan had a goal of returning “U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to their 1990 levels by 2000,” and was presented as “voluntary” – an approach that the GCC supported. However, this report clarified that “this is not to say that businesses and industry support objectives that go beyond the Rio accord … for there has yet to develop any scientific consensus that supports catastrophic views of the future and the need for rapid, drastic actions.” The GCC therefore proposed a “No Regrets” strategy of “voluntary actions by business and industry that [made] economic sense in their own right and produce an environmental benefit” without committing to efforts that “go beyond the Rio de Janeiro climate treaty’s requirements, and which were more ambitious than those of our major trading partners.” This issue concluded with a quote from Charles DiBona, then-president of the American Petroleum Institute, summarizing industry sentiments: “There is no compelling reason to embark on a mandatory program now.”

This issue also contained the following pieces:

• Climate Experts Examine Models, Nighttime Warming
• President’s Announcement Asserts Global Warming Threat
• The Climate Change Action Plan: A Summary
• How Were Chart Numbers Calculated? Congress and Public Still Waiting To Hear
• The U.S. Initiative On Joint Implementation
• Industry Roundup

Interested in more GCC documents? See more in the full Global Climate Coalition collection.