This document is the Global Climate Coalition’s (GCC) February 1998 Climate Watch Brief (Volume 5 Issue 15). The briefs 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.

The issue focused on the GCC’s objections to the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed in December 1997, three months prior to the publication of this edition of Climate Watch. In columns titled “Labor, Industry, Foreign Policy Experts Urge Rejection of ‘Anti-U.S.’ Climate Agreement,” and “Fatally Flawed…Cannot Be Fixed,” the report outlined responses at the first congressional hearings on the Kyoto Protocol in February 1998. The GCC and other industry groups “were united in denouncing the terms of the climate agreement and urging President Clinton to reject it,” citing concerns that “in addition to its serious and disproportionate economic impact on the United States…the treaty would establish a new U.N. bureaucracy with authority to control Americans’ energy use.”

In a column at the right of the page titled “Job Losses Under Kyoto Agreement,” the report listed estimations of projected job losses in each state in the scenario of U.S. ratification of Kyoto. The data cited comes from an economics consulting spin-off from the Wharton Economic Forecasting Associates group which grew out of the Economics Research Unit (ERU) at University of Pennsylvania. ERU was originally funded by grants from Exxon and Sunoco, along with other corporations like IBM and Bethlehem Steel.

Also of note is a column featuring the arguments of James Sensenbrenner at the Congressional Kyoto hearings. Sensenbrenner, who had significant holdings in leading oil companies, stated that “the climate treaty is based on immature science.” Sensenbrenner has been a staunch climate denier in Congress for decades, stating in 2009 his belief that “solar flares are more responsible for climatic cycles than anything that human beings do.”

This issue also contained the following pieces: “Developing Country Commitments Seen Unlikely,” “World Meteorologists Stress Need For Better Science,” and “Oceans May Play Previously Unforeseen Role in Removing CO2 From Atmosphere.”

This document is part of the private collection of Nicky Sundt, a Washington-based climate change science, policy and communications expert.

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