This 1998 document from the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) is a collection of quotes taken from the Congressional Record of July 23, 1998 regarding the recent negotiations of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which was the first large-scale international agreement to commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The GCC was an industry-funded organization that opposed greenhouse gas regulations through direct engagement and collaboration with affiliated climate deniers from 1989 to 2002, and it strongly opposed the Kyoto Protocol. The U.S. was one of only three United Nations members that did not ratify the treaty, partially due to the lobbying and influence (both through ad campaigns and political maneuvering) of the GCC during the 1990s. The extent of the GCC’s influence was made clear in a 2001 State Department Briefing memo on a meeting between the GCC and then-Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs, Paula Dobriansky, who states that “POTUS rejected Kyoto, in part, based on input from you.”
The quotes excerpted in this GCC memo are taken from eight Congressmen – two moderate Republicans with pro-environmental voting records, and six Democrats with similarly climate-friendly reputations. The selected portions of speeches by these Congressmen are taken out of context in order to create the perception that these pro-environment representatives were opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, potentially excerpted to be used as ‘evidence’ for GCC talking points. A similar GCC memo with de-contextualized quotes was published in 1996, regarding “scientific uncertainties” in the IPCC.
The extent to which the quotes of these Congressmen were de-contextualized is exemplified by the statement attributed to James Greenwood (R-PA), who is quoted in this document saying “Some of my colleagues in the earlier debate this morning talked as if it were clear that we are experiencing global warming today. We cannot prove that, Mr. Chairman. We do not know that.”
The entire quote from Mr. Greenwood expresses a different sentiment, seeming to call out lobbying groups like the GCC for their promotion of climate change denial (the phrase excerpted in the memo is italicized):
“Mr. Chairman, we have to lead the world in research on global change, climate change. We have to lead the world in research on greenhouse gases. We cannot shrink from that. We cannot be in denial regardless of the interests that would have us do that. Some of my colleagues in the earlier debate this morning talked as if it were clear that we are experiencing global warming today. We cannot prove that, Mr. Chairman. We do not know that. What we do know is that this planet and its life is far, far too precious for us to be cavalier about this issue. Our children certainly will live in a world affected by what we do in our generation, in our time with regard to greenhouse gases.”
The other quotes excerpted for use in this memo are similarly misconstrued and taken out of context. In fact, the primary topic of discussion that day was not whether or not the U.S. should ratify the Kyoto Protocol (a decision over which the House members quoted here had no power), but rather an amendment proposed by Representative Joseph Knollenberg (R-MI) which would have restricted the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies to regulate and research the effects of greenhouse gas emissions.
Congressman Waxman addresses this amendment, referring to the Kyoto Protocol in a portion of his statement that was excerpted by the GCC in this memo (the phrase quoted in the memo is italicized):
“What those who supported the language known as the Knollenberg provisions say they were trying to do was that they were trying to stop the administration and any of these agencies from trying to implement a treaty on global warming until that treaty has been ratified, as is required, under the Constitution by the Senate of the United States. I accept that. No one is disputing that they should not implement a treaty that has not been ratified. But to say they cannot hold educational outreach, informational seminars or develop proposals is like telling them, ‘‘Don’t think about this issue. Put your head in the sand. Don’t even think about this issue. We don’t want you to do anything until we ratify the treaties, if we ever ratify a treaty.’’
The other statements quoted in this document are included below, in the order presented in the GCC memo, with their full context. The portions of statements selected for quotation by the GCC are italicized.
Rep. David Obey (D-WI)
“Now, as to what the amendment does not do, it does not change any of the statutory language in the bill regarding Kyoto. The limitation on page 58 of the bill still prohibits the use of funds to develop, propose or issue rules or regulations or decrees or orders for the purpose of implementation or in contemplation of the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. I am not fully satisfied with that language because I think it in fact may block some activities that it should not block, but I recognize that there should be no imposition of rules or regulations or decrees until and unless the Kyoto Protocol is actually ratified.”
“I think that the most serious environmental problem we face in the long term is probably climate change due to greenhouse gases, and if that trend is sustained, there is no question that our conifer forests, within a few generations, will no longer be in this country. They will be residing in Canada. And there is no question that if the trend continues the grain belt of today will turn into the dust belt of tomorrow. The Kyoto conference was meant to try to discuss what the world ought to do about that. In my mind, the product that came out of Kyoto was flawed. And because it does not deal with what China and other major Third World polluters contribute to the problem, I have great doubts that that protocol will be ratified until it is changed. That does not mean that we do not have an obligation to avoid extreme reactions in the meantime. I think when it comes to gagging the ability of the agency to even conduct educational seminars to provide not advocacy but explanation of the underlying issues, I think that is not only a right of the agency, I think they would be negligent if they did not. And I think that a Congress that did not allow them to do so would be in craven supplication to special interests in this country.”
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA)
“What those who supported the language known as the Knollenberg provisions say they were trying to do was that they were trying to stop the administration and any of these agencies from trying to implement a treaty on global warming until that treaty has been ratified, as is required, under the Constitution by the Senate of the United States. I accept that. No one is disputing that they should not implement a treaty that has not been ratified. But to say they cannot hold educational outreach, informational seminars or develop proposals is like telling them, ‘‘Don’t think about this issue. Put your head in the sand. Don’t even think about this issue. We don’t want you to do anything until we ratify the treaties, if we ever ratify a treaty.’’
Rep. John Tierney (D-MA)
“As a result of the hearings in that subcommittee, two things have become clear: One is that some of my colleagues are under the mistaken impression, I think, that they are, in fact, Members of the other body and it is going to be this group that actually ratifies the Kyoto Protocol. And aside from that overly generous interpretation of their role, they are also convinced that the protocol is going to be ratified tomorrow. I think we all know that nothing could be further from the truth. We all understand the Kyoto Protocol is not going to be ratified tomorrow. We all understand that there are serious issues and concerns with its content and its intent, and that we need to explore that thoroughly and that nothing should be done to implement that protocol until the Senate, if ever, should ratify it and move forward. But the language contained in the committee report for this bill prohibits the use of the funding from being used to develop, propose, or issue rules, regulations, decrees, orders for the purpose of implementation or in contemplation of implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. The report directs the Environmental Protection Agency to refrain from conducting any educational programs that promote policies that could be used to meet the emissions requirement called for in the protocol. Mr. Chairman, I hope we all can agree that that is overly broad and potentially dangerous.”
Rep. John Olver (D-MA)
“Mr. Chairman, I agree, as the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. OBEY) has already said, that no rules, no regulations that relate directly to the implementation of the Kyoto Protocols should be done in any direct way prior to the ratification of that treaty. But all his amendment does is make certain that all activities that are presently authorized by law in various other places will not be stopped on the basis of their having some implication for or some imagined implication for the Kyoto Protocols at some time. Climate change and global warming are terms that we have heard a lot about recently. We know that there has been an enormous change in the ozone layer, a huge gap in the ozone layer that has left the whole continent of Australia in a position where they have to move heavily clothed, or at least they are advised to do so, because there is not that protection against radiation that has been with this planet for all of human existence.”
Rep. David Obey (D-WI)
“The Congress does not have the ability to serve as a nanny in dealing with every agency of government who might get out of hand to do something illegitimate. The language of this amendment is pretty clear. The agency is expected to provide education, not advocacy. I would think that any time that the agency engages in an activity which goes beyond the line of the objective of providing information, I would think that people on the side of the issue who think that they have been skewered by it would bring it to the attention of the Congress, and I would think the Congress would react accordingly. I am not in the business of censorship, and I cannot be in the business of defining ahead of time whether some idiot in some agency is going to do something which they are not supposed to do under the law. All I can say is that the language is quite clear. My comments in explaining the amendment are quite clear. And if the agency goes across the line into advocacy, it does so at its peril.”
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA)
“I think 50 years from now, people would look back at the appropriations bill with dismay if it were to stay in its present form, because, as I read the bill that came out of committee, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Council on Environmental Quality would be restricted from educating and conducting outreach and holding informational seminars on policies underlying the protocol relating to the Kyoto Conference. .. I would hope that, as this bill moves forward, there will be other approaches that will assure those who are anxious about this matter that the treaty, if there is one, will not be implemented until it is ratified. We do not implement laws that have not been passed, and we do not allow executive branch agencies to adopt regulations to enforce treaties that have not been ratified.”
Rep. John Dingell (D-MI)
“I would observe that I was over at Kyoto, and over there nobody knew anything about it at all either. Some of the scientists who came forward to talk about global warming just a few years ago were predicting a new age of glaciation in which the world was going to get colder. I guess they found that it is more profitable to be on the side of global warming. That appears to be the more popular view. I think that we ought to look at this from the standpoint, first of all, of the Constitution, of our proper responsibilities to see what the real situation happens to be. The real situation is that until the Kyoto agreement is ratified, it does not mean anything. It also ought to be observed that the Senate of the United States has told this administration, by a vote of 95 to nothing, that they are not going to ratify. By the way, that is bipartisan because there was nobody who voted against it; everybody voted for it. They made it very plain they are not going to ratify it until it is very clear that that particular treaty affects everybody and that the United States is not going to be the only nation in the world which is compelled to cut back as much as 30 percent on our use of energy, to sign a treaty which is going to bind nobody else the same way it binds us. The Europeans say, well, we are going to be bound and the British are going to get out in some neat devices because they have gone to North Sea natural gas. The Germans are going to point out how they do not have to comply very much because they have the fine situation where they have taken over and closed a bunch of old, inefficient fuel systems. The Soviet Union says, we will not be bound. Most of the former Soviet bloc countries say we will not be bound and we will not sign. Nobody in Africa and the developing countries will be signing, and they will not be bound. It is interesting to note that India, which is a massive emitter of CO–2, is not going to be bound. It is also interesting to note that our friends in China have told me, in a discussion I had with our delegates, that they will never be bound; they are always going to be a developing country. So that leaves Uncle Sap, the United States, which proposes to be bound by a treaty which is going to cause enormous economic hardship. This is not going to be ratified by the Senate. We can just bet our bottom dollar on that particular point.”
Rep. George Brown (D-CA)
“What I do want to see us do is to better understand this problem, and take prudent steps to do whatever we can reasonably do to solve the problem. Now, one prudent step we can reasonably take is to be more efficient in our use of energy. It makes our industry more competitive and more productive when we do that. It also slightly decreases the chance of global warming, the impact of global warming, if it is due to the inefficiencies of our industrial system. Generally speaking, the large production of CO–2 reflects inefficiency in the industrial system. So there are prudent things that we ought to be doing. Now, I feel that we should not be trying to implement the Kyoto Protocols if we have not signed them. I agree with what has been said on both sides with regard to such implementation. I think it would be highly imprudent to so curtail the agencies of the Government that they could not inform the public as to the facts of matters within their jurisdiction. If we move in that direction, we will soon be reaching the point where we will say do not do any more research on global warming, do not try to understand what is actually happening, even though, as I say, we have been doing such research for the last 20 years.”
Rep. James Greenwood (R-PA)
“Mr. Chairman, regardless of where one stands on the issues of climate change, there are certain facts that are absolutely beyond scientific dispute. One of them is that we are carbon-loading the atmosphere. We have been carbon-loading the atmosphere since the dawn of the Industrial Age. The percentage of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is now 20 percent over what it was before the Industrial Age began. The biosphere in fact consumes carbon dioxide and turns it into oxygen. Some of my colleagues and others have said, ‘‘Well, that is the harmless and natural state of the planet.’’
Well, it is except to the extent that the human race in burning fossil fuels, coal, oil, gas, wood at an increasing and dizzying pace over the last 100 years has increased the carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere far more than they can be consumed by the biosphere, and the trends are known that this will get worse until we humans learn to build societies that can meet the needs of our people without unbalancing that thin and precious and delicate layer of the atmosphere that allows us to live in this thin band of temperatures in which humans and other life on this planet can live. Mr. Chairman, we have to lead the world in research on global change, climate change. We have to lead the world in research on greenhouse gases. We cannot shrink from that. We cannot be in denial regardless of the interests that would have us do that.
Some of my colleagues in the earlier debate this morning talked as if it were clear that we are experiencing global warming today. We cannot prove that, Mr. Chairman. We do not know that. What we do know is that this planet and its life is far, far too precious for us to be cavalier about this issue. Our children certainly will live in a world affected by what we do in our generation, in our time with regard to greenhouse gases. Mr. Chairman, I will not offer this amendment this evening, but those of us who care passionately about this issue will watch the effects of the Knollenberg language. If the Knollenberg language does what its advocates purport it to do, and, that is, to simply prevent the implementation of Kyoto in ways that are unauthorized, then that will be fine and we will move on from there. But if this language, Mr. Chairman, is used to subvert EPA’s legitimate role in studying carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, then we will be back here next year and we will fight and we will not withdraw amendments because we stand firm on the proposition that the Environmental Protection Agency must lead this Nation in the study of this phenomenon.”
Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY)
“This debate is not about the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol could not—and should not—be ratified in its current form, and no one should behave as if the treaty has been ratified. On that there is total agreement. The problem is this: the fact that Kyoto is not acceptable right now doesn’t mean that climate change is not a potential threat. It doesn’t mean that we know everything we need to about greenhouse gas emissions. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be encouraging actions that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Rep. James Greenwood (R-PA)
“The issue of the Environmental Protection Agency’s activities with regard to greenhouse gases has created suspicion on both sides of the argument. Suspicion on the part of industry that the Environmental Protection Agency would take a backdoor approach to implementing Kyoto. That is a legitimate concern. In fact, the United States Congress, namely, the Senate, has not given the authority to the Environmental Protection Agency to implement Kyoto and it should not do that without the proper authorization. On the other hand, Mr. Chairman, the environmental advocates in this country are concerned and have a deep suspicion on the other side, and that is that the Knollenberg language would not be used simply to prevent EPA from implementing Kyoto but in fact would stand in the way of the Environmental Protection Agency’s legitimate role in studying greenhouse gases and modeling CO2 throughout the atmosphere and implementing voluntary reductions and promoting technology that would reduce carbon dioxide and in fact regulating other pollutants such as mercury in a way that has the least impact on the emissions of carbon dioxide.”
Interested in more GCC documents? See more in the full Global Climate Coalition collection.
This 1998 document from the Global Climate Coalition is a collection of quotes from the congressional record about the Kyoto Protocol and EPA implementation. The GCC was an industry-funded organization that opposed greenhouse gas regulations through direct engagement and collaboration with affiliated climate deniers from 1989 to 2002. Its membership spanned across the automotive, utility, manufacturing, petroleum, and mining industries.
This document is one of many published by the GCC that illustrate its active opposition to the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.
Interested in more GCC documents? See more in the full Global Climate Coalition collection.