In 1998, the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) released this document titled “Labor Voices on Kyoto.” The industry-funded GCC 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. GCC used this document to highlight labor union opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, including quotes from the AFL-CIO and the United Mine Workers of America. 

In December of 1997, roughly a year prior to the release of this document leveraging labor union opposition, GCC chairman Bill O’Keefe told the Washington Post that the GCC intended to “support a move to get the president to make a quick decision” on the Kyoto protocol, with organized labor making up a key political bloc which may sway the decision. The same Washington Post article notes that AFL-CIO policy director David Smith (who is also quoted in the GCC document here), was careful to state that “[Kyoto] is not a situation where people ought to draw lines in the sand … We don’t think Kyoto was the end of the discussion.” 

In contrast to Smith’s ambivalence in the Post article, the GCC document here portrays both Smith and Cecil Roberts of the United Mine Workers of America as being strongly opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, exemplifying the GCC’s regular practice of circulating excerpted quotes from public officials that serve the GCC agenda. Also in 1998, the GCC employed this practice by taking the quotes of Congressmen completely out of context in order to create the false impression that the Congressmen – all of whom had positive environmental records – were opposed to the Kyoto Protocol. Interested in more GCC documents? See more in the full Global Climate Coalition collection.

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