These advertisements were placed in the Washington Post and New York Times in 1997 during the negotiation process of the December meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change which would result in the Kyoto Protocol. A set of New York Times ads were preserved on PolluterWatch several years ago. The industry-funded Global Climate Coalition (GCC) opposed international and domestic greenhouse gas regulations through a variety of tactics including these advertisement

The GCC membership included multiple industrial trade groups and corporations in the automotive, utility, manufacturing, petroleum, and mining industries.

Many of the newspaper ads list the GCC as one of the organizations who “paid for” the ads. In addition, many of the other trade associations that paid for the ads were also members of GCC at the time (i.e. the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, American Petroleum Institute, Edison Electric Institute, National Association of Manufacturers, Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers‘ Coalition for Vehicle Choice, and National Mining Association).

While one of the NY Times advertisements is solely attributed to the GCC, “Don’t Risk Our Economic Future,” other ads were part of other collaborative campaigns such as ClimateFacts.org, run by another communications pop-up called Global Climate Information Project which peppered the Washington Post with ads late in 1997 just before the Kyoto meeting.

Another ad placed in the Post earlier in 1997 has no lead organization listed and simply has list a series of trade associations that sponsored the ad. We really do not know what entity lead these efforts or paid the bills.

“Don’t Risk Our Economic Future”

“Not Global, Won’t Work”

“Kyoto Cools Economy”

Washington Post Advertisements 1997

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