This November 1996 document provides an overview of the Global Climate Coalition’s (GCC) various positions on issues associated with climate change. The 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. See this New York Times article for more context about the GCC.

Despite explicitly acknowledging the reality of anthropogenic climate change a year before, the overview stated definitively that “[c]urrently no science exists to accurately forecast long-term climate change” and that too much scientific uncertainty existed to show that climate change was more than “part of a natural warming trend which began nearly 400 years ago.” As in other GCC publications, the GCC combined cherry-picked scientific statements from credible sources with GCC-commissioned reports (i.e. Accu-Weather report) and climate deniers’ statements to support their positions.

It also criticized general circulation models (GCMs) which it said were unable to “provide reliable information for policy purposes.” While eschewing climate modeling, the GCC endorsed the use of other models that showed “[t]he potential economic consequences of … greenhouse gas emissions reduction[s] … are large enough that policymakers should call for a rejection of the current direction.” According to Harvard University’s David Levy and Sandra Rothenberg, “general equilibrium economic models” like the ones cited by the GCC are “more complex and rest on less secure theoretical foundations than GCMs.”

The report also described the organizational structure of GCC, highlighting the following committees: “Science and Technology, Communications, Economic Analysis, Federal Affairs, and International.”

The titles of the attached reports are as follows:

• Climate Models: Issues and Challenges; The views of the Global Climate Coalition
• Economic and Lifestyle Impacts From Proposed Greenhouse Gas Emission Restrictions
• Issues Related to Potential Health Impacts Resulting from Climate Change (later edition embedded below)
• Economic and Employment Impacts From Proposed Greenhouse Gas Emission Restrictions
• Impacts On Trade And Competitiveness From Proposed Greenhouse Gas Emission Restrictions
• Extreme Weather Events and Climate Change

1997 re-publication of health impacts document:

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