This document titled, “Understanding Carbon Dioxide: Future Trends in Emissions and Emissions Control,” contains a Global Climate Coalition (GCC) Backgrounder about carbon dioxide and its role in climate change. GCC published many Backgrounders during the organization’s tenure, many of which denied the science of climate change. 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 wrote in this Backgrounder, “[c]arbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a byproduct of human, plant and animal respiration, a product of combustion, and a vital component of photosynthesis.” Additionally, GCC stated, “…scientists disagree on whether the increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2 will cause any significant climate change.”

GCC concluded that industrialized countries, like the US, have already initiated carbon reducing policies, and “the greatest opportunities (and needs) for controlling the growth in CO2 emissions will be in developing and countries with economies in transition.”

The GCC published a Backgrounder with the same title, but slightly different content in February 1994.

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.

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