How American Industry Seeks to Kill Treaty on Climate Challenge.

[Guest guest]

From : " The Independant " Online Edition.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article331768.ece

A detailed and disturbing strategy document has revealed an extraordinary

American plan to destroy Europe's support for the Kyoto treaty on climate

change.

The ambitious, behind-the-scenes plan was passed to The Independent this week,

just as 189 countries are painfully trying to agree the second stage of Kyoto at

the UN climate conference in Montreal. It was pitched to companies such as Ford

Europe, Lufthansa and the German utility giant RWE.

Put together by a lobbyist who is a senior official at a group partly funded

by ExxonMobil, the world's biggest oil company and a fierce opponent of

anti-global warming measures, the plan seeks to draw together major

international companies, academics, think-tanks, commentators, journalists and

lobbyists from across Europe into a powerful grouping to destroy further EU

support for the treaty.

It details just how the so-called " European Sound Climate Policy Coalition "

would work. Based in Brussels, the plan would have anti-Kyoto position papers,

expert spokesmen, detailed advice and networking instantly available to any

politician or company who wanted to question the wisdom of proceeding with Kyoto

and its demanding cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.

It has been drawn up by Chris Horner, a senior official with the

Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute and a veteran campaigner

against Kyoto and against the evidence of climate change. One of his colleagues

& shy; who describes himself as an adviser to President George Bush & shy; was the

subject of a censure motion by the Commons last year after he attacked the

Government's chief scientist.

Mr Horner, whose CEI group has received almost $1.5m (£865,000) from

ExxonMobil, is convinced that Europe could be successfully influenced by such a

policy coalition just as the US government has been.

He thinks Europe's weakening economies are likely to be increasingly ill at

ease with the costs of meeting Kyoto. And in particular, he has spotted

something he thinks most of Europe has not yet woken up to. Most of the original

15 EU Kyoto signatories & shy; Britain is an exception & shy; are on course to

miss their 2010 CO2 reduction targets. But under the terms of the treaty, they

will face large fines for doing so, in terms of much bigger reduction targets in

any second phase.

These will prove unacceptably costly to their economies, Mr Horner believes,

even if they try to buy their way out by buying up " spare " emissions for cash

from countries such as Russia. Mr Horner believes the moment for his coalition

is at hand and has been seeking support for it from multinational companies. In

his pitch to one major company, he wrote: " In the US an informal coalition has

helped successfully to avert adoption of a Kyoto-style programme by maintaining

a rational voice for civil society and ensuring a legitimate debate over climate

economics, science and politics. This model should be emulated... to guide

similar efforts in Europe. "

Elsewhere he claimed: " A coalition addressing the economic and social impacts

of the EU climate agenda must be broad-based (cross industry) and rooted in the

member states. Other companies (including Lufthansa, Exxon, Ford) have already

indicated their interest! "

 

 

 

We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war

than we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.

-- General Omar Bradley

 

 

 

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