US Oil Industry seeks to derail Kyoto

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Lobbyists funded by the US oil industry have launched a campaign in Europe aimed at derailing efforts to tackle greenhouse gas pollution and climate change.

Documents obtained by Greenpeace and seen by the Guardian reveal a systematic plan to persuade European business, politicians and the media that the EU should abandon its commitments under the Kyoto protocol, the international agreement that aims to reduce emissions that lead to global warming. The disclosure comes as United Nations climate change talks in Montreal on the future of Kyoto, the first phase of which expires in 2012, enter a critical phase.

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During the 1990s US oil companies and other corporations funded a group called the Global Climate Coalition, which emphasised uncertainties in climate science and disputed the need to take action. It was disbanded when President Bush pulled the US out of the Kyoto process. Its website now says: "The industry voice on climate change has served its purpose by contributing to a new national approach to global warming."

In January Sir Robert May, the former government chief scientist who stepped down as president of the Royal Society last week, warned in the Guardian that US lobby groups with links to the oil industry were turning their attention to the other side of the Atlantic. He wrote that a "lobby of professional sceptics who opposed action to tackle climate change" were targeting Britain because of its high profile in the debate.

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It says industry associations are the "wrong way to do this" but suggests that a cross-industry coalition, of up to six companies each paying €10,000 (£6,700), could "counter the commission's Kyoto agenda". Such a coalition could help steer debate, it says, by targeting journalists and bloggers, as well as attending environmental group events to "share information on opposing viewpoints and tactics".

RWE says it met Mr Horner earlier this year but that they have not taken the idea forward.

In the email, dated January 28 this year, Mr Horner describes Europe as an "opportunity". He says it "would be like Neil Armstrong, it's a developing untapped frontier". He adds: "US companies need someone they can trust, and it's just a den of thieves over there."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1661741,00.html?gusrc=rss