Abstract:
In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that the increasing
concentrations of greenhouse gases are caused by human activities and will result in an additional
warming of the Earth's surface. Earlier warnings on climate change had triggered, in 1999, the
formation of the Global Climate Coalition by the fossil fuel industry in order to ensure that action
would not taken in relation to climate change that would harm fossil fuel use.
This paper documents the continual undermining by the fossil fuel industry (particularly in the US)
of the scientific and international policy consensus on the urgent need for a range of coordinated
international environmental policies to address the serious problem of global warming. This has led
to the US and Australia not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol (which they both signed). This has reduced
the pressure on China and India to address the increasingly serious problem of their rapidly
increasing levels of fossil fuel use contributing to continued burgeoning global greenhouse gas
emissions.
