A list of companies who supported lies about global warming

Please digg this post or email it in order to spread it around as a way to show the below companies that you refuse to accept their distorting our democracy and engangering us in the process.

On April 23, Andrew Revkin of the New York Times published a story proving conclusively that the so-called Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, knew that they were lying when they ran "an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming."

According to Revkin:

... a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995.

A working democracy requires a correctly informed electorate. Deliberately lying to the public is a direct assault on the American system of democracy. To use power and money to lie to the American public is to distort our electoral process.

And to do it knowing what is at stake is just unfathomable. We are now at the point where we are near the climate tipping point. Without the efforts of the so-called Global Climate Coalition (GCC), and other organizations like it, we may have been able to get to work on this planetary problem a decade or even 20 years ago.

This is like a health insurance company refusing treatment to a child with cancer, except that we are talking about refusing treatment to billions of children--an entire planet's worth. In the course of it's work, according to SourceWatch, the GCC spent tens of millions of dollars on ad campaigns trying to stop action on global warming and made millions of dollars of contributions to politicians to influence their decisions.

The companies who exhibited this gross disregard for human life continue to wield power in the ongoing discussion about how to ameliorate the climate crisis. It is important to know, therefore, exactly which companies are prone to lie and distort the truth so we know not to believe them in the future.

For that reason, here, according to SourceWatch, is the list of members of the so-called Global Climate Coalition, who tried for so long to mislead us. I hope you'll digg or stumble or email this post around to make sure it is seen and read and to show these companies that we won't accept this kind of this behavior:

• Air Transport Association
• Allegheny Power
• Aluminum Association, Inc.
• American Automobile Manufacturers Association
• American Commercial Barge Line Co.
• American Farm Bureau Federation
• American Forest & Paper Association
• American Highway Users Alliance
• American Iron and Steel Institute
• American Petroleum Institute
• American Portland Cement Alliance
• Amoco
• Association of American Railroads
• Association of International Automobile Manufacturers
• Atlantic Richfield Coal Company
• Baker Refineries
• Bethlehem Steel
• BHP Minerals
• Chamber of Shipping of America
• Chemical Manufacturers Association
• Chevron
• Chrysler Corporation
• Cinergy
• CONRAIL
• Consumers Energy
• Council of Industrial Boiler Owners
• CSX Transportation, Inc.
• Cyprus-Amax
• Dow Chemical Company
• Drummond Company
• Duke Power Company
• DuPont
• Eastman Chemical
• Edison Electric Institute
• ELCON
• ExxonMobil
• Fertilizer Institute
• Ford Motor Company
• General Motors
• Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.
• Greencool
• Hoechst Celanese Chemical Group
• Illinois Power Company
• Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corp.
• McDonnell-Douglas
• Mobil Corporation
• National Association of Manufacturers
• National Lime Association
• National Mining Association
• National Ocean Industries Association
• National Petrochemical and Refiners Association
• Natural Rural Electric Cooperative Association
• Norfolk Southern
• Northern Indiana Public Serv. Co.
• Ohio Edison
• Parker Drilling Company
• Process Gas Consumers
• Shell
• Society of the Plastic Industry
• Southern Company
• Steel Manufacturers Association
• TECO Energy Inc.
• Texaco
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce
• USX Corporation
• Union Carbide
• Union Pacific
• Virginia Power
• Western Fuels Association