The audacious PR plot that seeded doubt about climate change

[Nevilledog]

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Jay Rosen
@jayrosen_nyu
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A BBC story about "The audacious PR plot that seeded doubt about climate change" includes this description of how easy it was to get journalists to help. https://bbc.com/news/science-environment-62225696… via @wblau
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8:05 AM · Jul 24, 2022

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62225696

Thirty years ago, a bold plan was cooked up to spread doubt and persuade the public that climate change was not a problem. The little-known meeting - between some of America's biggest industrial players and a PR genius - forged a devastatingly successful strategy that endured for years, and the consequences of which are all around us.

On an early autumn day in 1992, E Bruce Harrison, a man widely acknowledged as the father of environmental PR, stood up in a room full of business leaders and delivered a pitch like no other.
At stake was a contract worth half a million dollars a year - about £850,000 in today's money. The prospective client, the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) - which represented the oil, coal, auto, utilities, steel, and rail industries - was looking for a communications partner to change the narrative on climate change.

Don Rheem and Terry Yosie, two of Harrison's team present that day, are sharing their stories for the first time.

"Everybody wanted to get the Global Climate Coalition account," says Rheem, "and there I was, smack in the middle of it."

The GCC had been conceived only three years earlier, as a forum for members to exchange information and lobby policy makers against action to limit fossil fuel emissions.

*snip*

[Bayard]

1. Despicable and short-sighted

Like killing off the planet is a business decision.

[Hekate]

2. There is a place in Hell...