The IPCC was not created to carry out original research but only to assess published literature, from both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed sources, and make assessments and recommendations. The mission included,
…to analyse—in a comprehensive, objective, open, and transparent manner—the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.
The founding of the IPCC coincided with the U.S. presidential election. The new President-elect, George H. W. Bush (former vice-president to Reagan) took the climate issue very seriously, which was hardly surprising considering his membership in the Trilateral Commission and friendship with his advisor David Rockefeller.
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According to the State Department, the U.S., which had the capacity to create a consensus around crucial issues, should take the lead in addressing global warming. The United States could, however, not act unilaterally since climate change was a global issue which could only be solved by an effective global response. The key was to bring all nations together and create both a scientific understanding and a united effort.
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The Trilateral Commission and the Soviet Union
The day after the UN had declared the climate as a common threat to humanity, Soviet general secretary Mikhail made a speech o the UN General Assembly where he expressed that:
Further world progress is now possible only through the search for a consensus of all mankind, in movement toward a new world order. The world community must learn to shape and direct the process in such a way as to preserve civilization, to make it safe for all and more pleasant for normal life. It is a question of cooperation that could be more accurately called ‘co-creation’ and ‘co-development’. (Mikhail Gorbachev December 7, 1988
)
On January 18, 1989, at the Central Committee of the Soviet Union Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev met with Trilateral Commission leaders Georges Berthoin (European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission), Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (President of France 1974–81), Yasuhiro Nakasone (Prime Minister of Japan 1982–87), Henry Kissinger, and David Rockefeller, to discuss a merging of the capitalist and the socialist system.
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Internationalists from both the West and the East would now be joining forces.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev founded Green Cross International and the Gorbachev Foundation and began to actively work for the implementation of the transformation to a new world system.
Several parallel projects were initiated, all with the mission to create a better political structures for addressing global environmental problems.
GLOBE
In 1989, GLOBE (Global Legislators for a Balanced Environment) was founded under Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future,
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by a group of cross-party legislators from the U.S. Congress, the European Parliament, and the Japanese Diet. Founding members included U.S. Democrat Senators James H. Scheuer (Founding President of GLOBE), Al Gore (International President of GLOBE 1990–92), and John Kerry; U.S. Republican John Heinz III (President of GLOBE USA); Dutch Social Democrat Hemmo Muntingh; and Liberal Democrat Takashi Kosugi from Japan. (The fact that GLOBE was founded with representatives from these three regions can be viewed in relation to some of its founders’ involvement in TriCom.) In 1991, legislators from the Soviet Union/Russia were also invited.
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GLOBE International is registered as an environmental NGO in and operated from Brussels.
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Its purpose was to function as an international hub for information exchange between legislators, enabling them to “respond to urgent environmental challenges through the development and advancement of legislation”, working with international institutions, national parliaments, and the media.
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Just like the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future in the U.S. and Fabian Society in England, but with environment and climate as its main focus and an international reach, the aim of GLOBE was – and still is – to secure international environmental legislation on problems identified by the Club of Rome, the Brundtland Commission and others as requiring global solutions. Initially, these were: climate change, ozone depletion, acid rain, waste disposal, deforestation, overfishing, and overpopulation.
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Part of GLOBE’s mission was “to seek free market solutions” to environmental problems.
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Transnational corporations were invited and GLOBE EU funders included Unilever, Dow Chemicals, Proctor & Gamble, Toyota.
During its first years, GLOBE received funding from IFAW, German Marshall Fund, and W. Alton Jones Foundation (the two latter closely related to the Rockefeller sphere). GLOBE would later be funded by the European Commission, the governments of Norway, Denmark and Germany, several UN agencies such as UNEP, the Global Environmental Facility, and the World Bank.
Initial organising assistance also came from Britain through Edward Seymour-Rouse from International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) who became GLOBEs first executive director.
GLOBE was developed as basically an Anglo-American project representing political and economic interests primarily in Great Britain, USA, and the Netherlands. In the background we find the British Fabian Society (with which GLOBE shared headquarters for a time) and the London School of Economics. It is also related to the Club of Rome via shared members. After the G8 meeting in Gleneagles in 2005, GLOBE has also been invited to its annual global summits.
GLOBE still gathers MPs from across the political spectrum under one umbrella, with a
common
agenda, using the Molitor model to its own ends:
This circumvents regular democratic procedures and shapes public opinion to align with the interest of the ruling elite without the real players being visible in the process.
London School of Economics and Fabian Society
The London School of Economics and Political Science, was founded in 1895 by Beatrice and Sidney Webb, both members of the Socialist think-tank Fabian Society, working for the gradual introduction of socialism through legislation rather than by violent revolution.
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The Rockefellers have had close ties to the school – which was described in the 1930s as “Rockefeller’s baby.”
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These ties have remained. Besides funding from Rockefeller Foundation, Republican David Rockefeller got a part of his education at this socialist school in 1937–38, before moving on to get his Ph.D. at the Rockefeller-funded University of Chicago.
CLIMATE ACTIVISM
Getting the Green NGOs Onboard
It was now time for the next step in the policy cycle (see Appendix D).
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The Rockefeller foundations increased their funding of both research supporting the hypothesis of CO
2
impact on climate and policy responses to mitigate its effects. RBF would later describe their efforts during Phase One (1984–92) in their Sustainable Development Program, and take credit for both the Rio Summit and the creation of the IPCC.
A review of correspondence between then-RBF president Bill Dietel and program staff clearly indicates that the Rio negotiation and treaty, and the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, were specific aspirations of the RBF program at the time. Total RBF funding committed during this eight-year period was under $1,000,000.
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Within the green movement there had been some skepticism towards the CO2 theory, due to its connection with scientists and politicians proposing nuclear power as the solution.
This view would, however, soon change when funding from large foundations and governments started flowing into their organisations and campaigns. The Brundtland Report had given clear guidelines. In February 1989 Gordon Goodman (Beijer Institute) noted that international attitudes towards greenhouse gas were dramatically different from those in 1986,
…largely due to the very high level of exposure given by the news media to a series of unusual climatic anomalies.
Goodman suggested to RBF:
To ensure that public concern would be translated ‘into positive action,’ there would be ‘an important, behind-the-scenes role to be played by thoughtful and well-placed nongovernmental organizations that are free from the political considerations that often constrain government initiative.’
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Foundations such as RBF, Rockefeller Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and Ford Foundation followed the advice and increased their financial support for green NGOs.
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In 1987, Adam Markham, pollution campaigner of Friends of the Earth, collected the available climate science in the report
Heat Trap: Threat Posed by Rising Levels of Greenhouse Gases
, published in 1988 – the same year as the founding of the IPCC.
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It became the starting point for the Friends of the Earth involvement in the climate issue.
Soon after, Friends of the Earth launched the first campaign in Great Britain on possible consequences of climate change.
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Greenpeace started their climate lobbyism in 1989 through Australian diplomat Paul Hohnen and oil geologist Jeremy Legget. Hohnen later became involved with the Energy- and Environment Programme at Chatham House (the British equivalent of Council on Foreign Relations).
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Climate Action Network
In 1989, Michael Oppenheimer from the Environmental Defence Fund founded the umbrella organisation Climate Action Network which gathers green NGOs to exert pressure on policy makers on the climate issue. Today it includes over 900 organisations.
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In the background we find RBF.
CLIMATE SKEPTICISM
Global Climate Coalition
That same year, the skeptical lobby organisation Global Climate Coalition (1989–2002) was also created by a number of oil producers, petrochemical companies and car manufacturers. Chairman was William O’Keefe from the conservative think tank George C. Marshall Institute. Rockefeller’s crown jewel, Exxon, held a leading position in GCC, as well as Ford Motor Company, BP, GM, DuPont, and Royal Dutch Shell.
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GCC opposed regulations for limiting climate change and challenged the theory of global warming.
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After the Kyoto Protocol 1997, however, oil companies started leaving GCC to instead embrace the carbon dioxide theory of global warming.
George C. Marshall Institute
In the 1990s, the George C. Marshall Institute was described as the leading climate skeptic think tank in the U.S., founded in 1984 by Frederick Seitz (1911–2008), Robert Jastrow (1925–2008), and William Nierenberg (1919–2000).
There were, however, many connections with the CO
2
proponent camp. Jastrow founded and from 1961 headed the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) at NASA (at his retirement 1981 succeeded by
James Hansen).
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Nierenberg in 1965 succeeded Roger Revelle as head of the Scipps Institution of Oceanography.
Seitz, who assumed the role as the greatest climate sceptic in the U.S. together with Fred Singer, had for decades collaborated closely with the Rockefeller family. In 1968, Seitz succeeded Detlev Bronk as president of the Rockefeller University and had been on the executive board for the Rockefeller Foundation 1967–77 (the board at this time also included Maurice Strong).
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Seitz was also a member of Council on Foreign Relations. Despite his skepticism he was in 2000 given the “David Rockefeller Award for Extraordinary Service to The Rockefeller University.”
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Thus, both the leading sceptics
against
and advocates
for
the carbon dioxide theory at the time were part of the Rockefellers’ vast network.
CLIMATE POLICY
Stockholm Environment Institute
In 1989 Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI) was founded, with Gordon Goodman as its first Executive Director. Officially initiated by the Swedish Government through the Minister for Energy, Birgitta Dahl, with ideological kin Bert Bolin as co-founder. In reality it had evolved out of the privately owned Beijer Institute (founded by Swedish businessman Anders Wall) from which staff was transferred to SEI.