Astroturf Troopers
News: How the polluters' lobby is using phony front groups and New World Order wackos to attack the Kyoto global warming treaty.
Plus: Meet the real interests behind the anti-enviro wingnuts.
December 4, 1997
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In the battle to shape public opinion on global warming, the big polluters are fighting dirty. In tandem with their air war of bogus advertising, the major carbon-emitting industries are mobilizing phony grassroots troops on the ground to lobby against the global Climate Change Treaty being negotiated this week in Kyoto, Japan. And some of those troops would be right at home in Tim McVeigh's militia unit.
The Global Climate Coalition (GCC), run by Washington P.R. firm Ruder Finn, represents the big oil, gas, coal, and auto corporations. And while its stated mission is to coordinate "the active involvement of U.S. business in the scientific and policy debates," a MoJo Wire investigation found that GCC is also coordinating a secret coalition of extreme right-wingers and astroturf groups -- fake grassroots lobbyists funded by conservative foundations and corporations -- including so-called "Wise Use" radicals, John Birchers, Lyndon LaRouchites, and anti-U.N. New World Order conspiracy kooks.
GCC chairman William O'Keefe, an executive with the American Petroleum Institute, kickstarted this secret coalition in 1996 when he hired former lobbyist Susan Moya to set up a national network of "grassroots" groups, a network that now includes dozens of industry-funded astroturf groups in several states.
Moya denied the existence of her astroturf network, but the MoJo Wire has obtained a memo that says otherwise, written by Moya herself. Moya and GCC refused to answer questions about their grassroots setup, but some of the corporate-funded astroturf groups named in her memo, including Texas Citizens for a Sound Economy and People for the West, confirmed that they were part of Moya's network of "state grassroots leaders," and that they received this memo. Moya's network also includes right-wing extremist groups, some of them downright wacky:
So what? So Sovereignty International is a leading promoter of United Nations paranoia, claiming that environmentalism is part of a plot to establish a "one world government." The group was founded in 1988 by Lamb; Tom McDonnell of the American Sheep Industry Association, who has collaborated with Lyndon LaRouche followers; and Dr. Michael Coffman, a self-styled expert on global environmentalism who did a national speaking tour this summer sponsored by the John Birch Society. His topic: The U.N.-corporate-environmentalist conspiracy to seize private land in America, hand it over to wild animals, and herd all the humans into crowded communities.
an anti-environmental umbrella group run by New World Order crank Henry Lamb. Founded and funded by land developers, ECO claims to network more than 300 Wise Use groups, most of them funded by the extractive industries. For an in-depth look at ECO and its ties to other right-wing and corporate astroturf groups fighting the Kyoto treaty, click here.
EPA's global warming Web site offers in-depth explanations of the science and the treaty. Corporate Watch's Kyoto site tracks big-business influence on the treaty negotiations. The Environmental Working Group's CLEAR site tracks hundreds of anti-environmental groups and their funders, complete with a searchable database.
