Sir John Houghton speaks out on why the United States has had a delayed response to climate change. As the former co-chairman of the Scientific Assessment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1988-2002, he lays out a compelling case for how big business foiled the American people. The rest of the interview at GoCarbonFree is worth reading in full.
GoCarbonFree: How have you felt about the United States since that time? Even last year President Bush II was querying the science behind man-made global warming….
Sir John Houghton: Straight after the Earth summit in 1992 the Exxon company and the coal companies in the US set up a massive misinformation campaign, telling people that the science was flawed and that the IPCC was a collection of untrustworthy green activists. They hired top lawyers to spread this message and put it out over the US media. They also lobbied members of Congress and tried to discredit the IPCC and its chairman in a very serious way. This is still happening. It’s the big problem in getting something done about climate change.