Hill & Knowlton Defends Fluorinated Gases

The Hill & Knowlton PR firm reportedly used scaremongering tactics to kill legislation before the European Parliament in 2005 that would have banned fluorinated gases ("f-gases"), which contribute to global warming.

"It's been six months of intense lobbying," said Avril Doyle, a parliamentarian who supported the regulation. "It was email, writing, phoning and faxing, non stop." She added that MEPs received letters "threatening them with job losses if they voted for this amendment or they voted for that directive." Greenpeace reports that the most vocal lobbying on F-gas regulation has come from the "European Partnership for Energy and the Environment" (EPEE).

In fact, EPEE is neither European nor for the environment. "It's actually an industry front group," states the Greenpeace report, "made up largely of American and Japanese multinationals with plants in Europe, who are lobbying against regulation of F-gases out of cost concerns. And while their website makes a flashy show of how their chemicals don't destroy the ozone (which is true) they fail to mention that they're contributing to global warming. ... Ironically, Hill & Knowlton is exactly the same company which, in 1975, trotted out reports and scientists claiming that the Ozone hole was a myth, environmentalists were scare-mongering, and industry shouldn't be required to take costly and unnecessary action to ban CFCs."

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