First, here's the run-down: • Victimized by Yes Men: This is the most recent and absurd. Monday, the prankster group the Yes Men pulled off a press conference posing as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Yes Men "announced" that the Chamber was reversing course on climate policy by supporting current versions of climate legislation and calling for a carbon tax. If you haven't already seen this, here's the video of a Chamber representative breaking up the prank. • Undercut by the White House: The Washington Post reported Monday that the Obama administration is working aggressively to dethrone the Chamber from its traditional role as the chief representative of big business by reaching out directly to CEOs of major U.S. companies. • Brought down to size: On October 13, Mother Jones exposed the fuzzy math behind the Chamber’s claim to represent three million members. In a press conference the following day, the Chamber implicitly acknowledged its accounting “error” by shrinking its stated membership count by 90 percent, to 300,000. • High-profile defections: In response to the EPA’s official finding on April 17 that greenhouse gas pollution endangers public health, the Chamber of Commerce submitted a petition to the EPA requesting a hearing on the science of climate change and threatening litigation if denied. William Kovacs, the Chamber’s senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs, was quoted August 25 in the LA Times calling for "the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" to put the "science of climate change on trial." A growing group of prominent Chamber members are finding the organization’s climate-denying rhetoric too passé for their liking and scaling back or ending their involvement in the organization. On September 22, California utility Pacific Gas & Electric announced that it was withdrawing from the chamber, citing "fundamental differences" over climate change. A series of other climate-induced defections ensued, including New Mexico utility PNM Resources, Exelon, the country’s largest electric utility, and Apple. Just this week, Mohawk Fine Paper also joined the exodus. Meanwhile, Nike announced that it has left the Chamber’s board of directors and General Electric and Johnson & Johnson released statements to clarify that the Chamber’s positions on climate change do not represent their own. And Kate Sheppard reported Wednesday on Mother Jones that MoveOn is now organizing a grassroots push to urge Toyota to leave the Chamber as well: MoveOn is asking members who own Priuses (Prii?) to send in photos asking Toyota to resign its membership. So far, they've gathered more than 770 images, which they plan to deliver to the company's New York headquarters and dealerships around the country. Toyota responded to the pressure on Friday, releasing a statement to “set the record straight” that the company supports economy-wide reductions of greenhouse gases. The San Francisco Chronicle described these defections as "a foreboding trend for the country's leading business lobby." The recent defections and dissidence confronting the Chamber bring two questions to mind. 1. Do these public relations troubles signal that the Chamber of Commerce’s influence in federal policy debates is actually waning? The verdict’s still out. There’s no question that the Chamber’s reputation and credibility are taking a beating; however, the same day this week that Politico ran an article questioning the Chamber’s coolness, it also ran an article about the spending records the Chamber is breaking. According to a report filed with the Senate on Monday, the Chamber spent $37.4 million in lobbying in the third quarter of 2009, an organizational best for the Chamber and possibly the most ever spent by any group in a quarter, though as Politico qualifies, not “wildly out of line with past Chamber spending.” We’ll have to wait and see whether image or money speaks louder in the Chamber’s case. 2. Does this public rift in the business community bolster the chances of getting strong climate legislation out of Congress? Here the verdict’s still out as well, but I have several observations. I’d put the motivations of companies leaving the Chamber into two broad categories: (1) companies like Apple that want to attach and maintain a “green” image to their brand and (2) companies like Exelon that stand to profit from the cap-and-trade system and industry giveaways included in the Waxman-Markey climate bill passed by the House in June. James Surowiecki points out in a recent piece in the New Yorker: We assume that lobbies always recognize what’s best for their members. But they don’t, and, in the case of climate change, they may very well be missing what the companies that have resigned in protest have seen: global warming isn’t just bad for the planet; it’s bad for business. We need firms investing in renewable energy and efficiency measures, and strong climate legislation should support and reinforce such action. On the other hand, we shouldn’t let polluting industries, especially the likes of the Big Oil, nuclear, coal and agribusiness lobbies, write climate legislation and expect it will be what’s best for the planet. This is what happened when Congressmen Waxman and Markey, who authored the House climate bill, based their legislation on a blueprint developed by the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (US CAP), of which Exelon, PG&E, PNM Resources, General Electric and Johnson & Johnson, as well as some environmental groups, are all members. US CAP’s blueprint was deeply flawed, as was the weak climate bill passed by the House in June with the support of many US CAP members. The bill’s cap on global warming emissions won’t get us close to what science demands and it contains massive loopholes and giveaways to polluting industries, while selling short investments in a green economy. Possibly worst of all, the bill ties the EPA’s hands by gutting its preexisting authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. This is the legislation we “achieved” with the engagement and support of big businesses (the Chamber of Commerce itself excluded). At least we know the Chamber’s intentions. Though the Chamber switches its tune from time to time to claim concern and interest in solving global warming, the media seems less and less inclined to buy into its hot air. For example, check out this column by Steven Pearlstein on the Washington Post on the Chamber’s “dirty little secrets”: To hear it from Donohue and his minions, it's not that the business community opposes financial regulation, or universal health care or controlling greenhouse gases -- it's just opposed to every credible idea for doing something about them. And rather than focus on working constructively to improve legislation, the Chamber's default strategy is to try to kill it outright through exaggeration, misrepresentation and outright lies. The businesses defecting from the Chamber have more credibility behind their admission of the problem of global warming and their engagement in working towards legislative action. I’d argue this actually poses a problem. While the Chamber may be a new laughing stock, utilities like Exelon and oil companies like Shell (also a US CAP member) are in Congress writing our climate legislation. We can’t confuse what’s best for their bottom line with what’s best for our planet and the people living in it. |
