Of course, the people that work in the coal industry (and the oil industry) who don’t want cap-and-trade legislation or any legislation that reduces greenhouse gases and promotes the adoption of renewable energy, don’t want prudent energy legislation, because they benefit from polluting the environment and making people sick. However, that doesn’t give them the right to force all Americans to continue to be disadvantaged by an imprudent energy policy that comes at a high price.
Basically, the Chamber’s policy positions are not only anti-environmentalism but they’re anti-business too. For example, according to Wikipedia, the Chamber, in addition to being a supporter of nuclear power, globalization, and free trade, supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and supports drilling offshore for energy. These policy positions are shortsighted and dangerous. For example, nuclear power requires massive amounts of water and produces radioactive waste that seems impossible to dispose. Globalization and free trade agreements lack meaningful environmental and social mandates and drilling for oil offshore or in ANWR isn’t meaningful energy policy. Furthermore, drilling domestically for oil doesn’t necessarily lead to domestic consumption, since oil is sold on the international market.
Due to its anti-environmentalism position, the Chamber is waging a losing battle. As energy availability and natural resources continue to decrease as populations continue to increase in countries around the globe, environmental regulation—and not just market-based mechanisms—will be necessary to protect and adequately distribute energy and resources to businesses and communities. Consequently, over-population, unchecked development, depletion of non-renewable resources, and depletion of other natural resources are real issues that businesses must reconcile and help remedy if they’re to survive into the future. Unlimited development is impossible, and unsustainable development exacerbates the unavailability of energy or entropy. Consequently, the sooner the Chamber can grasp these concepts, the sooner they’ll truly be pro-business.
Recently, the Chamber suffered an embarrassing prank over its hostility towards meaningful greenhouse-gas regulation:
In a dramatic announcement at the National Press Club today, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reversed its position on climate change policy, and promised to immediately cease lobbying against the Kerry-Boxer bill.
Not.
Within minutes of the Chamber’s dramatic announcement, it was revealed that the “Chamber spokesperson” was an impostor, and the press conference an elaborate hoax designed by activists to draw attention to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s “troglodytic” fight against climate change legislation. At the close of the news conference, a visibly rattled Chamber of Commerce spokesperson (Eric Wohlschlegel) barged into the room and declared the event a fraud. (Videohere.)
The stunt was pulled off by the Yes Men, the activists best known for posing as corporate executives in order to reveal how corporate greed negatively influences public policy. Recently, the Yes Men have focused their attention on the urgent need for action on climate change. Today they sought to highlight relentless corporate lobbying of elected officials aimed at derailing domestic climate legislation and a much-needed global climate accord.
The group of reporters at the Press Club listened closely as U.S. Chamber “representative” “Hingo Sembra” (Andy Bichlbaum of The Yes Men) asserted that the Chamber would put its full weight behind supporting the Kerry-Boxer bill, while working with Senators Kerry and Boxer to strengthen the bill.
“We believe that climate legislation currently being considered by the U.S. Senate is a great start towards a bill that will spur American innovation, create jobs, and give us all a good chance of survival,” he said. To the visible delight of reporters in the audience, he added, “We at the Chamber have tried to keep climate science from interfering with business. But without a stable climate, there will be no business.”
The Chamber has recently come under fire for launching multi-million dollar advertising campaigns designed to derail climate negotiations. Their position has been so controversial that Apple, Exelon, PNM Resources, PG&E, PSEG, Levi Strauss & Co, and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce have all left the U.S. Chamber, and Nike very publicly stepped down from the board.
“The Chamber’s position against climate legislation is completely troglodytic,” said Bichlbaum. “The rest of the world sees the need for urgent action on the climate. The rest of the world’s rich countries have pledged large emissions reductions. With scientists saying if we don’t reduce carbon emissions, then sooner or later we’re doomed, the Chamber represents corporate America at its most backwards.”
“An entity claiming to represent the public good, but that opposes action on the climate, is obviously illegitimate,” Bichlbaum added.
“Public relations hoaxes undermine the genuine effort to find solutions on the challenge of climate change.
“These irresponsible tactics are a foolish distraction from the serious effort by our nation to reduce greenhouse gases. The U.S. Chamber believes that strong climate legislation is compatible with the goals of improving our economy and creating jobs. We continuously seek opportunities to engage in a constructive dialogue to achieve these goals.
“We will be asking law enforcement authorities to investigate this event. Beyond that, the Chamber will simply continue to focus on a positive vision for getting people back to work and growing our economy.”
The U.S. Chamber is the world’s largest business federation representing more than 3 million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region.
Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:
I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.
In her sky-is-falling rhetoric, Sarah Palin claims the energy sector will dry up but fails to mention jobs created by further developing the renewable energy sector:
Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.
Senator John F. Kerry refutes Palin at the New York Times:
“Yes, she manages to write about the climate change action in Congress without ever mentioning the reason we are doing this in the first place,” Mr. Kerry wrote. “It’s like complaining about the cost of repairing a roof without factoring in the leaks destroying your home.”
Mr. Kerry outlined the threats of climate change – including those facing Ms. Palin’s own state of Alaska – and also refuted her arguments that cap-and-trade legislation will cost jobs and hurt the poorest Americans.
“Palin confidently claims job losses are ‘certain,’” Mr. Kerry wrote, but “she somehow neglects to mention that jobs in our emerging clean energy economy grew nearly two and a half times faster than overall jobs since 1998.”
Mr. Kerry was presumably referring to a recent study from the Pew Charitable Trusts.
In an impressive feat, Palin managed to write an entire piece about energy policy without mentioning the words “global warming,” “climate change,” “carbon,” or “emissions.” There’s “no denying” the need to address the issue, but there’s also no explaining why. (She did, however, manage to work in the phrase “cap-and-tax” four times.)
Keith Olbermann’s critique of Sarah Palin’s Washington Post op-ed:
s Derek says, this is a bit like an op-ed on health care that doesn’t contain the words spending, costs, coverage, or medicine, or a high-school paper on Catcher in the Rye that doesn’t contain the words, um, Catcher in the Rye.
I find this absence sickening. Deciding how to deal with climate change is an uncertain and complicated process. It requires weighing costs in the present against benefits a hundred years in the future. It requires weighing costs in the U.S. against benefits in places like India and Bangladesh. It requires weighing concrete GDP against the moral emphemera of the world’s floral and animal diversity. And it requires sacrificing today to ward off uncertain and unquantifiable future risks. This tremendous empirical uncertainty demands reflection and humility.
And then you have Sarah Palin show up, blathering about how we’re “destroying America’s economy” while we’re “literally” sitting on mountains of oil and drill baby drill and blah blah blah. Sickening.
You can read Sarah Palin’s Washington Post op-ed here.
In an attempt to appear independent from the Democrats in Washington and the Obama Administration, West Virginia’s Governor Joe Manchin, who is “the Democratic nominee to replace the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.)[,] actually fire[ed] a bullet through a piece of paper meant to symbolize last year’s House-passed cap-and-trade bill.” In his advertisement, Governor Manchin seems to channel the Tea Party more than the Democratic Party. According to The Hill, “Manchin is trying to illustrate his independence from Washington lawmakers and the Obama administration as he finds himself trailing or — at best — in a dead heat, with Republican John Raese for Byrd’s seat.”
