As California Sen. Barbara Boxer prepares to unveil the Senate’s climate change legislation on Capitol Hill today, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — a strong opponent of the global warming bill passed by the House and a likely foe of the Senate bill — faces a high-profile revolt by some of its members.
Earlier this month, San Francisco-based PG&E took the extraordinary step of quitting the chamber because of its “extreme rhetoric and obstructionist tactics” as the debate over global warming legislation heats up in Congress.
Two other utility companies, New Mexico’s PNM and Chicago’s Exelon, followed PG&E’s lead, and other companies are under pressure to join the exodus.
On Tuesday, the Green Century Equity Fund, which invests in athletic shoemaker Nike, urged Nike to “Just do it” and terminate its membership in the chamber as well.
“It makes sense to us for Nike to be the next company to pull out of the chamber,” said Emily Stone, a shareholder advocate for Green Century, noting that Nike has a strong brand as well as a reputation for supporting environmental sustainability. “What PG&E did was very important. The chamber is a powerful organization, but there’s safety in numbers.”
On Wednesday morning, Nike announced it was resigning from the chamber’s board of directors, but not the full chamber itself.
“Nike believes U.S. businesses must advocate for aggressive climate change legislation and that the United States needs to move rapidly into a sustainable economy to remain competitive and ensure continued economic growth,” the company said in a statement. “As we’ve stated, we fundamentally disagree with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the issue of climate change, and their recent action challenging the EPA is inconsistent with our view that climate change is an issue in need of urgent action.”
But Nike said that, for now, it will remain a member of the chamber in hopes of advocating for global-warming legislation within the chamber’s various committees and influencing their policies from within.
The defections began when PG&E Chairman and CEO Peter Darbee sent a sharply worded two-page letter outlining why the utility, which provides gas and electricity to 15 million customers from Eureka to Bakersfield, is pulling out of the chamber, which represents 3 million large and small businesses across the country and has one of the most powerful lobbying operations in Washington.
Darbee, who has invited leading climate scientists to meet with PG&E’s board of directors in recent years, was particularly alarmed that the chamber recently requested a public “trial” to weigh the scientific evidence that global warming endangers human health.
“We find it dismaying that the Chamber neglects the indisputable fact that a decisive majority of experts have said the data on global warming are compelling and point to a threat that cannot be ignored,” Darbee wrote. “In our view, an intellectually honest argument over the best policy response to the challenges of climate change is one thing; disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality of these challenges are quite another.”
PNM, New Mexico’s largest utility company, followed PG&E’s lead a few days later. And on Monday, Exelon announced it was pulling out of the chamber as well.
“The carbon-based free lunch is over,” said Exelon CEO John Rowe at a national conference of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce put out a statement Tuesday saying it opposes the House bill because “it is neither comprehensive nor international” and “would impose carbon tariffs on goods imported into the United States, a move that would almost certainly spur retaliation from global trading partners.”
PG&E, PNM and Exelon are all members of the United States Climate Action Partnership, or USCAP, an alliance of major businesses and environmental groups working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The group supports cap-and-trade legislation that limits the amount of greenhouse gas companies can emit. Other USCAP members include General Electric, Ford Motor, Duke Energy and Dupont.
Nike — along with Levi Strauss, Starbucks and Sun Microsystems — is a founding member of BICEP, or Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy. That group also supports regulation that places a cost on carbon emissions and creates incentives for clean-energy innovation.
“The cleavage among chamber members is very broad and very deep,” said Steve Tripoli, a spokesman for BICEP.
Environmentalists applauded the defections.
“PG&E’s decision was very significant, and we can expect to see a lot more discontent,” said Peter Altman, climate change director of the National Resources Defense Council, which is also active in USCAP. “The chamber is a loud voice on this issue, and the departures send a very clear statement that their voice is getting weaker.”
Darbee has taken time to deeply educate himself about the myriad issues that global warming presents. About three years ago, Robert Corell, an oceanographer who worked at the National Science Foundation, was invited to talk to PG&E executives. He spent an entire day at the company, going through the basic science of climate change as well as evidence that the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is falling. About a quarter of California’s power comes from hydroelectric plants.
“Peter Darbee knows that the snowpack is the ultimate reservoir for PG&E’s hydropower plants,” Correll said. “They’ve been moving more and more to having a lower carbon profile for their company, and Darbee is quite a leader in my view. I was just in Europe, and when the PG&E announcement about the chamber came out, the Europeans were just overwhelmed. It sent an enormous signal.”
Contact Dana Hull at 408-920-2706.
