The US Chamber of Commerce is putting the full force of its polluter-funded war chest behind fighting limits on industrial carbon pollution set to be announced by the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday. Paul Krugman dives into their numbers and finds even by the Chamber's biased analysis, the cost of climate action would be just 0.2% of economic growth:
You might ask why the Chamber of Commerce is so fiercely opposed to action against global warming, if the cost of action is so small. The answer, of course, is that the chamber is serving special interests, notably the coal industry — what’s good for America isn’t good for the Koch brothers, and vice versa — and also catering to the ever more powerful anti-science sentiments of the Republican Party.Remember, this is the same U.S. Chamber of Commerce that has fought every single Obama administration effort to create jobs. Either the US Chamber's sudden concern for jobs is a fraud, or they only care about saving jobs in the polluting industries that fund the Chamber. But you will never hear a reporter point this out, because connecting the dots has a well-known liberal bias.
Finally, let me take on the anti-environmentalists’ last line of defense — the claim that whatever we do won’t matter, because other countries, China in particular, will just keep on burning ever more coal. This gets things exactly wrong. Yes, we need an international agreement to reduce emissions, including sanctions on countries that don’t sign on. But U.S. unwillingness to act has been the biggest obstacle to such an agreement. If we start taking serious steps against global warming, the stage will be set for Europe and Japan to follow suit, and for concerted pressure on the rest of the world as well.
Now, we haven’t yet seen the details of the new climate action proposal, and a full analysis — both economic and environmental — will have to wait. We can be reasonably sure, however, that the economic costs of the proposal will be small, because that’s what the research — even research paid for by anti-environmentalists, who clearly wanted to find the opposite — tells us. Saving the planet would be remarkably cheap.
A must-read piece today from Grist's David Roberts on why clean energy is a huge political winner:With the Wall Street Journal editorial page beating its chest, Politico making sweet, sweet love to the Solyndra non-scandal, and the Chamber of Commerce dumping money into attack ads, Democrats have gotten unduly spooked. They’ve started believing John Boehner’s trash talk, that energy is a wedge to divide unions from greens.Next time you hear a Democrat waffling on support for clean energy, kick them in the shins. I am not making this up: Some focus group testing this week showed clean energy is almost as popular with swing voters as killing Osama bin Laden (although who gives killing the mastermind of 9/11 a B minus?). Plus, we all know how much voters love candidates apologizing for what they believe in.
It’s an empty threat. The fact is, overwhelming majorities of Americans — across party, age, and regional lines — support clean, modern energy. A poll conducted by ORC International in November found that 77 percent of Americans, including 65 percent of Republicans, believe that “the U.S. needs to be a clean energy technology leader and it should invest in the research and domestic manufacturing of wind, solar, and energy efficiency technologies.” Last February, a Gallup poll offered a list of actions Congress might take. The most popular option, with an incredible 83 percent support, was “an energy bill that provides incentives for using solar and other alternative energy resources.” [...]
Clean energy isolates the Republican base from the broad mass of American opinion and, in particular, from swing-state independents. It’s a wedge issue and an electoral winner for Democrats if they can quit playing defense and go on the attack. The appropriate response to threats from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a well-administered ass kicking.
Fox continues its formal transition to officially becoming the broadcast wing of the Republican Party:News Corp., the parent company of Fox News, contributed $1 million this summer to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the business lobby that has been running an aggressive campaign in support of the Republican effort to retake Congress, a source close to the company told POLITICO.What's comical is that Fox still goes through the song & dance of pretending to be a "news" channel. When the Republicans of Fox act like journalists, it's clearly no less of a charade than Stephen Colbert puts on every night at 11:30pm. So why do it? I guess Fox viewers like telling themselves they're not being spoon-fed one big ad for the Republican Party?
It was the second $1 million contribution the company has made this election cycle to a GOP-aligned group. In late June it gave that amount to the Republican Governors Association. [...]
Specifically, the chamber has said it plans to spend $75 million in connection with the 2010 election, and has so far has directed substantial amounts to Republican Senate candidates. As of Sept. 15th, the group had spent $6,747,946 airing more than 8,000 ads on behalf of GOP Senate candidates, according to a study (PDF) from the Wesleyan Media Project.
You hear about plenty of greenwashing -- companies trying to look green with token environmental efforts. But rarely do you see a company actively trying to look less green.Toyota had already lost some of its green cred when Ford put out a superior hybrid, the Fusion. Now the company risks destroying its environmental reputation entirely by casting its lot with the U.S. Chamber. Will the Prius go from a symbol of planetary protection to a symbol of ignorance and inaction?Officials from the US Chamber of Commerce told Politico today that in private conversations the car company had been supportive of its campaign against a proposed law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.The comments look set to further anger hundreds of disgruntled Prius owners who have joined an online campaign demanding Toyota quit the chamber in protest at its opposition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The chamber has called the bill a "jobs killer", and its executives have questioned the science behind global warming.
Today's Washington Post takes a look at some polluter-funded front groups that have recently sprung up to fight clean energy & climate legislation. In a classic example of reporting to the controversy, the article tries to paint the debate as getting more and more heated ... but cites evidence that clean energy and climate action are actually getting more and more accepted.The new [polluter front] groups join an increasingly fractious debate over climate legislation that has roiled corporate and environmental groups alike.Yowza! Sounds like the gloves are off, right? Lay it on me! Tell me how this is just the latest battle in that classic war, uncaring businesses versus treehugging environmentalists!
Earlier this month, Duke Energy, Alcoa and Alstom all pulled out of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, an industry group whose ads have asserted that the House climate bill would make energy unaffordable. "We thought [the bill] had evolved in ways to be affordable for our customers," said Duke spokesman Tom Williams.Huh. That's odd. So big businesses are actually joining forces with the environmentalists to stand up against denial and inaction?
This week, a group of large corporations -- including New Mexico utility PNM Resources, California utility PG&E, power generator Exelon and Nike -- denounced the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's opposition to climate legislation.
The Washington Post reports a Big Oil front group is joining John McCain's running mate in trying to strip polar bears of Endangered Species Act protection:The American Petroleum Institute and four other business groups filed suit Thursday against Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, joining Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's administration in trying to reverse the listing of the polar bear as a threatened species.The other groups involved in the latest lawsuit are the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Mining Association and the American Iron and Steel Institute. Just despicable.
Kassie Siegel, climate program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which originally petitioned to list the polar bear as an endangered species in 2005, decried the assertion in the Alaska suit that science does not prove polar bear populations are declining. The center is also suing the federal government, seeking to change the polar bear's official status from "threatened" to "endangered."If you liked the Bush administration's war on science, you'll love Sarah Palin!
"The amazing thing about this litigation is that the governor of Alaska is so anti-environmental that she is suing the Bush administration over a claimed overabundance of protections for the polar bear," Siegel said. "It's just amazing."
