chamber of commerce changes approach to climate change

Es­ti­mated reading time is 2 min­utes.

AS ONE OF THE MOST POW­ERFUL lob­bying groups in the country, the U.S. Chamber of Com­merce has long been a cen­tral player in the net­work of or­ga­ni­za­tions seeding de­nial about cli­mate change. Its work in­cludes spending mil­lions of dol­lars in­flu­encing elec­tions and lob­bying in sup­port of new oil and gas de­vel­op­ment, roll­backs of U.S. methane reg­u­la­tions, and the re­peal of the Clean Power Plan.

Until now, the pro-business group has also sup­ported U.S. with­drawal from the Paris Agree­ment. In 2017, it funded a highly crit­i­cized re­port on the con­se­quences of meeting the com­mit­ments of the pact. The re­port paints a bleak pic­ture of eco­nomic down­turn and was used by Pres­i­dent Trump as ev­i­dence for pulling the U.S. out of the pact.

 

ClimateChangeCartoon MikeLester 700

Car­toon by Mike Lester for The Wash­ington Post.

Last week, just be­fore Trump took the first formal step to pull the U.S. out of the Paris cli­mate agree­ment, the lob­bying group qui­etly up­dated its web­site with a brand new stance on the matter. A page ti­tled Our Ap­proach to Cli­mate Change now reads:

“Greater col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween gov­ern­ments and busi­nesses is es­sen­tial to build the best models to tackle cli­mate chal­lenges, which is why the Chamber sup­ports U.S. par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Paris Agreement.”

The para­graphs were lifted from “One of the Country’s Biggest Cli­mate De­nier Groups just Did an About-Face” by Emily Pon­tecorvo for Grist (

To read Emily Pon­tecor­vo’s ar­ticle in its en­tirety, click here.

Greater col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween gov­ern­ments and busi­nesses is es­sen­tial to build the best models to tackle cli­mate chal­lenges. Click To Tweet

ChamberOfCommerce building 1000

FEA­TURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of this page is the fa­cade of the former head­quar­ters of Chamber of Com­merce of the State of New York, the oldest Chamber of com­merce in the United States, es­tab­lished in 1768 during the British Colo­nial Period.

 


 

Leave a Comment