Pacific Gas and Electric, the Northern California utility, has pulled out of the US Chamber of Commerce, citing what its chairman, Peter Darbee, called its “disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort reality” in the debate over climate change.
Darbee’s often harshly worded letter to the Chamber, excerpted on the company’s blog, expressed dismay that the Chamber “neglects the indisputable fact” that climate change is “a threat that cannot be ignored.”
With 3 million member businesses of all sizes, the nation’s biggest business lobby has come under increasing fire for taking a hard line against this year’s climate legislation. In May, a letter from Johnson & Johnson and Nike asked the Chamber to stop speaking about the issue as if it represented the entire business community. PG&E is the first business to move beyond those objections to publicly break with Chamber over its position. “[N]ot every issue is created equal,” the company, a major investor in green power, said on its blog, “and sometimes companies decide they have to take a more decisive stand on really big ones.”
It remains an enigma why the Chamber, which has called for a “Scopes Monkey Trial” on climate science, is working so hard to undermine climate legislation. The NRDC recently pointed out that Chamber president Tom Donohue has deep financial ties to the coal industry. The Chamber stresses that it position on global warming was hammered out by the its Environment and Energy Committee, which is chaired by Donald J. Sterhan, the owner of an affordable housing company. But a web search reveals that the Montana native is also a board member of the Billings Petroleum Club. The club’s members often include people outside the oil industry, yet the club’s September 2009 newsletter, the Gusher, lists numerous oil companies as sponsors, among them Devon Energy, Montana Wyoming Oil Company, and Petro-Hunt.
