Chamber of Commerce seeks to weed out climate dissenters

[marmar]

from Mother Jones:




Chamber of Commerce Goes After Climate Dissenters In Its Ranks

— By Josh Harkinson
| Mon Aug. 2, 2010 4:30 AM PDT


A new split over climate policy is brewing within the ranks of the US Chamber of Commerce as a breakaway group of local chambers is getting ready to publicly split with the business lobby's hardline stance against climate legislation. The new climate coalition, known as the Chambers for Innovation and Clean Energy (CICE), will press Congress to take stronger action on climate and energy issues. It has already signed up about a dozen chambers and will officially launch later this year.

The US Chamber is already working behind the scenes to discredit the new group. After it caught wind of the effort last month, it fired off a letter to local chamber leaders, discouraging them from joining CICE, which it claimed was "established by the Natural Resources Defense Council." The letter, written by US Chamber board member Winthrop Hallett, the president of Alabama's Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce, states that the new group's "indirect purpose appears to be undermining the U.S. Chamber's and the business community's leadership on" climate issues.

The claim that CICE is little more than a front group for the NRDC is "outrageous" and "really just pissed me off," says Steve Falk, the president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, which has been organizing the independent climate coalition. Hallett's letter, which has not been posted publicly but which Mother Jones has seen, does not explain the alleged connection between CICE and the NRDC. Hallett and a spokesman for the US Chamber did not respond to requests for comment.

In a letter that Falk sent to local chamber leaders last week in response to the US Chamber's attack, he speculated that its claim of a NRDC link might be based on CICE's connection with Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), a NRDC partner group that bills itself as "the independent business voice for the environment." Falk and E2 cofounder Bob Epstein say that the group did help create CICE's website but did not conceive of the idea for the group or craft its talking points. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/07/chamber-commerce-climate-NRDC-CICE

[ixion]

1. We should be building independent, distributed energy systems in every household right this minute

instead, we're still doing a back-and-forth thing.

Failure to act will be catastrophic, ultimately.

[glinda]

2. Have long felt that there needs to be a Dem Chamber of Commerce but they should

change their name to something else.