The U.S. Chamber of Commerce dug further into denial of the reality of global warming pollution Friday, attacking the Obama administration’s clean energy goals as “wholly unrealistic.” Brad Johnson has the story.
In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama called for the end to billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for the oil and gas industry, and a national commitment to double low-carbon electricity by 2035. “Raising taxes on the industry that fuels our lives shows a profound detachment from our energy and economic reality,” former Bush official Karen Harbert, president and chief executive officer of the chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, lashed out. Harbert further attacked the president’s proposal for being too “ambitious“:
The president’s proposed ‘clean energy’ mandate would entail a more ambitious restructuring of the country’s power sector than even those in the his party have proposed. This mandate could require us to increase our non-hydro renewable generation by more than 700% and more than double our nuclear power, while virtually eliminating from the country’s most available, proven, and economic domestic energy resource””coal.
Harbert somehow thinks that making America into the world’s clean-energy leader is a bad idea.
In actual “energy and economic reality,” the oil and coal industries are killing Americans, weakening our economy, and destabilizing our planet. Pollution from burning coal and oil kills at least 20,000 Americans a year. Oil company profits are soaring “” ConocoPhillips up 46 percent to $1.9 billion, Chevron up 72 percent to $5.3 billion “” on rising prices that are sucking the lifeblood out of the economic recovery. Even Dr. John Felmy, American Petroleum Institute’s top economist, admits that raising taxes on oil companies could create two million American jobs.
Furthermore, the fossil-dominated chamber continues to blindly ignore the existential threat of climate change. Our polluted climate is already causing death and misery on an unprecedented global scale. If anything, President Obama’s clean energy plan may be insufficiently ambitious. The simple facts are that the United States needs to join the rest of the world in rapidly eliminating the unconstrained use of fossil fuels. As the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook describes, in a “climate friendly” scenario “the power sector is largely decarbonized by 2035.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce needs to starting facing reality “” or at least properly rename Harbert’s program to the Institute for 19th Century Energy.
– Brad Johnson in a WonkRoom cross-post.
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The US Chamber of Commerce isn’t in favor of de-carbonizing our energy use? I wonder why. Hmm. Their president and CEO, Tom Donohue, “served for 13 years as president and chief executive officer of the American Trucking Associations, the national organization of the trucking industry.
Donohue serves on two corporate boards of directors—Union Pacific Corporation and Sunrise Senior Living Corporation. He is president of the Center for International Private Enterprise, a program of the National Endowment for Democracy dedicated to the development of market-oriented institutions around the world.”
(See http://www.uschamber.com/about/board/thomas-j-donohue )
Given that US railroads make a lot of money hauling coal all over the country, and the trucking industry would be hard hit if we finally got serious about cutting emissions as much as is needed, this suddenly makes perfect sense. And he’s pretty obviously a member of the “free markets are magic” club, just to put a cherry on top.
Where can i find a list of companies still keeping their “CoC” membership, a nut job PR machine? Or why does the support literally kills companies businesses in the long run.
I don’t know how this body survives in the light of it’s seeming corruption.
The US Chamber of Commerce sees things simply as growth at all costs- since continued rapid expansion will create a strong economy. Unfortunately this very dated idea brings deadly side effects; Pumping increasing amounts of C02 into the atmosphere at a frightening rate.
The Chamber does not believe in climate science- or for that matter any science if it interferes with their unsustainable growth Modus operandi, no matter how it destroys the planets environment.
Brad Johnson wrote: “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce needs to starting facing reality …”
Oh, they are facing reality, alright.
They are facing the reality that they are going to have to fight tooth-and-nail by hook and by crook to perpetuate business-as-usual consumption of fossil fuels for as long as possible, which is what the Chamber is paid to do.
We need more people making the connection that when it comes to “big government” and “government handouts” there’s a HUGE republican hypocrisy going on.
If it’s a fundamental part of their campaigns, where they repeat at full bull horn voice until we’ve got it hard-wired into our heads that it’s not for government to give handouts and pick winners, that subsidies create free-riders, that people and companies are to stand on their own merit, that government interventions can reduce the efficiency of the market, etc., then how are we at ALL to take them seriously when they immediately turn around and say “Don’t stop the billions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits to the biggest companies in the world”?
It’s not conservative behavior, it’s not consistent with their deficit reduction rhetoric, and in a saner world with even the tiniest political memory, it would be an act that almost on its own would send them back to the margins.
Anyone know the latest fraction of the U.S. trade deficit that results from oil purchases from foreign countries?
Anyone have really good figures on jobs per dollar of subsidy across the various energy options? I’ve heard it said that fossil fuels return the fewest jobs per dollar of the energy options, with efficiency being number one in job production. If that’s true, then from an economic opportunity cost perspective, these billions in subsidies are LOSING American jobs in that the same money spent on other energy options would generate more jobs.
The Chamber is getting even more fossil fueled and rightwing since the only progressive companies have been quitting. Apple, Google, etc.
The Chamber’s statement was not very specific as it is little more than an announcemnet for the release of their own plan on Tuesday. But one point they make is interesting:
““The fundamental problem with the administration’s approach on energy is that it picks winners and losers,” said Karen Harbert, president and CEO of the Energy Institute.”
This is of course the key argument for cap & trade.
Prokaryotes has it right. Where can we find a list of companies that still belong to the chamber? I went on th chamber’s website and could not find a list of members. Anyone have any ideas?
did i miss some fine print?
the president said: “By 2035, 80 percent of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources.”
and brad johnson restated this as: “a national commitment to double low-carbon electricity by 2035.”
studies such as delucchi & jacobson lead me to project electricity with a fast-growing share of growing energy demand, over the next investment cycle. can i get a show of hands of people who think obama’s commitment would only double clean energy production?
dp: It might depend on how they are defining ‘clean’ or ‘low carbon.’ Obama included natural gas as clean and it is lower carbon. He also supports expanded nuclear power. These could be the ‘fine print.’
mike: yeah the doubling brad johnson mentioned has to include gas & nukes to reach anything like 80%. OTOH to offset much gasoline & diesel, doubling is way short of 80%.
Bob G: “Prokaryotes has it right. Where can we find a list of companies that still belong to the chamber? I went on the chamber’s website and could not find a list of members. Anyone have any ideas?”
I can supply some non-helpful information, but nonetheless interesting. We volunteered last year for a Greenpeace project that involved contacting both local and national Chambers of Commerce. Greenpeace was frustrated with their inability to uncover a list of the national companies within the Chamber, which made the project exceedingly difficult.
We found contacting local Chambers time-consuming and generally non-productive. It reminded me of my first Stepitup event, when I contacted every organization in town about it. By the next Stepitup event, I had wised up, contacting only those organizations which I thought might be inclined to come. Similarly, contacting every company yields a lot of negative responses, and by not even knowing if said company is a member of the COC, it really becomes a volunteer time drain.
I’ve heard that 350.org is considering contacting the COC members this year. I hope that they have better luck than Greenpeace, and that this is not just a huge waste of valuable volunteerism.
January 30, 2011 at 3:49 pm
Prokaryotes has it right. Where can we find a list of companies that still belong to the chamber? I went on the chamber’s website and could not find a list of members. Anyone have any ideas?
I can supply some non-helpful information, but nonetheless interesting. We volunteered last year for a Greenpeace project that involved contacting both local and national Chambers of Commerce. Greenpeace was frustrated with their inability to uncover a list of the national companies within the Chamber, which made the project exceedingly difficult.
We found contacting local Chambers time-consuming and generally non-productive. It reminded me of my first Stepitup event, when I contacted every organization in town about it. By the next Stepitup event, I had wised up, contacting only those organizations which I thought might be inclined to come. Similarly, contacting every company yields a lot of negative responses, and by not even knowing if said company is a member of the COC, it really becomes a volunteer time drain.
I’ve heard that 350.org is considering contacting the COC members this year. I hope that they have better luck than Greenpeace, and that this is not just a huge waste of valuable volunteerism.
or something like that. i’m really more interested in whether brad johnson knows something about the administration’s medium-term fuel switching plans or he’s having fun with fractions.
Prokaryotes says:
Or why does the support literally kills companies businesses in the long run.
It seems to me that many Business people practice a form of Slash and Burn Agriculture. When thay have exhausted the resources in one sector they assume that they will able to move their money to a new resource. Unfortunately for us that may not work in the future.
Fall 2009: Major companies and local chambers break from U.S. Chamber over its extremism. Apple, Exelon, Mohawk Paper, PG&E, PNM Resources, and the San Francisco and Santa Barbara Chambers of Commerce quit the Chamber over its climate change stance. “Extreme rhetoric and obstructionist tactics seem to increasingly mark the Chamber’s public stance on this issue,” said PG&E. Alcoa, Cisco Systems, Comcast, Dow, Duke Energy, Entergy, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, PEPCO, Royal Dutch Shell and Seventh Generation are among the other companies that broke with the Chamber on specific policy issues in 2009. Local chambers for Greater New York, San Jose, Eastern Connecticut, Greater Seattle, and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Aspen also distanced themselves. The CEO of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce bluntly stated: “They don’t represent me.” [Mother Jones, 10/14/2009]
http://www.changetowin.org/chamber/2009-us-chamber-credibility-scorecard.html
Karen Harbert is completely clueless. Unbelievable.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a powerful business lobbying group in the United States that “has become a fully functional part of the partisan Republican machine” since CEO and president Thomas J. Donohue took office in 1997. Prior to Donohue’s tenure, the Chamber “used to be a trade association that advocated in a bipartisan manner for narrowly tailored policies to benefit its members.” The Chamber’s 2010 budget is approximately $200 million, but as a trade organization, its donors can remain anonymous.
The Chamber claims on its website that its mission is to “advance human progress through an economic, political and social system based on individual freedom, incentive, initiative, opportunity, and responsibility.” It describes itself as “the world’s largest business federation representing more than 3 million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region.”
Despite these claims, the New York Times reported in October 2010 that half of the Chamber’s $140 million in contributions in 2008 came from just 45 big-money donors, many of whom enlisted the Chamber’s help to fight political and public opinion battles on their behalf (such as opposing financial or healthcare reforms, or other regulations). The Chamber is “dominated by oil companies, pharmaceutical giants, automakers and other polluting industries,” according to James Carter, executive director of the Green Chamber of Commerce…..
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=U.S._Chamber_of_Commerce#Board_members
Note on above link: There is an extensive list of related articles at the bottom of that page.
10/13/09
Mother Jones
The Chamber’s Numbers Game
http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/10/chamber-commerce-smaller-it-appears
The nation’s largest business lobby may be much smaller than it appears. A review of archival press releases suggests that the US Chamber of Commerce—which will not disclose the names of its members—has vastly overstated its size in recent years, helping to make its controversial positions on health care and climate change look like a consensus of American businesses.
In testimony before Congress, statements to the press, and on its website, the Chamber claims to represent “3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions.” In reality, the number is probably closer to 200,000.
In February 1997, the Chamber’s membership figure mysteriously jumped from 200,000 to 3 million, where it has remained ever since. The first use of the bigger number came less than two weeks before Chamber president Richard Lesher retired, soon to be succeeded by current president Tom Donohue. In congressional testimony and a press release, the Chamber suddenly described itself as representing “an underlying membership of more than three million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region.” (continued)
The most hideous part of this story is the mention of the so-called ‘National Endowment for Democracy’ an umbrella organisation for a number of US groups with the arrogant and presumptuous task of interfering throughout the world in the internal affairs of other states, in order to impose regimes to the Global Master’s liking. That it also has an arm that seeks to impose ‘market economies’ ie those where money and its accumulation are the highest goods and where that familiar type, the business psychopath, rules society, is even more nauseating. A ‘marketised’ world, as we know, will refuse to save humanity, if the return on capital from destroying it is greater.