Like a bad horror movie, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce just can’t stop shrinking — and like the incredibly shrinking man, it is becoming increasingly desperate in its efforts to save itself.

After a third company, Exelon, the nation’s largest utility, pulled the plug on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over climate denial, Chamber spokesman Eric Wohlschlegel desperately — and falsely — claimed “We’ve never questioned the science behind global warming.”

In fact, as NRDC’s Pete Altman (with some help from National Wildlife Federation) reports:

In a petition to EPA this summer, posted on the U.S. Chamber’s website and part of the public record on important global warming proceedings under the Clean Air Act, the Chamber argued that a “warming of even 3ºC in the next 100 years would, on balance, be beneficial to humans” because of fewer cold-related deaths in winter months. (p. 38)  The petition is available at:  http://www.uschamber.com/co2/default

This is but one part of an elaborate U.S. Chamber effort to prove that climate change is not a threat.  As part of its comments to EPA, the U.S. Chamber submitted a 57 page document that would make even he hardiest climate denier blush (See “Detailed Review of EPA’s Health and Welfare Scientific Evidence” on the above-referenced site).

Here are some excerpts:

1. “The increased use of air conditioning will mitigate many of the effects cited by EPA….” (p.1)
2. “Overall, there is strong evidence that populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations” (p. 4)
3. “The evidence when considered together suggests potential increases in temperature as the result of climate change will not pose an endangerment to public health… ” (p. 14)
4. “The U.S. health care system has effectively dealt with many of the reported climate sensitive diseases for a long time, and will continue to respond effectively.”  (p. 39)

Wonk Room further notes:

This is a blatant falsehood, by any definition. The Chamber has a long history of questioning the science of climate change. The Chamber’s present campaign against regulation of greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency questions the existence of global warming as well as the scientific evidence of its impacts on the public health and welfare. The Chamber promotes global warming denier books “to advance our thinking about issues of significance,” and has promoted the work of global warming denier Pat Michaels since at least 1992:

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Tom Donohue, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO

Energy companies are abandoning the sinking ship of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in droves over its opposition to climate change action. The Chamber is aggressively opposing efforts by President Obama and the Congress to fight global warming pollution, saying federal regulation would “strangle the economy” and cap-and-trade legislation would be “economically disruptive of business and industry activities.” However, responding to the criticism of the companies who have left the Chamber, spokesman Eric Wohlschlegel claimed his organization respects the science of climate change:

We’ve never questioned the science behind global warming.

This is a blatant falsehood, by any definition. The Chamber has a long history of questioning the science of climate change. The Chamber’s present campaign against regulation of greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency questions the existence of global warming as well as the scientific evidence of its impacts on the public health and welfare. The Chamber promotes global warming denier books “to advance our thinking about issues of significance,” and has promoted the work of global warming denier Pat Michaels since at least 1992:

2009: Chamber SVP Kovacs Calls For ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ On The ‘Science Of Climate Change.’ “It would be evolution versus creationism. It would be the science of climate change on trial.” Chamber of Commerce Senior Vice President William Kovacs explained that the Chamber was seeking a “Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” on global warming to prevent the EPA from declaring greenhouse gases a threat to the public welfare. [Los Angeles Times, 8/25/09]

2009: Chamber Claims No ‘Plausible Theory’ To Link ‘Climate Change With Extreme Weather Events And Disease In The United States,’ Disputes ‘Claims Of Ocean Acidification.’ In an official filing prepared by the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis for the comments on the EPA’s proposed endangerment finding for greenhouse gases, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce cited blog posts by global warming deniers such as Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger to challenge a broad range of climate change science, including sea level rise and the “UN/IPCC forecasted temperature increases.” [U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 8/25/09]

2009: National Chamber Foundation Promotes Global Warming Denier Book As ‘#1′ Top Book Of The Year. Promoting “Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s National Chamber Foundation writes: “Climatologists Patrick J. Michaels and Robert Balling Jr. explain that climate science is hardly unbiased,” and that the “pop-culture icons of climate change turns out to be short on facts and long on exaggeration.” On Twitter, the National Chamber Foundation ranked the book “#1″ in its “Top Books of ’09.” [National Chamber Foundation, 8/20/09]

2008: National Chamber Foundation Promotes Global Warming ‘Deniers’ Book Against ‘Global Warming Hysteria.’ The National Chamber Foundation selected “The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution and Fraud; And those who are too fearful to do so” by Lawrence Solomon to “help shape the debate on issues important to the business community.” [National Chamber Foundation, 2008]

2008: Chamber President Tom Donohue Says ‘Scientific Inquiry’ Into Climate Change ‘Should Continue’ Because Of ‘Cooling Trend.’ On March 4, 2008, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue revealed his true thoughts to the Chamber’s board, questioning the science of global warming: “As the scientific inquiry continues (and given the recent reports indicating a cooling trend over the last year, such inquiry should continue) the Chamber supports public and private sector action to control the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.” [U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 3/4/08]

2003: Chamber Says ‘We Need To Have Better Science’ To Justify Climate Action. Following the defeat of the McCain-Lieberman cap-and-trade climate legislation in 2003, William Kovacs, the Chamber’s vice president for environment, technology, and regulatory affairs, told the Heartland Institute, “We need to have better science to support any efforts to restrict energy use before Americans can justify sacrificing their jobs, quality of life, and paying almost double for their utility bills.” [Heartland Institute, 11/21/03]

2003: Chamber Claims ‘Every Aspect Of The Environment’ Is ‘Getting Cleaner.’ Praising George W. Bush’s environmental record, William Kovacs dismissed the concept of global warming pollution. “The air, along with every other aspect of the environment, is getting cleaner. I think that has been a true statement for the last 30 years, and it will continue to be. I think Bush has been continuing along that path.” [New York Times, 2/23/2003]

2001: Chamber Claims Global Warming ‘About One Percent From Human Activity,’ Says ‘Things Just Change.’ Appearing on CNNFN, William Kovacs challenged the “link” between human activity and global warming and called for more research. “Let me address two issues. One is, the link. You know, let’s be realistic, 95 percent of all greenhouse gases, you know, really come from water vapor; and another 3 or 4 percent from natural causes, and we’re down to about one percent from human activity. So the Bush plan is really twofold. One is, we’re going to spend another 120-$130 million to see if we can get some of the tough issues, and make the links. Even EPA agrees. You know, yes, there is global warming, but you know, 20 years ago, we were worried about global cooling. Things just change, and before we sink the economy, we need to make sure we’ve got the right research done.” [CNNFN, 7/16/2001]

1992: Chamber Sponsors Global Warming Denier Pat Michaels To ‘Refute The Global Warming Warnings.’ “Bankrolled partly by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Global Climate Coalition, a group of manufacturers fearful of new environmental regulations, Patrick Michaels and Washington, D.C., attorney Eugene M. Trisko have been traveling cross-country to refute the global warming warnings from environmentalists.” [Chicago Sun-Times, 5/13/1992]

The final bill will not be unveiled until tomorrow, but Senators Kerry and Boxer (and their cosponsers) have managed to put together a bill that I believe is environmentally, economically and politically stronger than the House bill.

The Washington Post reports:

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will unveil a bill Wednesday that aims for a 20 percent reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by the year 2020, according to several sources and a close-to-final version of the bill obtained by The Washington Post.

Note: While that 800-page bill linked to above may be “close to final,” it will change in many places, so I would not rely on it too heavily for specific details.  Indeed, Greenwire (subs. req’d) reports an aide to Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) saying, “It’s a snapshot in time of our restructure of the [House] bill, but it doesn’t really reflect where the bill is now.”

Certainly 20% is better than the House’s 17% — and more than justified by both the science and recent emissions trends (see “EIA stunner: By year’s end, we’ll be 8.5% below 2005 levels of CO2 “” halfway to climate bill’s 2020 target“).

Unlike the Waxman-Markey bill, the Senate proposal preserves the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate large sources of greenhouse gases, such as coal-fired power pants.

That’s a good change, but it’ll be a huge fight to keep it.

“It’s clearly stronger than the House bill,” said Frank O’Donnell, who heads the advocacy group Clean Air Watch. “This very well may be the high-water mark for strong action on climate in this Congress, since it will face many efforts to erode it as it moves through the Senate.”

CP readers will not be surprised if that target changes as the bill winds its way through the Senate — and your 60 seconds to cry about that political reality is over …. now.  The bill keeps the key House targets of 42% cut by 2030 and 83% by 2050.

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Even corporations are losing patience with the deniers: earlier this week Pacific Gas and Electric canceled its membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest over the chamber’s “disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality” of climate change.

So the main argument against climate action probably won’t be the claim that global warming is a myth. It will, instead, be the argument that doing anything to limit global warming would destroy the economy. As the blog Climate Progress puts it, opponents of climate change legislation “keep raising their estimated cost of the clean energy and global warming pollution reduction programs like some out of control auctioneer.”

It’s important, then, to understand that claims of immense economic damage from climate legislation are as bogus, in their own way, as climate-change denial. Saving the planet won’t come free (although the early stages of conservation actually might). But it won’t cost all that much either.

So Paul Krugman wrote in his Friday NYT column, “It’s Easy Being Green.”  He provides more detail in two blog posts, “The textbook economics of cap-and-trade” and “Pigou, Glenn Beck, and the false case against cap-and-trade.”  For more, see my post “Intro to climate economics: Why even strong climate action has such a low total cost — one tenth of a penny on the dollar.”

Then on Monday, Krugman wrote another climate column, “Cassandras of Climate.”  It delivers a key political message:

I’m not, by the way, saying that the Obama administration was wrong to push health care first. It was necessary to show voters a tangible achievement before next November. But climate change legislation had better be next.

Why?  Because the climate situation is so damn dire.  As Krugman explains:

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Boxer, Kerry Set to Introduce Climate Bill in Senate

Ending some nine months of closed-door deliberations, Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) will release global warming legislation Wednesday that they hope will be the vehicle for broader Senate negotiations and an eventual conference with the House.

The bill’s authors said last week that they expect to start hearings early next month on the bill, with a markup in Boxer’s Environment and Public Works Committee to follow soon thereafter. They also acknowledged that their legislation is just a “starting point” in a bid to win over moderate and conservative Democrats, as well as Republicans.

“I hope what we’ve done is constructive and well-received,” Kerry, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said Thursday. “I have no pretensions, and neither does Barbara, that this will be the final product. It is a starting point, a commitment, full-fledged, across party lines to do what we need to do to protect the planet for the next century.”

The Boxer-Kerry bill will build in large part off H.R. 2454 (pdf), legislation approved in June by the House following several marathon months of negotiations that involved lawmakers representing coastal and industry-heavy districts. Exactly what is the same in the two bills remains to be seen. As for differences, Senate Democratic aides say they expect the legislation to divert from the House bill’s 17 percent emissions target for 2020 and go with an even more aggressive 20 percent limit. The bill also will stay silent on exactly how the Senate should divide up emission allowances.

At least five other Senate committees are also expected to contribute to the climate debate. The Foreign Relations and Agriculture committees are preparing language without convening a markup.

Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said he will hold votes on his pieces of the global warming bill. And the same goes for Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who last week told reporters that provisions on international trade and the allocation of emission allowances would be marked up provided Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says the bill is “clearly moving.”

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) has already approved legislation (S. 1462 (pdf)) out of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee that includes a nationwide renewable electricity standard and a raft of other energy incentives, including a provision that could bring oil and gas rigs closer to Florida’s Gulf Coast. Bingaman is also planning a hearing Thursday on several competing cost estimates associated with the House-passed climate bill. The session, which was postponed once earlier this month, now gives senators an early public forum to sound off on the Boxer-Kerry bill.

Already last week, several Democratic senators working outside of the Boxer-Kerry camp said their ideas would be melded into the legislation at a later date. “It’s going to need a lot of work,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

Brown said he did not expect the Boxer-Kerry bill to include language adopted in the House that tries to assist energy-intensive manufacturing industries, including steel, pulp and paper and cement.

“My understanding is they did not include the House language on manufacturing,” Brown added. “But I’ve been talking to them about it. They are very open to it. They are in no way dismissive.”

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said she also does not think her concerns will be addressed in the initial draft from Boxer and Kerry. That means further efforts on issues related to agriculture, offsets and energy intensive industries.

“We will have to take a look at the language and then determine it from there,” Stabenow said.

China leads way for solar energy

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Google is using its Google Earth mapping tool to simulate on a 3D map of the world the predicted effects of climate change until the year 2100.

Using data provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the search giant created new layers for Google Earth showing the range of expected temperature and precipitation changes under different global emissions scenarios that could occur throughout the century.

The Sydney Morning Herald further reports these “new tools were introduced in partnership with the Danish Government ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Convention in December.”  And as as HuffingtonPost reports, “Al Gore stars” in the Google Earth climate simulator video:

Can Twitter save civilization? We’re about to find out.

As the clock winds down on the big climate negotiation in Copenhagen this December (formally known as the 15th Conference of the Parties, or COP-15), the future of the planet and its inhabitants may be in the hands of tweeters, especially tots, teens and twenty-somethings.

Several groups are attempting to mobilize a worldwide mandate for action in Copenhagen, calling for boots to hit streets and thumbs to hit keyboards, to harness the power of Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, You Tube, FlickR, text messaging and the potential power of the PDA Nation.

One of my favorites (in part because I’ve been a sometime advisor on it) is a campaign called Hopenhagen, launched last week during “climate week” in New York City. At the request of the United Nations, the International Advertising Association is applying its creative powers to a viral effort in which young people will petition for a “definitive, equitable and effective” climate agreement at COP-15.

Led by the global communications powerhouse Ogilvy & Mather, the campaign urges young people to become citizens of a Hopenhagen community, complete with a virtual passport. With help from corporate giants Coca Cola, Siemens and SAP, and with support from a growing list of “Friends of Hopenhagen” who range from Reader’s Digest and the Wall Street Journal to Mother Jones magazine, Ogilvy will deploy media and billboards in major cities to promote the power of the grassroots.

Rather than complaining about an infringement on its name, the City of Copenhagen has agreed enthusiastically to rename itself “Hopenhagen” in December, replacing Cs with Hs where the city’s name appears at the airport and on highway signs leading to COP-15.

Hopenhagen is one of several current opportunities for youth to help shape the future they will inherit, and for old-timers like me to improve the future we will pass along. Here are some of the others:

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