The U.S. Chamber Doesn't Speak For Me

I’m finding it difficult to shed a tear for a guy with a huge office overlooking the White House who compares having to disclose political giving to Libyan military oppression. Chamber of Commerce top lobbyist R. Bruce Josten is hope that I will, though. He went after the White House Tuesday for a possible executive order requiring federal contractors to disclose political spending more than $5,000–including to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

As outlined in New York Times article, the executive order was designed in response to tens of millions of dollars in anonymous spending during the 2010 elections after the Supreme Court took the limits off corporate giving. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $32 million themselves. From his perch atop the U.S. Chamber, Josten complains that disclosing political giving would open up businesses to protest and “harassment” because of their gifts. That, he is correct about.

But what are we talking about exactly? This rule would only apply to people looking for government contracts. Do you own a hardware store or car repair shop? This doesn’t apply to you.

According to the article, it only discloses political spending over $5,000. Are you a building contractor looking for federal work and give $200, $500, or $2,500 to a political candidate? This doesn’t apply to you.

So who does it apply to? If you’re a major corporate contractor looking to throw down $10,000, $100,000, or, say, $32,000,000 to get a friendly politician elected who will help you get contracts, it would apply to you.

And should it not? The danger of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is that they spend huge amounts claiming to represent the American businessman, but get most of their money from 16 mega-corporations, including dirty energy interests. And if you think that

This is exactly what “The U.S. Chamber Doesn’t Speak for Me” campaign is working to do. We need to pull back the curtain to show that the wizard pulling the strings at the U.S. Chamber is not American small business. We’ve been honored to have some great businesses join in this effort, from one of Aspen, CO’s biggest employers to the thousands of small businesses across the United States.

The U.S. Chamber can’t continue to front for Dirty Coal and Big Oil and keep who they really represent a secret any longer. Whether it’s through an executive order or local organizing, we will make it happen.

Here’s some great news coming out of Colorado for Earth Day: Aspen Skiing Company recently joined 100 Colorado companies to say “The US Chamber Doesn’t Speak for Me.” Aspen is already known for its commitment to environmental sustainability and we’re proud to have them on board with the campaign.

A huge thanks goes out to 350.org organizer Micah Parkin for the amazing work she’s done to sign up businesses across Colorado. Micah’s been working on the campaign for just a few weeks, but already 100 companies have come on board and momentum is growing by the day. And more thanks to Auden Schendler, the VP of Sustainability at Aspen, who’s been a vocal supporter for companies getting more involved in fighting climate disruption.

Here’s an article in the Aspen Times about the announcement and the growing push to get companies across Colorado to say, “The US Chamber Doesn’t Speak for Me.”

Aspen Skiing Co. Joins Effort to Scold US Chamber

ASPEN — The Aspen Skiing Co. added its voice this week to protests taking aim at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for its actions on climate change.

The Skico was one of 100 Colorado businesses that signed a declaration saying, “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce doesn’t speak for me.” The fledgling effort will continue to try to get Colorado businesses and local chambers of commerce to join the effort, said Micah Parkin, an organizer with the environmental group 350.org.

The Skico joined the effort because it opposes the chamber’s spending of millions of dollars to lobby against U.S. legislation to regulate greenhouse gases, said Auden Schendler, Skico vice president of sustainability.

The chamber spent a reported $50 million in 2009 to oppose regulation, he said. The Skico supports regulation of greenhouse gases and has become increasingly involved in the political process to push for the government to address climate change.

“This is kind of the heart of it,” Schendler said. “They are the enemy — the chamber.” (more…)

Written by Lauren Levenstein and reposted from the U.S. Chamber Watch blog

To celebrate Earth Day, we thought it might be fun to see how much you really know about the nation’s largest lobbying entity that is currently the leading voice of big corporations’ anti-environmental agenda. Do you know how the anonymous corporate money funneled through the Chamber by Big Oil and Coal is affecting environmental policy?

Q. This past Monday, which event took place in front of the Chamber’s headquarters (that the Chamber later took to its blog to dismiss)?

a.) Tom Donohue disclosed Chamber member companies
b.) Chamber acknowledged the importance of strong regulatory policies
c.) Thousands gathered to protest Chamber’s anti-climate policies

A. If you answered “C,” you are correct. On Monday, April 18^th, thousands of activists from the pro-environmental Power Shift conference gathered in front of the U.S. Chamber, shutting down the street. Participants loudly held the Chamber accountable for what it really is – as Power Shift partner 350.org put it – “little more than a front group for corporate polluters.” Check out video from the event here.

Q. This week marked the one year anniversary of the British Petroleum (BP) gulf oil spill, after which Chamber President Tom Donohue came under fire for saying that American taxpayers should help pay for the oil spill cleanup. In the past year, how else has the Chamber helped BP remain unaccountable to the American people?

a.) Chamber lobbied against bill making it easier for victims to sue for damages
b.) Chamber helped defeat LA bill making it easier for state to sue BP for damages
c.) Chamber unabashedly supported and continues to support deepwater drilling
d.) All of the above

A. If you answered “D,” “all of the above,” you are correct. The U.S. Chamber had been “shilling” for BP long before the oil disaster and ratcheted up its support immediately following the spill. In the fall of 2009, while many other large corporations had already distanced from the Chamber over climate issues, a BP spokesman embraced the Chamber noting, “Yes, BP is a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and expects to remain so.” And as the reporter explained, that news likely caused Tom Donohue to “breathe a sigh of relief.”

Q. In 2009, the New York Times editorial board wrote about the Chamber, “no organization in this country has done more to undermine” a comprehensive solution to global warming. During this Congressional session, how has the Chamber continued this work?

a.) Strengthening EPA’s ability to regulate corporate pollution
b.) Stripping the EPA of its power
c.) Holding Chamber member companies accountable for carbon emissions

A. If you answered “B,” you are correct. Make no mistake, the U.S. Chamber is leading the fight to block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases and thus corporate pollution. The Chamber has filed several lawsuits challenging the EPA’s ruling that greenhouse gases are harmful to humans, thereby halting their potential regulation. The Chamber is also lobbying Congress at every chance to support laws that would weaken the agency.

Q. The U.S. Chamber has legally defended which of the following companies when environmental-related lawsuits were brought against them?

a.) Chevron
b.) Citgo
c.) American Electric Power Company
d.) Hornbeck Offshore Services Inc.
e.) Duke Energy Corporation
f.) Exxon Mobil
g.) Cinergy Corporation
h.) All of the above

A. If you answered “H,” “all of the above” you are once again correct. The (litigation-hating?) Chamber has filed friend-of-the-court briefs on behalf of the companies listed above and many, many more when others were trying to hold the corporations accountable for damages to human life and the environment.

So, how did you do? Did you ace the quiz? You may have passed with flying colors but when it comes to sensible climate policies, the U.S. Chamber gets an F. Some big corporations (Apple, PG&E, Best Buy, Microsoft, GE, Dow, Cisco Systems, etc.), local chambers, and now citizens en masse, are stepping forward and reminding the Chamber that its arcane climate policy just won’t cut it any longer.

Happy Earth Day!

We’ve been blow away by the response to 350.org founder Bill McKibben’s speech at Power Shift 2011, the youth climate conference that brought over 10,000 young people to Washington, DC last weekend. Along with the thousands who watched the speech last Saturday night, more than 20,000 people have watched the speech on YouTube in the last few days.

In his talk, Bill makes the connection between the US Chamber’s “money pollution” and the lack of climate and clean energy action in Congress. Your message is clearly getting across: the US Chamber Doesn’t Speak for Me!

When we saw the staff at the US Chamber of Commerce peering outside the windows of their office this morning to watch thousands of people protest their lobbying on climate and energy, we were pretty sure that the message had gotten across. Now, we’re happy to have the proof in the form of a blog post on the US Chamber website.

In the blog, the US Chamber’s go-to-green basher, Ross Eisenberg (hi Ross!), writes:

There’s enough noise rattling around in the energy and climate debate that it sometimes sounds like an off-pitch band marching past your office window (not that the Chamber knows anything about this).  All of this becomes a distraction from the actual work being done in Washington to address energy and climate issues in a commonsense, bipartisan manner.

Glad you enjoyed the marching band, Ross, the security guards in front of the Chamber were so stoic we weren’t sure that you could hear the music. I’m not sure that the band will be too happy to hear that you thought they were off pitch, though. We thought they right on key.

Speaking of on key, the message of today’s event rang loud and clear. The American people know what’s blocking progress on climate and energy isn’t the American people, it’s the US Chamber and the big polluters that fund them. In fact, it’s laugh-out-loud funny to hear the Chamber try and make the case that they’re trying to push forward “actual work” on climate change when they’ve spent the last few months doing little more than attempting to eviscerate the Clean Air Act (not to mention working around the clock last year to stop the climate bill).

But after a good chuckle, let’s dive into that “actual work” the Chamber is talking about. In his blog, Ross highlights a proposed efficiency bill that the Chamber is promoting. He writes:

The bill is called the “Implementation of National Consensus Appliance Agreements Act of 2011.” This legislation – introduced by both a Democrat and a Republican – promotes energy efficiency without imposing unnecessary costs or burdens on industry.

We’re all for efficiency and we bet some fossil fuel corporations are too. After all, you’d have to be a dinosaur not to want to save money by wasting less energy. But dig a little deeper into the Chamber’s support for this piece of legislation and you’ll see there’s a bit of a subplot contained in that last line about “unnecessary costs and burdens on industry.”

The real motivation for the Chamber supporting this bill, it seems, isn’t to do what’s right for saving energy or the environment, but to keep up their attack on the ability of the government — aka, the people — to protect our communities from industrial polluters.

We’ve been a bit busy here at Power Shift recruiting 10,000 youth from across the country to join our campaign on the chamber, so I haven’t had the chance to dig into S. 398 (the proposed bill), but one line in the Chamber’s letter to members of Congress stands out. It reads, “The federal preemption provided by S. 398 would also reduce the potential for a patchwork of duplicative or conflicting state efficiency standards …” That sounds a lot to me like an attempt to replace tough and ambitious state efficiency standards with a system of voluntary pledges.

Ross concludes his post by writing,

While Congress is on recess this week, some of the anti-business crowd wants to march around Washington mischaracterizing the Chamber’s views on energy and climate issues.  This seems, dare I say, inefficient, as we’re working with lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to address these important issues.

So the thousands of businesses — including major corporations like Nike and Apple — that have pulled out of the Chamber to protest its climate policies are anti-business? Apple sure does a lot of business for being part of the anti-business crowd!

And to pick up on Ross’ turn of phrase, the real thing the Chamber is  “efficient” at is pumping more dirty money into the halls of Congress. And that work does happen on both sides of the aisle.

Days like today show that this campaign is having exactly the effect we need it to: the Chamber is quickly being revealed as little more than a front group for corporate polluters. The US Chamber does not represent the voice of American business and by signing up businesses across the country to pull out, we’re making that crystal clear for the world to see.

So in conclusion, we agree Ross! More action is needed on climate change. And that’s exactly what we’re going to deliver. We’ll be in touch.

The environmental movement is getting smarter by the minute, and this morning in Washington DC it passes a major test.

Thousands and thousands of people–many of them youth gathered for Powershift, the giant climate organizing symposium that has sprawled across the city’s convention center–are rallying in Lafayette Park.

Lafayette Park–googlemap it–is right across the street from the White House, and normally rallies there are aimed at the president. There’ll surely be some of that today, for the president has done far less than he promised to deal with global warming.

Mostly, though, the protesters will turn the other direction, and target a building that may project as much power as the Oval Office. It’s the headquarters of the US Chamber of Commerce, which boasts that it’s the nation’s biggest lobby. Indeed it is–it outspent the next five combined. And the biggest political player, outspending the Republican and Democratic National Committees. If Washington is polluted by money, the biggest smokestack comes out the top of the US Chamber.

They claim to ‘represent American business.’ In fact, more than half their budget came from just 16 companies. They don’t say who those companies are, but it’s not too hard to figure out, since they spend most of their time fighting any legislation that might help slow climate change. They’re radicals: they filed a brief with the EPA urging them not to act on carbon emissions because if the planet warmed humans could “adapt their physiologies” to deal with the change. If someone on a street corner told you that their plan for global warming was changing your anatomy, you’d give them a wide berth–but if you have a few hundred million in campaign contributions to hand out, it buys you a lot of respectability.

The time to strip away that respectability has come, and it starts today in DC. But it doesn’t end here. Across the nation, a campaign to get businesses to declare “The US Chamber Doesn’t Speak for Me” has begun to make real progress–thousands and thousands of small businesses have already signed up to say they can speak for themselves, thank you–and that they’re nimble enough capitalists to deal with a planet that runs on wind and sun. It’s not just small companies either–Apple Computer has quit the chamber, and local chambers of commerce from Seattle to New York have broken their ties with the US Chamber.

The environmental movement has spent the last twenty years pleading with Congress and the White House. It’s like spending twenty years pleading with the cashier at the front of the store to address your complaint. Sooner or later you have to take your problem to the manager in the back room. That’s what’s going on today.

On Monday, thousands of people will join a rally outside the US Chamber of Commerce to protest the money pollution that’s corrupting our democracy and wrecking our planet. We’ll be shining a spotlight on the US Chamber and revealing it for what it really is: a front group for the fossil fuel industry. And we’ll be calling on President Obama and Congress to stand up for people, not polluters, and take on bold clean energy and climate action.

350.org Founder Bill McKibben at Power Shift 2011 (photo: Shadia Fayne-Wood)

Stay tuned to this website or follow @350 and @energyaction on Twitter for live updates from tomorrow’s rally.

The rally is the culmination of Power Shift 2011, a conference here in DC for over 10,000 youth leaders from across the country.The energy at Power Shift has been palpable. Young leaders from every state in the nation have spent the weekend listening to inspiring speakers like EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and 350.org founder Bill McKibben.

On Monday, they’ll take a stand in front of the US Chamber and say, “enough is enough.” We’re sick and tired of seeing our country tied down to the fossil fuel industry. Tomorrow, that begins to change.

You don’t need to be an expert sleuth to figure out whose interests the US Chamber of Commerce is representing in Washington.

Today, the Chamber made it abundantly clear that it is on the side of Big Polluters — not clean energy entrepreneurs — by inviting Southern Company’s CEO Tom Fanning to address their “CEO Leadership Series” Luncheon on energy issues.

Southern Company is notorious for its full-throated support for coal and nuclear power, as well as its opposition to action on climate change.

Yesterday’s speech was no different. In his remarks yesterday, Fanning spent about 10 seconds paying lip service to the need for renewables and energy efficiency, before launching into a multi-paragraph diatribe promoting nuclear power, describing his commitment to “21st Century Coal,” and criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency for its efforts to protect our clean air and environment.

Fanning’s rhetorical strategy of saying we need an “all of the above” energy approach and then only really pushing coal and nuclear is typical of corporate polluters, who realize they can’t quite publicly oppose clean energy. Just take a look at his closing remarks:

So, in closing, where does that leave us? First, we need all the arrows in the quiver. We need new nuclear. We must preserve coal as a resource for our energy future. We need natural gas, but it’s not a panacea. We need renewables, but let’s recognize their limitations.

Notice how nuclear and coal come first, with no qualifications, and then natural gas and renewables are listed, but immediately undercut?

As long as big polluters like Southern Company set the policy at the US Chamber of Commerce, it will continue to misrepresent the voice of the vast majority of American businesses who support clean energy and climate action. In honor of Fanning’s speech at the US Chamber, we’ll be doubling our efforts to recruit new businesses across the South to join the “US Chamber Doesn’t Speak for Me”! We hope you’ll join us.

Tom Donahue, the president of the US Chamber of Commerce, addressed a crowd at West Point today with a speech that heralded the importance of free trade to our international security. What he failed to mention is that because of the millions of dollars it spends on blocking clean energy solutions, the US Chamber is one of the primary reasons that our country is still addicted to oil, an addiction that is costing us not only our money and health, but also the lives of many young men and women who are serving overseas.

Indeed, there are perhaps no better messengers for the movement to break our addiction to oil than our nation’s veterans. That’s one of the reasons why 350.org has been proud to partner with Operation Free, a coalition of leading Veterans and national security organizations who recognize that climate change is a major threat, and support fast, bold action.

Operation Free writes on their website,

Every day, the men and women of our military serve us, from the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan, to disaster relief in New Orleans, to humanitarian interventions around the world. We can help them shoulder the burden by acting on climate change now. If we work to reduce our use of oil and mitigate the effects global warming, our military will be able to continue to work effectively. But, if we continue to wait, rising ocean levels will inundate naval bases and island bases; temperatures will become more extreme, making it more difficult to execute operations around the world; ice caps will melt, forcing our navy to expand further around the world.

We’re looking forward to continue to work with Operation Free and others to reduce our dependence on foreign oil — and get the Chamber out of the way of blocking progress.