Investor’s Business Daily
10/12/2009
Public Discourse: Our energy secretary applauds and encourages companies to leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its position on climate change. Should any Cabinet secretary, with the powers of government behind him, be threatening U.S. companies?
Part of the climate-change mantra is that the debate is over and the science is settled. Just to make sure, environmental groups have sought to pressure businesses to go green or at least keep silent. Now it would appear the whole weight of the federal government is being thrown behind this campaign to coerce and silence real and potential opposition.
On Thursday, Steven Chu, President Obama’s energy secretary, told attendees at a solar power event on the National Mall that it’s “wonderful” to see companies like Exelon, Apple and Pacific Gas & Electric leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The chamber is a pro-capitalism, pro-free-enterprise association of businesses that has fought against climate treaties like Kyoto and legislation such as Waxman-Markey as futile efforts not founded in science that are economically damaging and recipes for global poverty.
“I think it’s wonderful,” Chu told reporters at the event. He said that companies that left the 3-million-member chamber objected to “foot-dragging” and “denials” and realize that efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases are “part of our economic future in the United States.”
Chu divides the business community into climate-change “deniers” and those who have converted to what Czech President Vaclav Klaus has called a “religion.” He hopes to conquer opponents who realize that those who follow the road to the climate conference this December have no economic future.
Said chamber President Tom Donohue at a press conference: “It is pretty clear,” said chamber President Tom Donohue, “. . . that a number of environmental groups are trying to apply some pressure on chamber companies to apply pressure on us to change our views” on climate legislation passed by the House of Representatives.
One chamber crime has been to call for a public hearing at which the organization can present evidence that climate change is based on flawed and politicized science.
It also wants to challenge the EPA’s finding that carbon dioxide, rather than being the basis for all life on earth, is a dangerous pollutant that requires draconian regulations on everything down to your lawn mower.
Officials at the EPA dismiss these calls, saying that its endangerment finding is based “on the soundest peer-reviewed science available, which overwhelmingly indicates that climate change presents a threat to human health and welfare.”
The article continues at IBD.
