“Will the Chamber stop scheming with climate denial organizations? Will the Chamber stop opposing climate action candidates? Those are the tests. This, by the way, is not a PR test. It’s not a PR test of how little you can get away with; this is a science test. It’s a science test of how we keep our planet below 1.5 degrees celsius global warming. If we fail the science test, how well we did on the PR test is gonna look pretty silly.”
Lack of Transparency
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the largest and best-funded industry lobbying group in D.C. It has spent $1.6 billion in lobbying over the past 21 years - three times more than any other industry lobbying organization in D.C.
The Chamber does not disclose its membership or its donations.
The Chamber claims to represent “300,000 direct members”. This is a powerful lobbying tool: the Chamber claims to speak for Main Street. The reality is that the Chamber only has around 32,000 paying members.
The Chamber does not speak for Main Street: in 2014, the Chamber and its affiliates raised $272 million from donations. 64% of that money came from just 119 mega-donations. It went against the wishes of the majority of its membership on tobacco, pensions, financial regulation, and now climate change.
Although the information is not public, journalists have found reasons to believe that the Chamber’s largest donations come from fossil fuel companies.
For the past twenty years, the Chamber has aggressively and successfully promoted the agenda of large fossil fuel companies.