How Big Business Shaped the GOP’s Stance on Climate Change
How the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is helping to muddy the waters in the GOP’s conversation about urgently required climate action.
By Rebecca Rennecker & Gabriel Slaughter, Jan. 19, 2021
Sun Over Earth NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
We’ve all heard about the increasing temperatures within our atmosphere, the melting glaciers, the rising sea levels, and the severe natural disasters seen worldwide. We know that this change in climate is occurring at an unprecedented rate due to human activity - yet some still find a way to dispute these facts. There is a tendency to have an “out of sight, out of mind” outlook on climate change as we don’t see immediate consequences from our actions. And when money gets involved, the lines are blurred even further.
The modern GOP is a case in point. We weren’t alive back then, but there used to be a vaguely rational, bi-partisan consensus that the federal government should take action to mitigate climate change. In 1988, George H. W. Bush said: “Those who haven’t seen anything about the greenhouse effect don’t know about the Whitehouse effect; We will do something.” Yet 28 years later, Marco Rubio said in a 2016 debate: “sure the climate is changing, and one of the reasons is because the climate has always been changing. There has never been a time when the climate was not changing." So what the hell happened?
Photo by Brendan Smialowski
The modern Republican Party is considered to be the side of “big business,” focused on financial gain above all else. Of course, there is the Trump effect: one of Trump’s biggest talking points is the country’s energy independence through the use of fossil fuels: he praises fossil fuels and discredits alternative renewable energy sources as a waste of time and money.
By framing fossil fuel energy in such a positive light, praising it for its low cost and creation of American jobs, Trump has found a way to even further discourage action against climate change within the Republican Party. Although Trump claims that climate change is a hoax, it is important to note here that not ALL Republicans believe this - they just deprioritize climate change and taking action in favor of short-term economic growth
Perhaps the biggest international effort to mitigate climate change is the Paris Climate Agreement -- a global commitment to keep temperatures from rising above 2℃ over the next century and take further measures to keep it below a 1.5℃ increase. The agreement was signed on April 22, 2016 by 195 countries, but on November 4, 2020, the United States became the first country to withdraw from the climate change commitment as Trump framed it as an unfair economic burden on Americans through its regulations on emissions and investments in renewable energy. The United States is responsible for about 15% of total global greenhouse gas emissions and by withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, it shows that the world’s most powerful economy does not care about the destruction of the planet.
If money, federal policy, and climate are involved, guess who else is? -- corporate America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The chamber’s website proclaims admiration and support for the Paris Climate Agreement. If the stability of our climate system were not at stake, the irony that the Chamber actually co-sponsored the research paper that Trump used to justify leaving the Paris Agreement would be hilarious. Unfortunately, the lives of approximately 1 billion people are at stake. The US Chamber undermines support for science-based climate action within the GOP in two important ways.
It’s subsidiary, the Global Energy Institute continues to promote an “all of the above” energy policy through op-eds, think-tank “research,” lobbying Executive branch agencies like the EPA, and lobbying Congress - all this despite the fact that our economy must rapidly phase down fossil fuel consumption to meet our Paris Agreement targets. This production of pro- fossil fuel talking-points undermines GOP politicians’ ability to speak clearly about the challenges required to address climate change.
Meanwhile, the Chamber’s political donations and electioneering cash (the Chamber has spent more than $150 million on Congressional races since 2010 - more than any other business lobbying group) supports Republican politicians defending chamber member corporations’ rights to further pollute and act against the climate agreement. For example, the Chamber spent $32,000,000 on electioneering activities in the 2010 midterm cycle. Analysts found that 94% of that money funded the campaigns of climate-deniers. More recently, the Chamber urged Congress to vote against a bill that would regulate PFAS chemicals that pollute the water of over 110 million Americans, and which have been proven to cause cancer, lower birth weights, and kidney problems. By funneling dark money into Republican campaigns behind closed doors, the US Chamber is able to ensure there are Republicans in office that will work in favor of the polluting corporations.
Unfortunately, it looks like big money will play a big part in shaping the policies and actions against climate change. There are people in power that are concerned with the profits of the corporate American economy above all else and who are willing to go as far as to deny the urgency of climate change or even call it a hoax. Their control over federal climate policy is directly speeding up the demise of the planet. This is why we at Change The Chamber are trying to hold America’s biggest corporate lobbying group accountable for its lobbying and corporate advocacy.
GEI Leader Marty Durbin testifies before the senate EPW's Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety
The pro- fossil fuel corporate lobbying groups and the GOP are, once again, starting to acknowledge that climate change is real, but they are still far from where they need to be. They have changed their strategy from outright climate denial to a new tactic of underplaying the urgency of climate change and the scale of the action required (which must include a radical cut back in fossil fuel use and approximately $2.5 trillion of investment into green infrastructure over the next 10 years, according to a new Princeton study). In 2009, the Chamber preposterously claimed to the EPA that “a warming of even 3 [degrees] C in the next 100 years would, on balance, be beneficial to humans.” Nowadays, the Chamber’s approach is more subtle: they call for more R&D into renewable energy and carbon capture technology, while continuing to advocate for fossil fuels without any substantial curtailment, including coal, which is by far the most polluting fossil fuel.
The bottom line is that until the US Chamber and other aligned groups endorse a plan to radically curtail fossil fuel use in line with the recommendations of the 2018 IPCC report to reach net zero by 2050, they are denying the urgency of climate change and the unprecedented scale of the risks involved.
In a major step forward, the US Chamber recently endorsed a “market-based mechanism” to “to Accelerate GHG Emissions Reductions Across the U.S. Economy.” It remains to be seen whether this statement will be translated into substantial lobbying and advocacy for science-based climate policy, or whether it will just be more greenwashing. We at Change The Chamber will continue to hold corporate America’s largest lobbying group accountable.