Up in the Air

By Bill Polits

On October 5^th, Apple became the latest in a string of large firms to withdraw from the United States Chamber of Commerce over the Chamber’s stance on climate policy. Since late September, three large utilities – Pacific Gas & Electric, PNM Resources and Excelon have resigned from the chamber over climate policy differences. Since that time, Nike has resigned its place on the Board of Directors of the chamber, but has retained its membership in the organization.

The spat centers on the US Chamber of Commerce’s policy stance clarification of September 29 wherein they say that they oppose current efforts by the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as well as the current legislation in both houses of congress to combat emissions of climate-altering substances. The chamber supports a legislative approach, they say, but does not support the Waxman-Markey bill because it is  not aggressive enough on moving new technologies to market and leaves US businesses open to negative economic consequences, while doing little to require other countries to step up to the plate.

The head of the Chamber of Commerce has cried “foul,” saying that environmentalists have put pressure on these companies, and chastised Apple for misstating the chamber’s position.

The Impact on Fire Safety

If events such as large companies withdrawing from the chamber are the leaves in the bottom of the tea cup, the smart money is on the assumption that change is going to come. The fact that large companies are willing to engage in a public battle over the issue of climate change and the US regulatory and legislative response to it, highlights the urgency this issue elicits in the business community – including the large manufacturers of fire suppressant gases having a large Global Warming Potential (GWP). The thinking is that these companies need a solid set of expectations on which to base their long-range planning, and they’re thinking that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.