The Future is In Our Hands

Sometimes change happens in small shifts, sometimes in a bit of an earthquake. So there we were on the same day Senators Kerry and Boxer released the Clean Energy and American Power Act for Senate consideration, the CIA announced a new Climate Change Center because of potential security risks of environmental issues and Nike dropped off the US Chamber of Commerce Board.

As a founding member of BICEP (Businesses for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy), being a board member of the Chamber just didn’t quite work for Nike. After all, the Chamber says global warming is a good thing … because we’ll have fewer cold days. Try telling that to cold-water fisherman in Montana or a skier in New Hampshire.

The Chamber isn’t working for a lot of companies, including three utilities, PG&E, PNM Resources and Exelon who have said “see ya” to the Chamber in the last few weeks. And on Monday, Apple headed for the door as well, telling the Chamber it would prefer the group take a more “constructive role” in addressing the climate crisis.

This week, nearly 200 business leaders are on Capitol Hill to tell Senators that passing climate and energy legislation is good for business. Included in the group is John Rowe, chairman and CEO of Exelon. He sees the passage of climate and energy legislation as the ticket to a faster investment stream that will create more jobs in a low-carbon economy.

Also this week, 28 companies, including Johnson & Johnson, GE, Weyerhauser, United Technologies, and Duke Energy, are launching their own advertising campaign to support climate and energy legislation that caps the carbon pollution that causes global warming. The ad campaign’s headline says it all: America’s Energy and Environmental Future is in Our Hands.