PG&E resigns from US Chamber over climate change dispute

Pub date September 22, 2009
SectionPolitics Blog

By Steven T. Jones

While we’ve regularly criticized Pacific Gas & Electric for its corrupting political influence and for not doing enough on climate change, but we were happy to hear the company has resigned from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the business association’s scurrilous campaign to dispute that climate change is real and caused by human activity.

“An intellectually honest argument over the best policy response to the challenges of climate change is one thing; disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality of these challenges is quite another,” PG&E CEO Peter Darbee wrote to the Chambers, according to the company.

The recent efforts by conservatives and corporations to turn back the clock on our understanding of climate change (which even the San Francisco Examiner is promoting) are disgraceful and should have no place in honest political debate. After a weird summer of right-wing Red-baiting, gun-toting, epithet-spewing antics, it’s an indication of how low the political discourse in this country has fallen when PG&E is calling out corporate America.