This article from October but is talking about how this act of leaving a large and influential lobby group like US Chamber of Commerce is unprecedented. Companies are reading the future differently, and some like Apple are betting on a carbon-scarce future. This is indicative of two things: first, it has become unacceptable to be seen as global warming denier, and second, the business coalition for status quo is weakening every day. There will probably be a tipping point down the line - watch for it.
Exit Through Lobby by James Surowiecki, Newyorker Magazine
Last Monday, Apple announced that it would be quitting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of the Chamber’s opposition to global-warming legislation. And that was just the latest in a series of defections: in the past few weeks, the public-utility companies Pacific Gas & Electric, PNM Resources, and Exelon all announced that they’d be leaving the Chamber, while Nike quit the organization’s board of directors. Historically speaking, this is a positive exodus....
Why the difference? Partly, it may be a matter of self-interest; Exelon, for instance, has big investments in renewable energy. But it may reflect a calculation that global warming is simply too big an issue to get wrong, both economically—few companies are really going to benefit from the melting of the polar ice caps—and from a public-relations point of view.
It concludes with a strong statement
global warming isn’t just bad for the planet; it’s bad for business.
Mercury News, among others, has reported on this:
"Apple is committed to protecting the environment and the communities in which we operate around the world," Catherine Novelli, Apple's vice president of worldwide government affairs, said in a letter to Thomas Donahue, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce president and CEO. "We strongly object to the Chamber's recent comments opposing the EPA's effort to limit greenhouse gases."
The move comes amid efforts by Apple to burnish its green image. The Cupertino-based company revealed its carbon footprint — or total greenhouse-gas emissions — for the first time last month, announcing on its Web site that 53 percent of the 10.2 million tons of annual carbon emissions it takes responsibility for comes from consumer use of its products.
The company has taken a broad view of greenhouse gas emissions, using a "life-cycle analysis" to calculate greenhouse gas emissions for each product, from production to transportation, consumer use and recycling.
"We believe it has resulted in the broadest possible measure of the carbon footprint for each of our new products," Apple said in response to a lengthy questionnaire by the Carbon Disclosure Project, which publishes emissions data for the world's largest corporations. "No other electronics company reports this information at the product level, but we think they should."
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