Chamber of Commerce Goes After Climate Dissenters In Its Ranks | Mother Jones

A new split over climate policy is brewing within the ranks of the US Chamber of Commerce as a breakaway group of local chambers is getting ready to publicly split with the business lobby's hardline stance against climate legislation. The new climate coalition, known as the Chambers for Innovation and Clean Energy (CICE), will press Congress to take stronger action on climate and energy issues. It has already signed up about a dozen chambers and will officially launch later this year.

The US Chamber is already working behind the scenes to discredit the new group. After it caught wind of the effort last month, it fired off a letter to local chamber leaders, discouraging them from joining CICE, which it claimed was "established by the Natural Resources Defense Council."
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In a letter that Falk sent to local chamber leaders last week in response to the US Chamber's attack, he speculated that its claim of a NRDC link might be based on CICE's connection with Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), a NRDC partner group that bills itself as "the independent business voice for the environment." Falk and E2 cofounder Bob Epstein say that the group did help create CICE's website but did not conceive of the idea for the group or craft its talking points.