I’ve been following closely corporate action in the run up to the vital Climate meeting in Copenhagen in December. Like it or not, when big CEO’s speak, politicians listen. Unfortunately there hasn’t been much to follow for most of the year. Sectors like the IT industry (who stand to be big winners from a strong global deal to significantly cut emissions) have been very quiet, during this crucial period.

Now, as though someone has poked a slumbering giant somewhere very painful, all hell has broken lose in the US in the last few weeks. As Grist puts it “Could corporate America finally be stirring from its climate change slumber?” In reality vested corporate interests of old dirty industry certainly haven’t been slumbering, they and their trade bodies (who often do the grubby job of lobbying) have been putting in overtime for years to keep any chance of effective legislation off the table, especially in the US. That’s the biggest reason why current legislation before the US Senate is far too weak.

The US chamber of Commerce has been leading this charge: “No organization in this country has done more to undermine [climate] legislation,” according to the New York Times editorial page. We covered Apple’s departure and background on our main site yesterday but after so long without this issue being given proper scrutiny there’s been a rash of high profile US media stories on the issue. Businessweek points out why Apple’s departure matters, Boston Globe highlights how the Chamber’s climate scaremongering is coming back to haunt them. The New York Times points out what a mess the Chamber seems to be in over its decision making on Climate. The San Francisco Chronicle has companies fleeing the Chamber like it has the plague.

Obviously stung by this unusual level of negative press the Chamber Chairman hit out at Apple with a letter to Steve Jobs on Tuesday. It wasn’t a wise move for many reasons – Apple and it’s loyal following are well practised at defending the company and it just poured extra fuel on the media fire to keep the story rumbling on with articles on ABC, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal and many others.

Newsweek has a good quote on what it means for the Chamber:

In the world of PR, how big is a problem like this? “It’s devastating,” says crisis PR expert Marina Ein. “I suspect that all of the [chamber] membership is asking itself at this point, Who’s leading us, and why aren’t more efforts being made to find consensus." Crisis communications usually involves people being surprised, for one reason or another. This was an issue, says Ein, they probably should have seen coming.

While certainly the Chamber’s position has been significantly weakened and Apple deserves high praise for its bold move, the Chamber remains a powerful force. More of its biggest members need to speak out or leave to ensure that they are not paying the Chamber to lobby against their own stated policies or change its position. Yes that means we are looking at you, Microsoft and IBM in particular, as Chamber Board members. Other well known companies on the Board include Fedex, Kimberly Clark, UPS, Xerox, Anheuser-Busch, Kodak and Accenture.

I can imagine the next Chamber board meeting might be a bit more interesting than usual. Clearly companies remaining members of the Chamber and silent on this undermines any claims they may make to be pushing for effective climate legislation.

The climate needs much more bold corporate champions now. Who is going to follow Apple or make the same bold speeches as the Ericsson CEO?

And finally, amongst all the heavyweight coverage of the Chamber mini implosion, I enjoyed the Crunchgear take on it all the most. Here’s a little snippet:

The USCC (Chamber of Commerce), however, is all up in arms about all this “nonsense” about new laws designed to protect the environment and whatnot, so it’s doing its damnedest to ensure that those laws don’t get passed. That’s what has upset Apple.

It’s sorta hard to describe what the USCC is, but you can safely think of it as a super powerful lobbyist. It has lobbyists on staff, yeah, but it also so damn influential that it hardly needs to muck about with lobbying, like a common schlup.

Update: Microsoft made a comment to Grist about the Chamber on 25th Sept:

Microsoft takes climate change very seriously and tried to distance the company from the Chamber’s climate shenanigans. “The views expressed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce do not reflect Microsoft’s position on climate change and we are not participating in their climate initiatives,”

Grist gave that a suitable response:

It’s not much of an answer. But if people keep asking, that answer might change.