Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
U.S. chamber wants Scopes trial on climate change
The biggest business lobby in the United States wants to hold a public hearing “to put the science of global warming on trial,” The Los Angeles Times reports.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to drive back major emission limits, wants the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to hold the hearing on evidence that climate change is man-made.
“Chamber officials say it would be ‘the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century’ — complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect,” the newspaper reported.
“It would be evolution versus creationism,” William Kovacs, the chamber’s senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs, told the LA Times. “It would be the science of climate change on trial.”
The EPA told the Times that a hearing would be “a waste of time” and called a lawsuit by the chamber “frivolous.”
“The chamber proposal ‘brings to mind for me the Salem witch trials, based on myth,’ said Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist for the environmental group Union of Concerned Scientists. ‘In this case, it would be ignoring decades of publicly accessible evidence.’”
But if the EPA refuses to hold the hearing, the chamber is threatening to take the fight to federal court.
Businesses rely on you, the consumer to buy their products and services to survive, prosper,develop and expand. Therefore you are the key to reversing climate change. If you care enough to question who sells you your products or services and vote with your feet, big business will be forced to move with you. In the old days, you did not expect the milk man to deliver your milk and then trample over your tulips on the way out, so today we don’t expect companies to make profits at the cost of the environment that we and our children live in. Big business needs to change in its own sector, as we all do, and every little reverses climate change.