Increasingly, businesses are severing their ties to industry lobbying groups that oppose climate change legislation, according to an article in today’s New York Times by reporters Clifford Krauss and Kate Galbraith.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been the primary target of businesses’ scorn thus far. Electric utilities Exelon and Pacific Gas & Electric have both said they will withdraw from the Chamber. Nike and Johnson & Johnson have been publicly critical of the Chamber, which is lobbying against cap-and-trade legislation currently under consideration in Congress and against EPA efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions through regulation.

Duke Energy, historically no friend of the environment, pulled out of the National Association of Manufacturers, another industry lobbying group, and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. “It was clear that many influential members would never support climate legislation in 2009 or 2010 no matter how it was written,” Tom Williams of Duke told the Times.

In the debate over cap-and-trade legislation and the ensuing rift between the business community and the lobbyists that purport to serve them, the Chamber and others are showing their true colors: Priority number one is not working in the best interest of American businesses, it’s opposing every legislative or regulatory effort that would bring about even a modicum of positive social change. It’s dogmatic conservatism at its worst.

For years, it was difficult to distinguish between advancing the interests of business and preserving the status quo. The economy was flourishing; business was good; if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

But the present economic downturn has apparently reminded many business leaders of the virtue of long-term stability and sustainability. Climate change is an obvious example. Global warming is no longer perceived as a threat to only fuzzy animals and pretty flowers. Fossil fuel dependence and carbon emissions are unsustainable for everyone – people, businesses, and the American, and even global, economy.

Businesses like Exelon, Nike, and others have seen the writing on the wall. The Chamber hasn’t. Now, the lobbyists are aligned only with Congressional Republicans and many gutless centrist Democrats who are blindly resistant to change.

Even though the status quo crowd says that cap-and-trade legislation would kill the economy, it is not doing the business community any favors. From The Washington Post:

"Inaction on climate is not an option," John Rowe, Exelon's chairman and chief executive, said in a speech at an energy-efficiency conference. "If Congress does not act, the EPA will, and the result will be more arbitrary, more expensive and more uncertain for investors and the industry than a reasonable, market-based legislative solution." 

In the latest issue of OMB Watch’s biweekly e-newsletter, The Watcher, we discuss the current state of greenhouse gas reduction policy including several EPA rulemakings and a recent influential federal court ruling that will allow coal utilities to be sued for creating a public nuisance:

Polluters could increasingly feel themselves pinned between litigation and oncoming federal regulations being developed by the Obama administration. The threat of tort lawsuits and prescriptive requirements imposed by government agencies may compel polluters to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. […]

Congress faces a choice: It could act itself by mandating a comprehensive, market-based, and tightly controlled emissions-reduction regime, or it could let EPA continue with more familiar command-and-control regulations and preserve a role for the courts, both of which would yield less predictable results.

Update (9.30.09): President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue defends the Chamber's position in a statement.