Why Businesses (Big and Small) Should Support Climate Action

Tom Benson, owner of the World's Largest Laundromat in Berwyn, Ill., is tired of listening to conservative industry groups' bluster that climate change legislation is bad for business.

That's because clean energy saved his.

When Benson bought his business a decade ago, all that hot water helping scrub everything from Speedos to sheets ate up a staggering 25 percent of total monthly revenues. With 153 washers using thousands of gallons of hot water daily, you can only imagine the energy costs. And that's before factoring in the 148 dryers.

So to cut his natural gas costs, Benson installed a solar hot water system on his roof. Three dozen 10-by-4-foot solar panels now produce more than 2,400 gallons of hot water daily, saving him some $25,000 a year.

"Our energy bills could have sunk this business," says Benson. "Now, they're a source of pride."

That's why Benson joined 10,000 small business leaders – hundreds of them U.S. Chamber of Commerce members – in signing Moveon.org's petition last week asking the chamber to stop lobbying against the Waxman-Markey clean energy bill. The small biz shout-out echoes the dozens of major U.S. companies already calling for strong policies to build a 21st century clean energy economy.

Benson knows firsthand that renewable energy incentives like those in the Waxman-Markey bill are critical for putting clean energy options within reach of small businesses. A grant from the state paid for half of his solar water heating system's cost.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, however, has been re-playing its classic fear-mongering tune with the Waxman-Markey bill, saying it's "unworkable and would cause significant economic harm by imposing a multitrillion-dollar tax on businesses."

It's a tired song. This is the same crowd that fought ozone-protection legislation measures in 1995, saying the costs would exceed $135 billion and that industries would collapse. The actual costs were barely 1 percent of that, the health benefits were enormous, and chemical companies made millions producing less dangerous chemicals.

But if 10,000 businesses say the Chamber doesn't speak for them, just whom does it represent?

Not major U.S. businesses like Nike, Starbucks, Levis & Strauss Co., the Gap and Sun Microsystems, who are members of Business for Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP). The BICEP coalition of consumer companies has publicly endorsed Waxman-Markey and published its own core principles for getting the country on a clean energy path.

"The way we see it, addressing climate change will help companies like ours reduce operating costs and mitigate future economic instability due to extreme weather conditions, agricultural loss and the very real human costs they bring," says Ben Packard, Starbucks VP of Global Sustainability.

Starbucks already sees the imprint of climate change on coffee growing regions around the world. Global rainfall and harvest patterns are shifting, hurting farming communities and shrinking the availability of arable land.

Nor does the chamber speak for the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of dozens of major corporations, many heavy carbon emitters, that also support pollution reductions, CO2 limits, and immediate steps to improve energy efficiency and boost clean energy.