Industry wants to try climate change - August 25, 2009
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents 3 million large and small businesses, wants to put the science of climate change on trial, reports the Los Angeles Times.
The chamber is pushing for the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a public hearing -- with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge to rule on whether humans are causing global warming, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The goal of the chamber is to guard against potential emissions regulations by undermining the scientific consensus on climate change. If the EPA denies it request, the chamber says it plans to take the fight to federal court.
Chamber officials have likened their move to the so-called “Scopes Monkey Trial” in 1926, which put evolution on trial. High school teacher, John Scopes, from Tennessee, was tried for teaching the ideas of Charles Darwin in defiance of the 1925 Butler Act - a law forbidding public school teachers in Tennessee from denying the biblical account of man’s origin. Scopes was convicted, but the ruling was later overturned on appeal due to a legal technicality.
"It would be evolution versus creationism," William Kovacs, the chamber's senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs, told the Los Angeles Times. "It would be the science of climate change on trial."
