American Business For Clean Energy

 Cross-posted from The Huffington Post

The Weekly Standard ran a cover story this week called, "In Denial: The Meltdown of the Climate Campaign." Despite the cute play on words about who is denying what, the article got it all wrong. Climate change legislation is not dead--not as long as publications like this keep putting it on its cover.

As one experienced senator recently told an NRDC trustee: "I have never seen an important piece of legislation get passed that wasn't declared dead several times before."

Two weeks ago, BP America, Caterpillar Inc. and ConocoPhillips decided not to renew their membership in the US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), an alliance of major businesses and environmental groups calling for federal regulation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Since then, there have been some wild assertions about the health of the movement for clean energy in America. A lot of people are looking at this like tea leaves, and trying to figure out what it means, so here's my reading.

Businesses in America are realizing that a clean energy economy is no longer a dream or a goal - it is a requirement. Businesses have a choice between obstinately clinging to the fossil economy (already dead) or reading the writing on the wall and getting behind the clean energy movement. Thousands of businesses and organizations across the country get it: