The Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM) is dropping its membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the business group’s stance on climate change. Earlier this week, PNM criticized the Chamber of Commerce, saying, “We believe the science is compelling enough to act sooner rather than later, and we support comprehensive federal legislation to meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect customers against unreasonable cost increases.”


In a statement, PNM spokesman Don Brown wrote:

At PNM Resources, we see climate change as the most pressing environmental and economic issue of our time. Given that view, and a natural limit on both company time and resources, we have decided that we can be most productive by working with organizations that share our view on the need for thoughtful, reasonable climate change legislation and want to push that agenda forward in Congress. These organizations include the Edison Electric Institute, the association of shareholder-owned electric companies, and the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a group of businesses and environmental organizations of which we are a founding member.

As a result, we have decided to let our membership in the U.S. Chamber lapse when it expires at the end of this year.

Earlier this week the Northern California utility Pacific Gas and Electric Co. pulled out of the Chamber of Commerce for the same reason.

As the Albuquerque Journal’s John Fleck notes, the Chamber of Commerce has called for a “Scopes monkey trial” into climate change. The Scopes monkey trial was the 1925 trial which put substitute teacher John Scopes on trial for teaching evolution in a Tennessee school.