Groups pressure Disney, Pepsi, the Gap to quit U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Cinderella's Castle at Walt Disney World.
(Image credit: Mark Ashman/Disney Parks via Getty Images)

Working together, several activist groups — Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Action on Smoking and Health, and Public Citizen — are urging the CEOs of Pepsi, the Gap, and Disney to quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The coalition says the chamber, the largest lobbying group in the U.S. and biggest business organization in the world, is actively working to promote tobacco products and fight legislation that combats climate change. In a letter to Disney's Bob Iger, the coalition said that while his company has committed to reducing its net greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2020, the Chamber of Commerce opposes the Paris climate agreement, is suing to block the implementation of the Clean Power Plan, regularly lobbies against legislation that seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and spends millions on ads to elect candidates who support the fossil fuel industry, The Guardian reports.

In recent years, 13 of the biggest companies in the world — including Starbucks, Costco, Mattel, Mars, General Mills, Hewlett-Packard, and Unilever — have left the chamber, Public Citizen said. In 2015, CVS, the first major drugstore to stop selling tobacco products, quit the chamber once the company found out the organization was lobbying foreign governments to ease restrictions on tobacco sales. Dan Dudis of Public Citizen told The Guardian this is just the beginning of an effort to get members to exit the chamber, which is pushing "the interests of a minority."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.