We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: We won’t be able to meaningfully reduce climate pollution in the U.S. until we do something about trade associations.

Organized business groups aligned with the fossil fuel industry collectively spend hundreds of millions each year to stymie climate and environmental policy. From 2008 to 2018, trade groups allied with Big Oil and other major climate polluters outspent clean energy trade groups 27 to 1.

Two of the most climate obstructionist trade associations that work on behalf of major polluters are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. The Chamber is “the number one obstruction in the path of a just transition to clean energy,” according to a 2023 report on the group’s long history of anti-climate lobbying. The group was a major voice against President Joe Biden’s signature climate law; it opposed pollution limits for power plants and transportation; and it worked to dismantle climate transparency rules for public corporations. Currently, the group is suing Vermont to stop its game-changing climate law that would hold corporations accountable for damage they do to the planet.

And though the Business Roundtable insists it supports climate policy, the group has lobbied against many major efforts to reduce pollution. The association is currently calling on Congress to ban environment- and climate- focused shareholder proposals, which often seek to force companies to set more ambitious climate targets, such as Chevron shareholders’ successful 2021 proposal to reduce Scope 3 emissions. In 2021, the Business Roundtable also “spent millions of dollars to stop the Biden administration’s Build Back Better agenda, which included significant efforts to reduce carbon emissions and promote clean energy,” the Guardian reported.

These group’s anti-climate lobbying activities are only possible because of the millions they receive in annual membership payments from corporate members. And according to a new report, many of those corporate members claim to be climate champions themselves.