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Ebay walks away from Climate Change flat-earthers

by on19 December 2014



American Legislative Exchange Council is everything that eBay isn’t

Ebay has walked away from a lobby group which is anti-climate change, wants to defund public services, oppose Internet neutrality and limit workers' protections.

Many wondered what a technology company like eBay was doing working with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). As its membership became known, and its policies became clearer, technology companies fled fast. In September, Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, said his company wanted out because ALEC was "literally lying" about climate change. Yahoo, Facebook and Yelp left ALEC soon after.

Many of the tech companies announcing their departure were involved in ALEC to support its free-market initiatives on communications and technology, but found the organization’s treatment of issues related to climate change distasteful. When it started to support the telcos views on Net Neutrality rather than the likes of the technology companies people started to question their involvement.

Nick Surgey of the Centre for Media and Democracy revealed much of the group’s agenda by releasing its library of model legislation — boilerplate bills co-written by lobbyists that state-level legislators present as their own.

While ALEC has been denying the existence of climate change or pushing policies the make it impossible to take action on carbon. It is clear that there is a tipping point that any companies that are concerned about brand damage are deciding that it’s not worth risking the ongoing damage to their reputation through ongoing participation in the outfit.

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