It is not a good week to be ALEC. So far, three major tech companies have come forward and expressed their desire to disassociate themselves with the lobbying group. The latest of these being Yahoo, which confirmed its intent in a statement to Common Cause yesterday.
“We’ve decided to discontinue our membership in ALEC. We periodically review our membership in organizations and, at this time, we will no longer participate in the ALEC Task Force on Communications and Technology,” said Yahoo.
The announcement comes on the heels of a bad breakup between Google and the conservative group earlier this week.
On Monday, Google’s executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, stated that Google felt its involvement with ALEC was a mistake and that ALEC was outright lying about climate change.
“We funded them as part of a political campaign for something unrelated. I think the consensus within the company was that that was some sort of a mistake and so we’re trying not to do that in the future,” said Schmidt.
ALEC has a history of pro-Right propaganda and constantly tries to undermine climate science in the interests of Big Oil.
“The company has a very strong view that we should make decision in politics based on facts – what a shock. And the facts on climate change are not in question anymore. Everyone understands climate change is occurring and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and make the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people, they’re just, they’re just literally lying,” Schmidt said.
Facebook has also expressed its lack of interest in continuing a relationship with ALEC.
In a statement reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, Facebook expressed that they no longer found themselves able to bring ALEC in line with the company’s views and thus would be terminating the relationship.
“We reevaluate our memberships on an annual basis, and are in that process now. While we have tried to work within ALEC to bring that organization closer to our view on some key issues, it seems unlikely that we will make sufficient progress so we are not likely to renew our membership in 2015,” said Facebook.
ALEC took the departure of Google from its ranks as an opportunity to throw a jab at the left though:
“It is unfortunate to learn Google has ended its membership in the American Legislative Council as a result of public pressure from left-leaning individuals and organizations who intentionally confuse free market policy perspectives for climate change denial,” said Lisa Nelson, ALEC’s chief executive.
All signs point to the tech-giants actions not being the result of caving to pressure. They’re some of the most powerful companies in the world. Instead, as those companies have stated publicly now, it just doesn’t make sense to continue a relationship with a company that so obviously is just lying about climate change and making the future a much worse place.
