Open Letter to Caterpillar on Cap-and-Trade

This week heavy-machine manufacturer Caterpillar held its annual shareholders meeting, and we and 70 or so of our good friends weighed in on one of the company’s more regrettable recent corporate decisions:

On the eve of the Caterpillar Corporation’s stockholders meeting in Chicago, 70+ groups and companies have sent a letter to Caterpillar, Inc. CEO Jim Owens urging him to immediately withdraw Caterpillar from the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP). USCAP is a coalition of companies and environmental groups seeking to establish a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions.

The signatories to the letter note that capping carbon emissions, as advocated by USCAP, would harm two groups disproportionately: The poor and Caterpillar stockholders.

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Bob Murray, founder and president of Murray Energy Corporation, in his own letter to Caterpillar earlier this year, chided the company for allying with environmental groups that “have been attempting to terminate the use of coal for decades.”

In addition to The National Center for Public Policy Research, think tanks and policy organizations that have signed the letter include: the American Conservative Union, FreedomWorks, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Tennessee Center for Policy Research, Frontiers of Freedom, Illinois Policy Institute, 60 Plus (an association of seniors) and the National Tax Limitation Committee.

Full press release here.