Political commentators keep describing the climate-change legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in June as stalled in the U.S. Senate.

Perhaps, but the latest drama is unfolding outside the political arena, in the offices of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is fielding some uncomfortable criticism over its opposition to the American Clean Energy and Security Act.

The U.S. Chamber is used to being tarred by labor and environmental groups. But this time, the revolt is from within. Three large utilities say they will leave the chamber over the issue.

Exelon Corp. became the latest and largest to do so yesterday. Chairman and CEO John W. Rowe, in an address to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, said his Chicago company is so committed to climate legislation that it will let its chamber membership lapse.

“Because of their stridency against carbon legislation, Exelon has decided not to renew its membership in the U.S. Chamber this year,” Rowe said.

It was only one line in a speech largely about energy efficiency. But in shunning the chamber, the parent of Philadelphia-based Peco joins PG&E Corp., of San Francisco, and PNM Resources Inc., of Albuquerque, N.M., which within the space of a week announced their intentions to leave the chamber. With a market value of $33.1 billion, Exelon is much bigger than PG&E and PNM.

No one from the U.S. Chamber, which has about 3 million members, returned a phone call yesterday seeking comment.

PG&E chairman and CEO Peter Darbee was even more forceful in his criticism of the chamber.

“We find it dismaying that the Chamber neglects the indisputable fact that a decisive majority of experts have said the data on global warming are compelling and point to a threat that cannot be ignored,” Darbee wrote in a letter to the chamber. Excerpts from that letter are posted on PG&E’s corporate blog.

The U.S. Chamber, as an advocate for business, has been challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from cars. Though the organization has said Congress should enact legislation to regulate greenhouse gases, the chamber does not support what the House has passed. (The clean-energy bill is often referred to as Waxman-Markey, after its sponsors.)

Saying the “carbon-based free lunch is over,” Rowe sees that opposition as a mistake. “Inaction on climate is not an option. If Congress does not act, the EPA will, and the result will be more arbitrary, more expensive, and more uncertain for investors and the industry than a reasonable, market-based legislative solution,” Rowe said in a statement.

All that would be Washington as usual had a U.S. Chamber vice president named Bill Kovacs not invoked the phrase “Scopes monkey trial” in an August article in the Los Angeles Times to describe the chamber’s effort to put “the science of climate change on trial.”

Kovacs later said his use of that analogy evoking the 1925 trial over the teaching of evolution in Tennessee public schools was “inappropriate” and detracted from the chamber’s message.

Exelon, PG&E and PNM weren’t buying that. All are card-carrying members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which is also supported by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

The group has been calling for federal legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse-gas emissions. Does it hope to influence the legislative process? Absolutely.

By turning their backs to the U.S. Chamber, Exelon and the others are showing they’ve given up trying to influence “the voice of business.”

Last week, the McKinsey Global Institute released statistics on the mightly blow struck by the financial crisis.

The value of the world’s financial assets fell by $16 trillion to $178 trillion. That’s still a lot of dough, but the disruption touched more than our 401(k) plans.

Looking at the flow of capital into and out of countries, McKinsey calculated an 82 percent decline to $1.9 trillion in 2008 from $10.5 trillion in 2007.

That means capital that had flowed freely all over the world slippled to a trickle.

At the Carnegie Mellon University conference that preceded the G-20 Summit, David M. Marchick was outspoken about his concern should foreign direct investment not improve. “FDI is responsible for producing higher paying jobs and higher levels of R&D,” he said.

Marchick, managing director for global government and regulatory affairs for the Carlyle Group, cited data that foreign direct investment is responsible for 5 percent of all jobs in the United States, but 20 percent of jobs in manufacturing.

As a result of the financial crisis, such investment has plummetted. In the United States, inbound investment declined by half, while outbound investment dropped by 75 percent, he said.

Plus, the United States often gets squeamish about where its foreign direct investment comes from. Remember the ‘80s when the Japanese were going to own America? Or when Dubai Ports World tried to buy five U.S. container ports in 2006? Not our finest hours.

In Pennsylvania, it’s clear some foreign investment is not only welcomed but embraced. As Gov. Rendell reminds us constantly, Spain’s Gamesa chose the state to build two factories to make wind turbines.

Nuclear weapons will trump economic harmony every time.

News about the existence of a second uranium enrichment plant in Iran certainly made the statement by the leaders of the Group of Twenty sound merely like a global to-do list.

But the G-20 Summit that ended in Pittsburgh Friday was the clearest sign yet that China, India and other developing nations are critical to the stability of the world economy.

President Obama's prepared remarks to the media reiterated many of the themes that had been expected: stronger international financial regulations, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, maintaining recovery plans until economic growth is restored, and overhauling the International Monetary Fund.

Most important, it will be the G-20, not the G-8, that will guide, shape and seek to protect the world economy.

This is not window-dressing. Back in the 1980s, when many U.S. politicians, labor unions and industry associations complained about ever-growing Japanese imports, Japan at least had a seat at the Group of Eight.

We still buy plenty of cars made by Japanese companies, but it's China that inflames the "Buy American" crowd. It's China whose economy has undergone a massive revolution since the '70s. But it had no seat at the G-8 table.

The G-20, formed in response to the Asian financial crisis, showed that global finance has indeed changed. No longer could the Old Economy G-8 "fix" what ails the globe. And no longer could these fast-growing economies be kept not only from the table of riches, but garage of responsibilities.

So, the Pittsburgh Summit made it official: The G-8 wasn't inclusive enough to promote global growth effectively. The G-20 is now the vehicle by which the nations that account for 85 percent of the world's gross domestic product will cooperate for the benefit of all.

The protesters and some of the activist groups in Pittsburgh advocating on behalf of the poor would beg to differ with that characterization. They view a host of human rights issues that the G-20 will not take on, and point out that there are 174 other countries that aren't inside the bigger tent. (Do we really need a second United Nations?)

In response to a reporter's question, President Obama said he hoped the protesters would read the G-20 communique. The goals set are "strong recognition from the most diverse collection of leaders in history that it is important to make sure that the market is working for ordinary people," he said.

Inclusion is good. Still, describing the G-20 as the world economy's board of directors gives me pause. In this country, big corporate boards aren't always better boards.

Given how intertwined our financial futures are, this shift to the G-20 makes a lot of sense. But it's results, not intentions, that matter to ordinary people.

Bob Eisenbeis, the chief monetary economist for Cumberland Advisors in Vineland, N.J., definitely sees the G-20 imposing limits on bankers pay, but he's convinced that banks will get around them.

How? Through innovation or by redefining pay, he said.

Great, that'll restore faith in banking.

"Clearly, pay wasn't the main cause of the crisis or so many small banks wouldn't have gotten into the trouble they did and failed," said Eisenbeis, who had been director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta before joining Cumberland.

Still executive pay was the "headline issue" heading into the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wasn't inching away from trying to "limit the risk that compensation practices in the world's largest institutions encourage excessive risk-taking."

But who will do it? Eisenbeis does not think it should be the Federal Reserve. Rather, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency "could do it just as well and they are into many more banks than the Fed is."

To Eisenbeis, the focus on compensation is a sideline to the roles leverage, lack of real capital and lack of regulatory enforcement played in escalating the financial crisis to history book status.

And no G-20 communique can substitute for flexing regulatory muscles and wringing out the excess from the system.

The difference between Thursday and Friday is one of anticipation.

My walk through the downtown to reach the Mellon Arena was much like yesterday. Little traffic on the streets, scattered pedestrians. But there was much more of a visible security presence, likely in preparation for a major march by protesters expected around midday.

I heard more sirens wailing today. They seemed even more piercing without the noise of everyday traffic and sidewalk chatter.

The bus from the media security screening area to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center practically zipped through town today along the same route. That's as much as a bus can zip, squeezing through concrete barriers and fencing.

Inside the convention center, the media room is more animated now. A briefing by the U.S. President on an issue that was unexpected (Iranian nuclear activity) will do that. But the anticipation of getting the Group of Twenty Summit communique is what may be keeping more reporters inside the house today.

There's room for 1,500 reporters in the ground-floor media room. But no one will get caught without a seat. It's a media room that's "too big too fail" although that's probably not how anyone dealing with a global financial crisis would ever describe it.

It all ends for Pittsburgh today. For the G-20, now poised to gain in importance over the better known G-8, the summit certainly comes to end. But its work to promote greater cooperation among the industrial and developing economies is really just starting.

Does hosting the G-20 Summit provide enough of a sense of civic pride to overcome the sheer difficulty many Pittsburgh residents have had in doing something as simple as making your bus for your commute home?

I stood with several hardy travellers Thursday evening at Wood Street and the Boulevard of the Allies, waiting for an airport-bound Port Authority bus.

Plenty of buses passed, but for an hour none was the 28X. The Port Authority had warned that the dinner at the Phipps Conservatory in the Oakland section for the world leaders and their spouses would disrupt several bus routes, including the 28X.

But the dinner was long underway, and the wait became an exercise in planning alternate means of getting out of the city. Cabs are scarce near the security zone, so flagging one would involve quite a walk, I was told. One thought another bus line could get us close to our destination, but no one was sure.

The conversations turned to the G-20 and the disruption to ordinary routines. Several said they were proud that Pittsburgh was hosting the world. Some of those who worked in retail talked about the day's customers who spoke with all sorts of accents. Some simply showing printouts from the Internet of items they wished to buy. But they can't wait until normalcy resumes.

A muggy evening turned into a soft drizzle. The traffic, such as it was, consisted of buses (not ours), Humvees, ambulances, police cars, a string of gray vans, and some folks on bicycles. Several at the bus stop began to envy the bicyclists.

At one point, on both sides of the Boulevard of the Allies, came a column of state police in riot gear. The walked two abreast, silently. As they neared our bus stop with about a dozen people, including one man in a wheelchair, I heard one officer say to another, "We stay on the sidewalk." And on they went.

After about 90 minutes, a 28X pulled up, six of us got on, and settled in for the next leg home.

Here's how smart Pittsburgh attorney Michael Bleier is: He was in Washington Thursday, thus avoiding the security net thrown over the downtown.

And what a net it was. The security zone around the David L. Lawrence Convention Center where the Group of Twenty is meeting served to keep what must be a bustling area any other workday very quiet.

To me, it felt like the downtowns of most U.S. cities early on a Sunday morning. The sidewalks were largely empty, except for the police, National Guard and other security personnel at every intersection.

The Macy's department store on Fifth Avenue was open for business, its display windows trying their best to appear inviting. But to whom? On the next block, the T-Mobile and Sprint phone stores were boarded up with plywood as if expecting a hurricane.

An official with the convention center proudly told me that the 20-nation economic summit, which ends today, is the biggest event it has hosted - bigger even than the FanFest event associated with baseball's 2006 All-Star Game.

I can only take his word for it because the media is being kept far away from the delegates. Two exhibit halls may be filled with the multilingual sounds of deliberation and diplomacy, but all I've seen are empty briefing rooms and a cavernous media center.

As for Bleier, who served as general counsel for Mellon Bank from 1992 to 2006, said he expects the G-20 to produce a "nice-sounding communique" about reining in executive compensation.

But he doesn't think government should be treading on what is the board of directors' responsibility.

"The issue of compensation is a cultural one," Bleier, now an attorney at Reed Smith L.L.P., said. "Management sets the tone" for how a company operates.

He concedes that there are plenty of examples of ill-conceived compensation schemes. When he was at Mellon, the message was to keep it simple. "Our CEO did not want to put something on the books that he did not understand," said Bleier, who was general counsel under two chief executives, Frank V. Cahouet and Martin G. McGuinn.

It is up to management to implement incentive compensation that does not reward people who create losses for an institution, he said. But despite many stories of just that kind of disconnect going on, Bleier does not think government should or can legislate it away.

"The real issue is not compensation, but the right risk management," he said. "If a company has the right culture, and it produces earnings and they're good earnings, then you won't have the risk that you've seen."

The culture of financial institutions needs to change, Bleier said. New rules and regulations can't make that happen, he said.

The quality of the people at the top can.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sent a message to all the doubters out there that the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh will produce a framework that will "limit the risk" from the compensation practices of the world's largest financial institutions.

A framework, not actual caps on pay.

It will be up to each nation to pass a mix of rules and laws to make sure they abide by that framework, Geithner said. So what would prevent a country from non-compliance? The Financial Stability Board, which was established in April, that's who.

The FSB has its roots in the Financial Stability Forum that the Group of Seven set up in 1999. It was last November when the global financial crisis spurred the leaders of the G-20 nations to expand the forum to make it more effective in promoting financial stability.

So it will be up to the FSB to assess the programs that each nation has put into place to deal with pay at the biggest financial institutions, Geithner said. Those not up to snuff will be viewed as not fulfilling commitments they made under the framework.

(The FSB held its second plenary meeting in Paris on Sept. 15, and you can read its statement here.)

And Geithner was clear that the G-20 expects to nations to act now on these compensation issues, so that financial institutions must respond to new laws in "this calendar year." Not next year. Not two years from now.

So it's looking like it'll be "framework Friday."

So is Philadelphia ready to host one of these global events?

You might think having been the site of the 2000 Republican National Convention, it would be a snap. After all, protesters came to Philadelphia, with marches and banners. The Convention Center, which is being expanded, might even be able to host it rather than the Wachovia Center.

But before our tourism and marketing folks gear up to pitch the Obama administration on Philadelphia's suitability as an international city, I'd hope they take a good look at what is not going on in Pittsburgh today.

Given the city's Convention Center is at 12th & Arch streets, the security zone would probably mean Market & Broad Streets would be off-limits. It would be Chinatown shopowners putting boards over their windows. And with certain roads into the city likely closed, getting to work in Center City would be a major challenge.

Let's let Pittsburgh bask in the glow of the international spotlight for a while. Mayor Luke Ravenstahl has said he hopes to see $35 million in tourist spending out of the G-20 summit. I can't see how that math works: Close the downtown and encourage people to stay home from work.

At any rate, the bill for the heavy security efforts is likely to consume most if not all of that economic impact.