From The Washington Free Beacon, Lachlan Markay. Press release follows.
Internal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emails show extensive collaboration between top agency officials and leading environmentalist groups, including overt efforts to coordinate messaging and pressure the fossil fuel industry.
The emails, obtained by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute (EELI) through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, could fuel an ongoing controversy over EPA policies that critics say are biased against traditional sources of energy.
Emails show EPA used official events to help environmentalist groups gather signatures for petitions on agency rulemaking, incorporated advance copies of letters drafted by those groups into official statements, and worked with environmentalists to publicly pressure executives of at least one energy company.
Nancy Grantham, director of public affairs for EPA Region 1, which covers New England, asked an organizer for the Sierra Club’s New Hampshire chapter to share the group’s agenda so EPA could adjust its messaging accordingly in an email dated March 12, 2012.
“If you could, it would great [sic] if you can send me an email describing what you would like to do in early April in NH–that way I can coordinate messaging with our air offices here and at HQ,” Grantham wrote.
Critics of the agency and its nonprofit allies were surprised by the cooperation.
“The level of coordination in these documents is shocking,” EELI said in a statement.
http://freebeacon.com/emails-show-extensive-collaboration-between-epa-environmentalist-orgs/
=============================================================
For Immediate Release:
January 14, 2014
Contact:
Craig Richardson
703-981-5553
Plans by EPA and Sierra Club to cripple coal industry exposed by FOIA Documents Obtained as a Result of E&E Legal FOIA Request
Washington, D.C. — A 2012 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal), under its former name, the American Tradition Institute, has produced several hundred documents affirming the uncomfortably close working relationship between the current U.S. Environmental Agency (EPA) and activist left-wing environmental groups in their effort to make abundant energy resources, particularly coal, much more scarce in America.
These records come in a series of productions in litigation spawned by two specific FOIA requests — a lawsuit filed after an EPA FOIA specialist admitted she and her colleague were instructed to do no work on the requests, as EELI counsel Chris Horner attested in a sworn affidavit. Mostly e-mails between EPA top officials and the Sierra Club, the records illustrate how certain EPA employees with backgrounds working for green pressure groups serve as liaisons to those groups in advancing a shared agenda. Other documents affirm the close advisory role the pressure groups play in key EPA actions, like EPA’s recently published New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for new coal-fired plants.
This collaboration takes place in many forms: emails providing, e.g., a list of coal plants the green groups insist any EPA standards block from coming or staying on-line, meetings at EPA and at the green groups’ offices where EPA comes to brief them, frequent conference calls, and at the Starbucks at Washington’s J.W. Marriott, across the street from EPA.
The latter is reminiscent of the Caribou Coffee revelations about this most transparent, White House, in history arranging off-site meetings with other lobbyists to avoid signing them in to the building (see, e.g., New York Times reportage of this subterfuge, here.)
The level of coordination in these documents is shocking, showing, for example, Sierra Club strategizing with EPA’s former green group activists, and other senior Obama appointees, about killing the coal and coal-fired electricity industries, even sharing a joke in one particular email saying EPA administrator Gina McCarthy had her “pants on fire” when assuring those parties they would remain viable under EPA’s regulations.
The e-mails show the central players to be two EPA officials who worked in the agency’s policy office at the time of the e-mails, Michael Goo (former legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) who left EPA for a senior Department of Energy post), Alex Baron, and EPA senior counsel Joe Goffman (a former EDF lawyer). They all work closely with John Coequyt, who heads the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign.
In one e-mail Coequyt sent to Goo and Barron, he said,
“Attached is a list of plants that companies said were shelved because of uncertainty around GHG [greenhouse gas] regulations. If a standard is set that these plants could meet, there is a small chance that they [sic] company could decide to revive the proposal.”
Coequyt is clearly signaling that that if the EPA sets achievable standards, proposed power plants on hold as the new standards are developed could ultimately be built, which is contrary to his group’s agenda.
Last week, the EPA finally released their New Source Performance Standards, four months after first announcing them.. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy (ACCCE), which plans to take the EPA to court over the new regulations, questioned what EPA was up to during those four months that it took the agency to post its NSPS.
Numerous other emails show close collaboration on EPA public hearings to generate support for the rule.
“ACCCE asks a very relevant question, if one that EPA’s own mail answers,” added Horner, the lawyer handling the lawsuit. “After reviewing the e-mails between one of the chief outside organizations in the war on coal, and their allies in the EPA, it’s clear that this process was one of trying to develop standards to kill the future of coal in America. And being less than honest about it, even according to their own allies in candid moments.”
Released documents as a result of E&E Legal’s FOIA request include:
· CCS PERMIT NEED, SO2 ROLLOUT.pdf
· COLLABORATION ON PUBLIC HEARINGS.pdf
· DOING EACH OTHERS HOMEWORK.pdf
· EPA COMING TO GREENS TO BRIEF.pdf
· GENERAL RE CLOSENESS: ALIGNMENT.pdf
· GREEN GROUPS AS PRIORITY PARTNERS.pdf
· MUST KILL COAL PRODUCTIONS.pdf
· PARTNERS ON CAIR: TRANSPORT.pdf
The Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) is a 501(c)(3) organization engaged in strategic litigation, policy research, and public education on important energy and environmental issues. Primarily through its petition litigation and transparency practice areas, E&E Legal seeks to correct onerous federal and state policies that hinder the economy, increase the cost of energy, eliminate jobs, and do little or nothing to improve the environment.
-30-
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Coal Gate!!
Greenpeace rules!
As far as US climate policy is concerned, there can now be little doubt the ecoloons are running the asylum.
The law that was passed is the “Freedom of information act”. Yet, under this administration, every time someone makes a request under that law they end up having to go to court to obtain the information. Does this make sense to anyone except to those who choose to violate the law.
It goes without saying it is no surprise this administration resists these citizens requests and then forces us taxpayers to contribute to their stonewalling efforts.
Wow. Think this will run and run – best get the ‘sticky’ tape out
The end justifies the Greens.
Why am I not surprised and this was supposed to be the transparent administration? Why am I reminded of the wizard in the Wizard of Oz? “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” What is frustrating is how many are following that advice and ignoring the man behind the screen. At least this leader isn’t doing as bad of things as Adolf Hitler. Even if people are following him as blindly. Have we all become brainwashed robots?
On lighter news it has been another beautiful day.
The problem is the real big & true environmental problems have been addressed. When the EPA was formed there were real problems – like the Cuyahoga river catching fire. Now that those real problems are addressed, they have to come up with all sorts of pseudo-problems, like AGW, to justify their existence.
Alternate idea – lets downscale the EPA to a size proportional the real new environmental issues that need to be addressed – I am guessing that will be something like a 95% reduction.
It is a deeper relationship than these docs indicate. Out of court deals are struck. Apparently prior to filing law suits, that permit big green companies to later make faux suits agaisnt the collaborating EPA, with prearranged settlement terms. This permits imposing judgements instead of bothering with writing new laws or regs. And the judgements appear to offer fat ‘reimbursements’ of legal fees by the big green plaintiffs.
The best news since the Ship Of Fools! It’s time to take back our energy policy from these idiot
liars.
We [no] longer have a government that is by and for the people.
We have individuals who have abused their positions to usurp the will of the people.
The republic has been murdered.
Here are 2 sources of information regarding CO2 that completely contradict each other.
The first one is a study that finds this about carbon dioxide: ” they teased out the carbon dioxide fertilization effect from all other influences and calculated that this could account for an 11 percent increase in global foliage since 1982.”
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/study-finds-plant-growth-surges-as-co2-levels-rise-16094
The other states this:
EPA FACT SHEET:
Reducing Carbon Pollution From Power Plants
Moving Forward On the Climate Action Plan
POWER PLANT CARBON POLLUTION IMPACTS PUBLIC HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT
•
Carbon pollution stays in the atmosphere and contributes to climate change, which is
one of the most significant public health challenges of our time.
•
Unchecked carbon pollution leads to long lasting changes in our climate, such as rising
global temperatures; rising sea level,changes in weather and precipitation patterns ; and changes in ecosystems, habitats and species diversity .
•
Public health risks include more heat waves and drought ; worsening smog (also called ground level ozone pollution)
;
increasing the intensity of extreme events, like hurricanes,
extreme precipitation and flooding ; and increasing the range of ticks and mosquitoes, which
can spread disease such as Lyme disease and West Nile virus
.
•
Our most vulnerable citizens, including children, older adults, people with heart or lung
disease and people living in poverty are most at risk from the impacts of climate change
http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2013-09/documents/20130920factsheet.pdf
Source number one used satellite observations of actual vegetation around the world over a 20 year period and looked at variations in foliage, while considering effects from other factors, to make its assessment.
How could source number 2, the EPA come to the conclusion that CO2 is pollution when it’s massively increasing crop yields and world food production. They must have some legit data to base this conclusion and the regulations on. Oh yeah, global climate models.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/06/climate-modeling-epic-fail-spencer-the-day-of-reckoning-has-arrived/
As Dr. Spencer has noted, global climate models are an EPIC failure but the EPA has its mission and has no intention of letting anything get in the way………..especially empirical data/facts, science, rationality, ethics or good judgement.
No JeffL the problem is that we people in our own government who abuse the government to further their own political agenda.
Private Wealth Council, Davos, Switzerland, founded 2004
People include:
Al Gore, Generation Investment Management, LLP, London,U.K.
Fritz Kaiser, Ex. Chair, & Kaiser Ritter Partner
Nicholas Parker, Toronto, Cleantech Network, LLC and former asset manager for Maurice Strong
http://www.privatewealthcouncil.org/people
One can just about go around in circles following major players in the Climate Change “Industry”.
Generation Investment Management, LLP
http://investing.businessweek.com/search/stocks/private/people.asp?privcapId=32584452
Includes:
David Wayland Blood
Al Gore
L. John Doerr, lll
What’s really farcical is when one of the “green” outfits sues the EPA so that the EPA is “forced” to do what the “greens” want by the courts while generating $millions for their mutual lawyer pals and/or spouses.
I agree with Jeff L. wholeheartedly. And to take his “alternate idea” one step further, we could use some of the money saved to restore the retirement pay we promised our veterans.
Eisenhower was right. Government can commit no greater crime than to work in secret with select groups to suborn the will and wishes of the people. Regardless of the case for or against anthropoheinous climate refudiation, this is wrong and all parties should agree it is wrong. The outcome does not justify the means.
If you like your dishonest government, you can keep your dishonest government.
Justa Joe says:
January 15, 2014 at 4:46 pm
What’s really farcical is when one of the “green” outfits sues the EPA so that the EPA is “forced” to do what the “greens” want by the courts while generating $millions for their mutual lawyer pals and/or spouses.
Sound like the greens are defrauding the american people.
Does Sen. Inhofe know about this? Wouldn’t this be against the law?
That FOIA disclosure is going to leave a major scar.
Now it’s time for prosecution to clean out the wound.
Interesting.
Txomin at 4:05 pm
The end justifies the Greens.
+2
Nothing but comprehensive policing and public reporting of bureaucratic activities and a massive purge of these agencies will root out the absolutely catastrophic corruption we’re seeing.
And that certainly won’t happen under the crooks running this particular show, as this and the IRS whitewash show.
It’s the most transparently criminal administration in American history. They finally even beat out Wilson.
Mainstream media will ignore this, and this scandal like the others, will fade away despite this Administration’s wanton lawlessness. The House led by the less-than-useless Boener does not have the character, strength nor integrity to impeach this President who has abrogated his oath of office more times than can be counted
If by collusion the greens are defrauding the american tax payer with fraudulent pre-arranged out comes with friends in the EPA, does RICCO mean anything?
Sorry meant RICO
From Wikipedia –
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly referred to as the RICO Act or simply RICO, is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization. The RICO Act focuses specifically on racketeering, and it allows the leaders of a syndicate to be tried for the crimes which they ordered others to do or assisted them, closing a perceived loophole that allowed someone who told a man to, for example, murder, to be exempt from the trial because he did not actually commit the crime personally.