Click here to download a complete pdf version of E&E Legal Letters Issue VII. Click on headlines for the full article.

E&E Legal’s Four Reports Expose ‘Climate Change’ Advocates
by Craig Richardson, Executive Director

2015 has been a productive year for E&E Legal’s investigatory practice. Since April, E&E Legal has released four groundbreaking transparency reports that expose the hidden truth behind the ‘green movement’ and its allies in business, federal and state agencies, and nonprofit organizations like the Sierra Club. This follows on two reports in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Horner’s Report from Belgium
by Chris Horner, E&E Legal Senior Legal Fellow

I met with some old friends and colleagues in Brussels in June, discussing the sorry state of “global warming” politics here and at home. “Climate” is an obsession in Europe, a continent whose leaders insist on hobbling the rest of the world with policies they’ve inflicted upon their own people and who are in too deep to walk the economically draining disaster back (which as E&E Legal has pointed out, carries terrible social costs).

Pope Francis Fails to Consider ‘Energy Poverty’ in his ‘Climate Change’ Encyclical
by Craig Richardson, Executive Director

(E&E Legal has produced and released a two-minute video that discusses the Pope’s encyclical and “Energy Poverty” in Europe)

The 1965 Second Vatican Council document, Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope) says “the [Catholic] Church…serves as a leaven and as a kind of soul for human society.” In the last 40 years, examples of this include Pope John Paul II’s relentless condemnation of communism, which was integral to its ultimate collapse, a continuous call for defending human life, and providing a lone voice for the poorest, most marginalized, and forgotten among us.

Virginia leaders should reject the Californication of their power grid
by Tom Tanton, E&E Legal’s Director Of Science and Technology Assessment

The idea of Virginia doing things “the California way” doesn’t make much sense. Unfortunately, Virginians may not have a choice if the Obama administration has its way.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will soon finalize the Clean Power Plan, requiring states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent by 2030. To meet these drastic reductions, which will have no impact on global temperatures, every state, including Virginia, will have to impose California-style taxes, manipulate markets and enforce short-sighted mandates — the same policies that have contributed to the Golden State’s sky-high energy prices and persistently high unemployment.

E&E Legal’s Receipt of IM Messages as Part of EPA FOIA Request Groundbreaking
by Matthew Hardin, FME Law Counsel

E&E Legal recently obtained its first batch of Instant Messaging (IM) records from EPA. While E&E has been trying to obtain IM records from various agencies since 2013, we were never successful until now. Agencies claimed that the records didn’t exist, that the relevant software did not “capture” the messages, or that the Im conversations were not truly “records” within the meaning of federal law. Email correspondence obtained by E&E Legal and others had alluded to IM conversations which would have been responsive to our requests, but the IM conversations were never produced.

Legal Battle over EPA Carbon Regulations begins anew with Rules Release
by Chaim Mandelbaum, FME Law Counsel

In June 2015, the D.C. Circuit decided In RE: Murray Energy, that challengers to the EPA planned carbon regulation would have to wait until EPA released the final rules to bring legal objections to these harsh regulations. On August 3rd, EPA released the final version of its Clean Power Plan, which proved to be even more divisive than the original proposal.

E&E Legal Letters is a quarterly publication of the Energy and Environment Legal Institute. The publication is widely disseminated to key stakeholders, such as our members, website inquiries, energy, environment, and legal industry representatives, the media, congressional, legislative, and regulatory contacts, the judiciary, and donors.