Click here to download a complete pdf version of E&E Legal Letters Issue XIV Winter 2017. Click headlines for the full article.

President Trump’s Clean Power Plan Executive Order Corrects Obama EPA’s Overreach
by Chaim Mandelbaum, FME Law Executive Director

On March 28, President Trump signed an executive order directing the EPA to reconsider the Clean Power Plan imposed by the Obama Administration.  This order may temporarily halt the long running legal battle over the plan, thought it surely won’t end it. This directive by the President is critical in moving the country away from the economy limiting approach to energy taken by the Obama Administration, and pushing towards a more prosperous and energy independent nation.

State, City Investment Officers the Next Stop for ‘Climate Change’ Industry & “Divestment through value destruction” Campaign
by Chris Horner, Senior Legal Fellow

In February 2014, acting on tips received, E&E Legal requested records regarding “climate risk disclosure” from the New York Office of Attorney General (OAG) under that state’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL).  This “CRD” movement is part of a campaign to, in effect, coerce ‘confessions’ out of energy-related interests that catastrophic man-made global warming is a real problem, of which they constitute a significant part, that their reserves are worth little to nothing and their public filings and other statements constitute misdeeds and even fraud. 

Revisiting the Original Climate Sin
by Steve Milloy, Senior Policy Fellow, as appearing in the Washington Times

If President Trump wants to put an end to the hoax and economic disaster that is man-made catastrophic global warming hysteria, there’s one order that is essential to issue: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must reopen its “endangerment finding” for greenhouse gases.

The Russia Connection Tom Steyer Doesn’t Want You To Know About
by Craig Richardson, President, as appearing in Daily Caller

Billionaire activist Tom Steyer’s political career has truly been plunging. The self-proclaimed eco-hero has slipped from 5% to 4% in a poll of possible contenders for the California governorship next year. These abysmal polling results place Steyer at the bottom end of an eight-person field of potential candidates. Given a typical survey’s margin of error – between 3% and 6% – one could easily say Steyer may not even register at all in the minds of California voters.

Public  Records on GMail
by Matthew Hardin, FME Law Counsel

In the modern world, government employees increasingly turn to GMail, text messaging, and phone “apps” for personal communications. So long as those communications are personal communications, there’s nothing wrong with that. But what happens when government employees use Gmail to communicate with fellow staff about work-related topics?

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.