Click here to download a complete pdf version of E&E Legal Letters Issue XVIII Winter 2018. Click headlines for the full article.

The EPA Cleans Up Its Science. Now Congress should act to lock in place data transparency.
by Steve Milloy, Senior Policy Fellow, as appearing in the Wall Street Journal

The Environmental Protection Agency will no longer rely on “secret” scientific data to justify regulations, Administrator Scott Pruitt announced last week. EPA regulators and agency-funded researchers have become accustomed to producing unaccountable, dodgy science to advance a political agenda.

The Legal Shakedown Of America’s Energy Industry Is Flagrant Abuse Of The Courts
by Craig Richardson, E&E Legal President, as appearing in the Daily Caller

It used to be that responsible liberal politicians made at least a token effort to distance themselves from extremist environmentalists and their efforts to shutter America’s energy industry manufacturing jobs. But these times definitely have changed and fringe “green” activists funded by deep, even foreign pockets are now apparently calling the shots within the political left.

Environmental street fighting
by Greg Walcher, Senior Policy Fellow, as appearing in The Daily Sentinel

Kenny Rogers’ classic tune about the “Coward of the County” concludes with the pearl of wisdom that “sometimes you’ve got to fight to be a man.” As much as we wish otherwise, there are times when fighting cannot be avoided, especially when our safety, families, or even country, are threatened. That’s why many leaders, from Lincoln and Churchill to Wilson and Bush, came into office with high hopes on domestic issues, but instead spent their tenure fighting wars.

Coloradans are taking on the state’s largest monopoly utility
by Amy Oliver Cooke, Senior Policy Fellow, as appearing in The Hill

Just because President Obama’s controversial and costly Clean Power Plan is dead at the federal level doesn’t mean Colorado ratepayers are out of financial danger. Nearly 1.4 million state electricity customers await a Colorado Public Utilities Commission (COPUC) decision on Xcel Energy’s legally tenuous Colorado Energy Plan (CEP).

California Cities’ Shakedown of Oil Industry Wrought With Fraud
by Katy Grimes, Senior Media Fellow, as appearing in the Flash Report

Environmentalists claim global warming can be mitigated, but only if humans are forced to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This pseudo-science is what California’s leftist politicians have adopted to control human activity, and the unelected bureaucrats at the California Air Resources Board based its cap-and-trade carbon auction program on.

No special interest behind Ingersoll wind energy talk
by Kevon Martis, Senior Policy Fellow, as appearing in the Midland Daily News 

My recent wind energy zoning presentation at Bullock Creek High School on behalf of the Ingersoll Township Concerned Citizens spawned an ill-informed op-ed by Peter Sinclair in which he accuses me of misleading and distorted statements and further questions my objectivity and financial motivations.

Just as E&E Legal Predicted, Next Stop for the Climate Shakedown Crowd: Pension Funds and Politician-Led lawsuits
by Craig Richardson, President

E&E Legal knows a thing or two about New York shakedown schemes.  Through our public records pursuits and subsequent lawsuits, we exposed an intricate scam consisting of green ‘rent seekers,’ willing public officials like New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and his co-ringer leader, former Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell, big donors like Tom Steyer and ideological scolds like the Rockefellers.

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.