Biggest US coal company funded dozens of groups questioning climate change

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Biggest US coal company funded dozens of groups questioning climate change

Analysis of Peabody Energy court documents show company backed
trade groups, lobbyists and thinktanks dubbed ‘heart and soul of
climate denial’

Suzanne Goldenberg and Helena Bengtsson
Monday 13 June 2016 11.00 BST

Peabody Energy, America’s biggest coalmining company, has funded at least two dozen groups that cast doubt on manmade climate change and oppose environment regulations, analysis by the Guardian reveals.

The funding spanned trade associations, corporate lobby groups, and industry front groups as well as conservative thinktanks and was exposed in court filings last month.

The coal company also gave to political organisations, funding twice as many Republican groups as Democratic ones.

Peabody, the world’s biggest private sector publicly traded coal company, was long known as an outlier even among fossil fuel companies for its public rejection of climate science and action. But its funding of climate denial groups was only exposed in disclosures after the coal titan was forced to seek bankruptcy protection in April, under competition from cheap natural gas.

Environmental campaigners said they had not known for certain that the company was funding an array of climate denial groups – and that the breadth of that funding took them by surprise.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/13/peabody-energy-coal-mining-climate-change-denial-funding

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1. Coal Company Paying Obama Mentor $435,000 to Fight Climate Plan

Coal Company Paying Obama Mentor $435,000 to Fight Climate Plan

by Jennifer A Dlouhy
http://twitter.com/jendlouhyhc

June 13, 2016 — 12:41 PM EDT

Peabody Energy Corp. is set to pay President Barack Obama’s Harvard Law School mentor $435,000 this year to help the bankrupt coal producer challenge the administration’s signature environmental law.

The payments to Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law expert and legal icon -- spanning May to December this year -- were disclosed in a legal filing tied to Peabody’s bankruptcy proceedings. They do not include any money Peabody sent Tribe before its April bankruptcy filing as part of the company’s crusade against Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which is designed to slash carbon dioxide emissions from power plants 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The program encourages states and utilities to burn less coal and use generate more electricity from cleaner sources such as wind, solar power and natural gas.

Tribe is set to receive monthly payments ranging from $17,500 in May to $75,000 in September, when the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington hears arguments in the Clean Power Plan case. The litigation ultimately is expected to be resolved by the Supreme Court, which includes two of Tribe’s former students, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Tribe’s work for Peabody has drawn a backlash from liberals who have regarded him as their top legal crusader. Tribe represented Al Gore before the Supreme Court in 2000 in the case that decided the presidential election and served in Obama’s Justice Department, defending the Affordable Care Act and other administration initiatives. But now, Tribe’s words are more frequently cited by Republican lawmakers lambasting Obama’s environmental agenda than liberal stalwarts defending the president’s policies.