Tag Archives: leaked documents

ALEC uses Indiana Regulator to help Coal Companies Stall Climate Change Action

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You’re probably familiar with the old “fox in the hen house” story, but what about when a hen joins the fox den?

This is the case with the recent American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) meeting in Washington, DC. Leaked documents obtained by Greenpeace reveal that ALEC’s anti-environmental jamboree was inundated with coal money and featured an Indiana regulator advising coal utilities on delaying US Environmental Protection Agency rules to control greenhouse gas emissions and hazardous air pollution.

Bottom of blog: View contents of the ACCCE USB drive from ALEC's 2012 States & Nation Policy summit.

At ALEC’s coal-sponsored meeting, where state legislators and corporate representatives meet to create template state laws ranging from attacks on clean energy to privatization of public schools, Indiana’s Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Management Tom Easterly laid out a plan to stall the US EPA global warming action in a power point clearly addressed to coal industry representatives at ALEC’s meeting.

In a USB drive branded with the logo of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a folder labeled “Easterly” contains a presentation titled “Easterly ALEC presentation 11 28 12” explaining current EPA air pollution rules and how Tom Easterly has worked to obstruct them. The power points is branded with the Indiana Department of Environmental Protection seal. In the latter presentation, Easterly ended his briefing to ALEC’s dirty energy members with suggestions for delaying EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions at coal plants. Continue reading →

Climate Denial University? The Heartland Institute’s Toxic Presence in Higher Education

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PolluterWatch: Greenpeace Investigates Heartland Institute Leaked Documents – click to see investigation and ongoing updates.

As Greenpeace questions universities about payments to faculty members from the Heartland Institute for its campaign to discredit climate science, we have made some interesting discoveries. Our newest letter is to the University of Missouri concerning professor Anthony Lupo, who leads the schools Global Climate Change Group and is slated to receive a total $18,000 from the Heartland Institute from 2011-2012 as a consultant for “Climate Change Reconsidered” reports. As you would expect from a Heartland Institute project, these reports are designed to confuse the scientific conclusions of 97% of climate researchers around the world.

While credible climate scientists and institutions have understood global warming for decades now, Anthony Lupo’s position on climate has fluctuated significantly. A thorough article in the Kansas City Pitch back in 2008 revealed the following evolution of Dr. Lupo’s public statements on global warming:

  • In 1998, Tony Lupo boasted that climate skeptics outnumbered the consensus view that global warming is happening and caused by people, proclaiming, “there is no scientific consensus whether global warming is a fact and is occurring.” This is despite the fact that in 1995 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” Dr. Lupo has participated in the IPCC as a reviewer, one of the few scientists involved who rejects the IPCC’s research conclusions.
  • In 2000, Dr. Lupo cited an influential oceanographer calling for more study on global warming in “recent statements”…after the oceanographer had been dead for nine years.
  • Continue reading →

Heartland Institute Sting Operation Triggers Greenpeace Investigations

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PolluterWatch: Greenpeace Investigates Heartland Institute Leaked Documents – click to see investigation and ongoing updates. 

What an awkward entrance into 2012 for the climate denial machine!

Among the ongoing dubious deeds of the billionaire Koch brothers, the American Petroleum Institute’s Vote 4 Energy propaganda and the House of Representative’s love affair with the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, an indicator that policymakers refuse to acknowledge the seriousness of global warming, we already had plenty of debunking to do.

Then the Heartland Institute fell on its face, inadvertently aiding in a leak of its own internal documents outlining their strategies and finances for 2012. We are currently investigating several areas those documents drew our attention to — see Greenpeace’s Heartland Institute Investigations and the Joseph Bast PolluterWatch profile.

Continue reading →