jay timmons N A M

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</div><div>June 24–25, 2020API was highlighted in a lawsuit from the Minnesota Attorney General’s office that also called out Exxon Mobil Corporation, ExxonMobil Oil Corporation, Koch Industries, Inc., and the Koch-owned Flint Hills Resources LP and Flint Hills Resources Pine Bend for allegedly misleading consumers about climate change. [87]“When corporations and trade associations break the law and hurt Minnesotans, it’s my job and my duty to hold them accountable. The fraud, deceptive advertising, and other violations of Minnesota state law and common law that the lawsuit shows they perpetrated have harmed Minnesotans’ health and our state’s environment, infrastructure, and economy,” said Attorney General Keith Ellison, as reported in the AG office press release. [88]“Previously unknown internal documents were recently discovered that confirm that Defendants well understood the devastating effects that their products would cause to the climate, including Minnesota, dating back to the 1970s and 1980s. But Defendants did not ever disclose to the public—or to Minnesotans—their actual knowledge that would confirm the very science they sought to undermine. Instead, Defendants, both directly and through proxies, engaged in a public-relations campaign that was not only false, but also highly effective. This campaign was intended to, and did, target and influence the public, and consumers, including in Minnesota,” the lawsuit reads. [89]Discussing API‘s role:“API has been a member of at least five organizations that have promoted disinformation about fossil-fuel products to consumers, including the Global Climate Coalition, Partnership for a Better Energy Future, Coalition for American Jobs, Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth, and Alliance for Climate Strategies. These front groups were formed to provide climate disinformation and advocacy from a seemingly objective source, when, in fact, they were financed and controlled by ExxonMobil and other sellers of fossil-fuel products. Defendants benefited from the spread of this disinformation.”On Koch, the lawsuit suggests that the company is liable for the various actions of its numerous subsidiaries involved in the manufacturing, refining, and distribution of petroleum products. It also notes:“Koch also supports numerous foundations including the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, the Koch Institute, and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation. Koch expects the foundations that it supports to fund groups that further its financial interests. Koch constructively controls how the foundations that it supports direct their philanthropic activities.”It also notes that, like numerous other oil companies, “Koch also understood climate-change science, the connection to sales of its fossil fuel products, and the potential for catastrophic consequences before the science was widely understood by the general public.”It highlights what appeared to be a coordinated effort by companies including Koch to “combat climate change ‘alarmists’ through a campaign focused on science, information dissemination, and politics.” It highlights a 2006 memo from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association that outlined how Koch Industries was working with other large corporations including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Southern Company, American Electric Power (AEP), and National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).Shortly after, the D.C. Attorney General’s Office joined in a similar lawsuit against BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell. The lawsuit alleges the four largest investor-owned oil and gas companies violated the District’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act by promoting and selling fossil fuel products contributing to global warming, while knowing about the harmful consequences since at least the 1950s. [90]The lawsuit highlights the industry’s use of fake grassroots groups, such as the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, which started out as a front group for tobacco giant Philip Morris in 1993. This group had transitioned to become the Advancement of Sound Science Center in 1997 and was run out of the home of climate science denier Steve Milloy, who most recently worked in public relations for coal company Murray Energy, before being disbanded. [90]According to a press release from the D.C. Attorney General’s Office, “The [oil] companies not only employed the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition — a fake grassroots citizen group created by Big Tobacco as part of the industry’s misinformation campaign — they also funded and promoted some of the same scientists hired by tobacco companies. These scientists disputed the conclusions of climate researchers, despite not having any training in climate science themselves.” [91]“For decades, these oil and gas companies spent millions to mislead consumers and discredit climate science in pursuit of profits,” said AG Racine. “The defendants violated the District’s consumer protection law by concealing the fact that using fossil fuels threatens the health of District residents and the environment. OAG filed this suit to end these disinformation campaigns and to hold these companies accountable for their deceptive practices.<a href="http://www.climatedevlab.brown.edu/uploads/2/8/4/0/28401609/covercountermovementcoalitions.2.2019.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">http://www.climatedevlab.brown.edu/uploads/2/8/4/0/28401609/covercountermovementcoalitions.2.2019.pdf</a>The Partnership for a Better Energy Future (PBEF) is a coalition formed in 2014 consisting of 177 conservative organizations across the country, representing industry groups (primarily manufacturing, agriculture, mining, refining) and foundations devoted to free market principles, fossil fuel interests, and climate denial. The coalition describes its purpose as educating and mobilizing “the broader business community and elected and public officials to address widespread concerns with forthcoming greenhouse gas rules.” From its formation until its dramatic halt in activity in the fall of 2015, PBEF antagonized “forthcoming greenhouse gas rules” in Obama’s EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP), which it believed would pose an economic threat to its member organizations. PBEF acted as a tool for smaller-scale organizations to reconcile their specific policy priorities, moving towards sharing resources in a collective assault on the national Clean Power Plan. Its emergence represented a call by national pro-fossil fuel organizations for local actors to associate, to build an anti-CPP movement that extended beyond the fight’s central political juggernauts like ExxonMobil, Southern Company, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. While the PBEF’s member organizations feature some especially prominent influencers of right-wing energy policy and climate denialism such as the American Petroleum Institute, the organization’s direct leadership is tied to the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute/Institute for 21st Century Energy, whose respective presidents Jay Timmons [nam] and Karen Harbert serve as PBEF co-chairs. Both leaders boast impressive careers within the conservative network, and are still central actors today. Timmons, whose NAM has received millions each from Free Enterprise America, Freedom Partners, and the American Petroleum Institute, was recently featured in an October New York Times article about the United States-Canada-Mexico Agreement speaking on behalf of all American “industry groups.” Harbert has been very active in the last decade, advocating for hydraulic fracturing and the Keystone XL pipeline in 2013, testifying in the Senate to ban crude oil exports in 2015, vocally opposing the Clean Power Plan in 2016, and maintaining throughout the position that climate change is “an open discussion” not necessarily caused...~ CPP]During this fourteen month period, PBEF was highly active on Twitter, tweeting and retweeting more than 1,200 times, compared to scattered one-or-twice-a-month retweets throughout fall 2015 and 2016 before tapering off completely. The content overwhelmingly concerns the EPA, the CPP, and other regulations, giving updates, pointing out flaws, giving state-by-state policy impact statistics, and more. Furthermore, PBEF’s retweets provide insights about the network of partner organizations surrounding the coalition -- common pages include the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), The American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy, the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee, the Republicans of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works Energy, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and their Global Energy Institute, Peabody Energy, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), and the Pennsylvania Coal Alliance. Most of these organizations are PBEF members, with the key exception of the Senate committee and Peabody Energy, a Fortune 500 coal corporation. Despite their targeted social media use, information about PBEF in media sources and documentation databases is limited even during their most active years. Reporting about the coalition seems to appear exclusively in pro-climate action research publications, and content published by its member organizations. Because of this, information about the strategies and activities PBEF participated in during their fight against the CPP or about the source and recipients of their funding is limited. When Donald Trump won the Presidency in November 2016 and his administration’s EPA head Scott Pruitt announced his plan to repeal the CPP, the PBEF’s website blog page as well as its Facebook and Twitter pages went silent. It is difficult to ascertain whether the coalition completely disbanded. As an organization fundamentally created to oppose an EPA program, the shift in leadership represents a win for PBEF’s central mission and thus an understandable decrease in activity.==no lnx ,amyThe Climate Change Countermovement: Brown University Report and PanelClimate Investigations Center on February 28, 2019Kert Davies</div>