PEABODY Coal

===

congrats, evil 7/14bankrupt, ceo paypeabody coal 2 blank 8/17=peabody shows in top 4 orgs  w/ exxon in Who are 3%
=nola 818 why worry?When <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topics/climate-science" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">climate science</a> deniers and fossil fuel evangelists met Tuesday in New Orleans for the Heartland Institute's second "America First" conference on U.S. energy, they had every reason to celebrate the unprecedented influence they enjoy in the Trump administration.Instead, they found plenty of reasons for dread.With <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25072018/republican-carbon-tax-bill-carlos-curbelo-congress-climate-change-regulation-highway-funding-gas-trade-offs" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">carbon tax proposals floating</a>, <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04042018/climate-change-fossil-fuel-company-lawsuits-timeline-exxon-children-california-cities-attorney-general" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">climate lawsuits advancing</a>, big corporations embracing the need for action and states and <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27062018/coastal-cities-lawsuit-fossil-fuel-oil-climate-change-sea-level-rise-damage-imperial-beach-california" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">cities getting into the act</a>, many of those gathered grappled with the reality that a fossil future was not secure—despite a largely pliant White House and Congress.Contrarian scientists, policy professionals and lawyers affiliated with conservative interests contemplated the spread of the climate action agenda as if it were a malignancy. While speakers at the live-streamed sessions universally praised President <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/donald-trump" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">Donald Trump</a> and his regulatory rollbacks, the overwhelming diagnosis was that more aggressive policy surgery was needed.<div class="content" style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded" style="box-sizing: inherit;">High on their list of targets was the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that greenhouse gases are a danger to human health and welfare. That determination, affirmed by the Supreme Court, is what empowers the agency to regulate global warming pollution.But the acting EPA administrator, Andrew Wheeler, has said he considers the endangerment finding "settled law" and does not wish to revisit it."Complete nonsense," said Atlanta lawyer Harry Macdougald, who was part of the legal team that unsuccessfully challenged the endangerment finding in court during the Obama administration. "It is a direct threat to the president's energy dominance agenda. And the next Democratic administration—and there will be one—will turn the screws."<h3 dir="ltr" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333;">Corporations 'Jumping on Climate Change'</h3>Another theme running through the sessions was exasperation with corporations that have decided to take climate action on their own—or at least have refused to challenge the consensus science that human activity is the driver for global warming."A number of regulated utilities across the country—no reason to name names, but there are about a dozen of them—have announced they are going to ... reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050 from their generating fleet, which is the Barack Obama plan and the Hillary Clinton plan," said Frederick Palmer, a senior fellow with the Heartland Institute and a former vice president for the coal company Peabody Energy. "So it's as if Donald Trump wasn't elected president of the United States as far as they are concerned."Palmer, who sits on the National Coal Council, a federal advisory committee to the U.S. energy secretary, said the council will soon release a study calling for action to bar coastal states from prohibiting coal export terminals, as Washington State has done. "We've got to get the left coast figured out," he said.Palmer also called for a federal moratorium on the retirement of coal plants, as a national security imperative. He wasn't the only one to suggest that conservatives may have to scrap laissez-faire principles to keep fossil fuel energy flowing.Joe Leimkuhler, vice president for drilling for LLOG Exploration, a Covington, Louisiana producer focused on the Gulf of Mexico, called for more royalty relief for offshore drilling to help the industry survive in an era of low prices.Craig Richardson, executive director of E&E Legal, a conservative legal group that repeatedly sued the Obama administration's regulatory agencies, said he now sees his group as "trying to be a supportive arm of this new administration." But he lamented what he and others called "virtue signaling" by corporations "jumping on climate change."Richardson complained about ExxonMobil leaving the conservative advocacy group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), over a clash on climate policy. (Last year, Heartland wanted ALEC to approve a resolution calling on the EPA to withdraw the endangerment finding. Exxon was among several corporations and utilities that convinced ALEC to shelve a vote on the resolution.)Heartland co-founder Joseph Bast provoked laughter by recounting carmaker GM's response to the <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02082018/trump-fuel-efficiency-standards-rollback-climate-change-epa" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">Trump administration proposal unveiled last week to freeze fuel economy standards</a>. Quoting the <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/zero-crashes-emissions-congestion-mary-barra/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">vision statement</a> of GM CEO Mary Barra—that the company is working toward a future of "zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion"—Bast said: "That is impossible, and it's absolutely ludicrous. Zero of each of those things mean zero cars. It means zero respect for people's personal choices of transportation. It would mean a devastating impact on the economy."...</div></div></div></div>==from alford:June 13, 2016

The National Black Chamber of Commerce was listed as a creditor in <a target="_blank" href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/06/13114/peabody-coal-bankruptcy-reveals-extensive-funding-climate-denial-network">Peabody Energy's 2016 bankruptcy filings</a>, reports the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD/PRWatch). <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/national-black-chamber-commerce#s26">[26]</a>

While the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2859772">available bankruptcy documents</a>

do not list the scale or dates of funding, they outline Peabody

Energy's financial ties to a large network of groups promoting climate

change denial. <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/national-black-chamber-commerce#s27">[27]</a>

Prominent individuals appearing in the documents include climate deniers <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/willie-soon" target="blank">Willie Soon</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/richard-lindzen" target="blank">Richard Lindzen</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/roy-spencer" target="blank">Roy Spencer</a> and <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/10/31/richard-berman-tobacco-to-fossil-fuels" target="blank">Richard Berman</a>. The long list of organizations also includes groups such as <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/americans-for-prosperity" target="blank">Americans for Prosperity</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/american-legislative-exchange-council" target="blank">American Legislative Exchange Council</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/committee-constructive-tomorrow" target="blank">CFACT</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/institute-energy-research" target="blank">Institute for Energy Research</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/state-policy-network" target="blank">State Policy Network</a>, the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/us-chamber-commerce" target="blank">U.S. Chamber of Commerce</a> and dozens more. <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/national-black-chamber-commerce#s28">[28]</a>

The Guardian also analysed and reported on the Peabody bankruptcy findings: [29] GUK

“These groups collectively are the heart

and soul of climate denial,” said Kert Davies, founder of the Climate

Investigation Center, who has spent 20 years tracking funding for

climate denial. “It’s the broadest list I have seen of one company

funding so many nodes in the denial machine.”

The company’s filings reveal funding for a range of organisations

which have fought Barack Obama’s plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions,

and denied the very existence of climate change. […]

Among Peabody’s beneficiaries, the Center for the Study of Carbon

Dioxide and Global Change has insisted – wrongly – that carbon emissions

are not a threat but “the elixir of life” while the American

Legislative Exchange Council is trying to overturn Environmental

Protection Agency rules cutting emissions from power plants. Meanwhile,

Americans for Prosperity campaigns against carbon pricing. The Oklahoma

chapter was on the list. […]

“The breadth of the groups with financial

ties to Peabody is extraordinary. Thinktanks, litigation groups, climate

scientists, political organisations, dozens of organisations blocking

action on climate all receiving funding from the coal industry,” said

Nick Surgey, director of research for the Center for Media

and Democracy.

“We expected to see some denial money, but

it looks like Peabody is the treasury for a very substantial part of the

climate denial movement.”

</blockquote>

Notable organizations listed in the initial documents include:

<ul><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/60-plus-association" target="blank">60 Plus Association</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Coalition_for_Clean_Coal_Electricity">The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/american-energy-alliance-aea" target="blank">American Energy Alliance</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Alliance_for_Energy_and_Economic_Growth">Alliance For Energy And Economic Growth</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/american-energy-alliance-aea" target="blank">American Energy Alliance</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/american-legislative-exchange-council">American Legislative Exchange Council</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/americans-for-prosperity" target="blank">Americans For Prosperity</a> Oklahoma</li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/atlas-economic-research-foundation" target="blank">Atlas Economic Research Foundation</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Rick_Berman">Berman And Company, Inc</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Consumer_Energy_Alliance">Consumer Energy Alliance</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Center_for_Clean_Air_Policy">Center For Clean Air Policy</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/about-center-energy-and-economic-development-ceed" target="blank">Center for Energy and Economic Development</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/center-study-carbon-dioxide-and-global-change" target="blank">Center For The Study Of Carbon Dioxide And Global Change</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Coalition_for_Responsible_Regulation">Coalition for Responsible Regulation</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/committee-constructive-tomorrow">Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Council_on_State_Taxation">Council on State Taxation</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/dci-group" target="blank">DCI Group AZ, LLC</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Ducks_Unlimited">Ducks Unlimited</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/energy-environment-legal-institute" target="blank">Energy & Environment Legal Institute</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Edison_Electric_Institute">Edison Electric Institute</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/franklin-centre-government-and-public-integrity" target="blank">Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/energy-environment-legal-institute" target="blank">Free Market Environmental Law Clinic</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/frontiers-freedom" target="blank">Frontiers Of Freedom Institute</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/george-c-marshall-institute" target="blank">George C. Marshall Institute</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Hill%26_Knowlton">Hill Knowlton Strategies</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Hill%26_Knowlton">Hill Knowlton, Inc</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/hudson-institute" target="blank">Hudson Institute</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Hunton%26_Williams">Hunton & Williams</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Independence_Institute">Independence Institute</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/institute-energy-research" target="blank">Institute For Energy Research</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/institute-liberty" target="blank">Institute for Liberty</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/National_Association_of_Manufacturers">National Association of Manufacturers</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/national-black-chamber-commerce" target="blank">National Black Chamber of Commerce</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/National_Conference_of_State_Legislatures">National Conference of State Legislatures</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/National_Mining_Association">National Mining Association</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/National_Association_of_Regulatory_Utility_Commissioners">National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/National_Rural_Electric_Cooperative_Association">National Rural Electric Cooperative Association</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/NextGen_Energy_Council">NextGen Energy Council</a></li><li>PACE (May refer to <a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Partnership_for_Affordable_Clean_Energy">Partnership for Affordable Clean Energy</a>)</li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/science-and-public-policy-institute" target="blank">Science & Public Policy Institute</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Sidley_Austin">Sidley Austin LLP</a></li><li><a href="http://desmogblog.com/state-policy-network" target="blank">State Policy Network</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Texas_Conservative_Coalition_Research_Institute">Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/texas-public-policy-foundation">Texas Public Policy Foundation</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/us-chamber-commerce" target="blank">U.S. Chamber of Commerce</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/about-western-business-roundtable-wbr" target="blank">Western Business Roundtable</a></li></ul>Notable individuals named in the initial documents include the following:

<ul><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Kelly_Mader">Kelly Forbes Mader</a></li><li><a target="blank" href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Heather_Wilson">Heather A. Wilson </a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/roy-spencer" target="blank">Roy W. Spencer </a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/willie-soon" target="blank" style="">Willie Soon</a></li><li><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/richard-lindzen" target="_blank">Richard Lindzen</a></li></ul>December 13, 2015==
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/05/20/1528950/-As-the-coal-industry-collapses-and-workers-suffer-top-executives-rake-in-more-cash-than-everno linksadvocacy group Public Citizen released a report Tuesday showing how top executives for three giant coal companies got large compensation boosts even as they laid off workers and cut their benefits. The three companies—Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, and Alpha Natural Resources—are all continuing their operations under Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings. Over the past few years, they went deeply into debt expanding via mergers and other purchases even as coal prices were falling and their bottom lines were going from black to red.  Their choices were not criminal. But they illustrate the stupidity of how executive compensation works these days. Bonuses and stock options when times are good, higher cash compensation when the company tanks. The so-called “war on coal” has been good to these men.In conjunction with their report, Public Citizen also sent letters to the CEOs of the three companies asking them to invest in a trust fund for laid-off employees.Nice gesture. But the folks at Public Citizen surely know that a positive response to their request is about as likely to happen as coal-fired steam locomotives making a comeback.The guys at the top may no longer qualify as coal barons, but they’ve adequately padded their nests with millions of dollars extracted the way they extracted the coal itself, ripping the resource from the ground and leaving the economic, environmental and social debris from their operations for somebody else to clean up. The Public Citizen report points out:Although these companies and their trade association allies have often blamed environmental regulations for their precarious financial state, the truth is that debt-fueled acquisitions hobbled their finances at a time when market conditions were rapidly souring. Namely, Alpha Natural Resources, Peabody Energy, and Arch Coal bet big on future Chinese coal demand growth in 2011, going into debt to finance major expansions into metallurgical coal production during the year it was at peak price, only to see markets decline soon after the transactions were complete. [...]Instead of taking responsibility for their decisions, coal industry representatives lay the blame for their financial woes on mine workers, unions, environmental regulations, and the federal government in an effort to shirk their contractual obligations. In 2015, West Virginia Coal Association President Billy Raney blamed the federal government for the coal industry’s economic problems. Of Alpha Natural Resources, which filed for bankruptcy last year, Nicole Gentile wrote:Seven executives and eight other employees who remain unnamed in court documents are eligible for the bonus if they hit certain metrics for cutting costs while protecting the company’s cash reserves. Top executives were already promised $2 million retention bonuses for staying with the company through August 2016. These bonuses are described by Alpha as incentives to ensure high-level performance, something that is apparently not covered by annual salaries. In 2014, as the company was evidently on the verge of financial collapse, Alpha paid CEO Kevin Crutchfield nearly $8 million, and former President Paul Vinning more than $4.5 million.
The plan to dole out millions of dollars to the same executives that bankrupted the company is the latest in a series of controversial steps taken by the industry giant. Late last year, Alpha also proposed to eliminate health insurance, disability, and other benefits for mine workers. According to court documents, this move would affect more than 4,500 disabled former employees, non-union retirees, and their families.Complaints to Alpha’s shareholders about such bonuses were obviously bound to be ignored. Those executives are, after all, just doing what they have been bidden to do, right? If they performed their screw-job efficiently, surely they deserved the extra money for it.Then there’s Peabody. It created the Patriot Coal Corporation specifically to walk away from its contractually mandated benefits to retirees and disabled workers. Patriot filed for Chapter 11 protection just two years after acquiring the financial obligations for these workers. The bankruptcy outcome means the workers and retirees will get few if any of the obligations their union had negotiated.
Last September, Tim McDonnell at Mother Jones wrote:
According to a report today from the Institute for Policy Studies, which bills itself as the country’s oldest progressive think tank, executive salaries and bonuses at the top 10 publicly traded coal companies increased an average of 8 percent between 2010 and 2014, even as the companies’ combined share price fell 58 percent.Meanwhile, the same executives cashed in well over $100 million in stock options, according to the report, which analyzed the companies’ public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In other words, coal execs are cashing in while their companies tank. ”That [stock-based] part of their compensation package is not so valuable right now, so the value of their cash-based pay has been going up,” said Sarah Anderson, the report’s author. “We’re seeing this move to insulate them from the implosion of the coal sector by handing out more cash.”It’s not just coal companies. From that IPS study cited by McDonnell and titled Executive Excess 2015: Money to Burn:Bonus incentives: None of the 30 oil, gas, and coal companies on our list reward their executives for diversifying into green energy or reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A review of the 13 oil producers on our list revealed that all of them reward executives for expanding carbon reserves.
Retirement security: The ongoing disregard for our environment that fossil fuel executives have shown has left the future much less secure for billions of people around the world. These same executives, meanwhile, can all look forward to lavishly secure futures. Executives at America’s top 30 oil, gas, and coal firms have accumulated company-provided retirement assets worth a combined $1.2 billion, enough to cover the entire flood control budget of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for nearly three years. […]
The CEOs of the 30 largest U.S. publicly held fossil fuel companies took in an average $14.7 million in 2014, over 9 percent more than the average $13.5 million that went that year to S&P 500 CEOs. […] The 30 fossil fuel CEOs had outsized pay packages, despite leading companies with market caps that are smaller on average than the S&P 500.
Ordinary American taxpayers prop up this stratospheric pay for oil, gas, and coal executives through federal subsidies to fossil fuel companies. According to Oil Change International, these subsidies run about $37.5 billion per year.It’s a grotesque system that penalizes workers, investors, taxpayers and the planet itself while rewarding those whose policies, lobbyists and campaign funding of climate change-denying politicians have kept us headed into the ever-growing climate crisis long after critics warned us and them it would happen.

==http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/11/05/ny-attorney-general-investigation-subpoena-exxonmobil-peabody-coal-climate-denialIn a blockbuster story, The New York Times reported that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has <a target="blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/science/exxon-mobil-under-investigation-in-new-york-over-climate-statements.html?emc=edit_na_20151105&nlid=69650246&ref=headline&r=0">subpoenaed</a> oil and gas industry giant <a target="_blank" href="http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/657">ExxonMobil</a>

to “determine whether the company lied to the public about the risks of

climate change or to investors about how those risks might hurt the

oil business.”

ExxonMobil, now also the <a target="blank" href="http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-calls-for-probe-into-exxon-mobil-claims-on-climate-change">subject of U.S. congressional </a>and <a target="blank" href="http://350.org/the-department-of-justice-must-investigate-exxonmobil/">activist group calls for a U.S. Department of Justice investigation</a>, knew about the risks of climate change since the 1970s and studied those risks internally for decades.

But the company subsequently funded climate change denial and disinformation efforts <a target="_blank" href="http://www.desmogblog.com/exxonmobil-funding-climate-science-denial">to the tune of at least $31 million</a>.

Coal giant <a target="_blank" href="http://www.desmogblog.com/tags/peabody-energy">Peabody Energy</a> has also been swept into the fold by Schneiderman, with The Times revealing for the first time that Schneiderman's office has been digging — for the past two years — into the coal company's climate denial activity and possible acts of deception.

“The focus includes the company’s activities dating to the late

1970s, including a period of at least a decade when Exxon Mobil funded

groups that sought to undermine climate science,” wrote The Times.

ExxonMobil has yet to decide how it will respond to the subpoena.

“We unequivocally reject the allegations

that Exxon Mobil has suppressed climate-change research,” Kenneth Cohen,

vice president of public affairs for the company, told The Times.

Schneiderman's Peabody probe has

followed a similar line of inquiry to that of the ExxonMobil one, with

his office looking into “whether [the company] properly disclosed financial risks related to climate change.”

Depending on the what the New York Attorney General's office learns from its investigation, it may deploy the <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Act">Martin Act</a>, a blunt tool Schneiderman's office can use to tackle alleged financial fraud.

Other oil companies could be next in line for the AG's office query, confidential sources told The Times, parallelling what happened with tobacco companies in the 1990's.

The subpoena is the fruits of the labor of an investigation that has

been ongoing for almost a year by Schneiderman, sparked initially by

revelations of <a target="blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-cash-for-climate-change-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html">ExxonMobil and other companies covertly funding</a> the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics' climate change denier <a target="blank" href="http://www.desmogblog.com/willie-soon">Willie Soon</a>'s denial research.

A <a target="blank" href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/05112015/new-york-attorney-general-eric-schneiderman-subpoena-Exxon-climate-documents">confidential source told InsideClimate News</a>, the Pulitzer Prize-winning news organization that has <a target="blank" href="http://insideclimatenews.org/content/Exxon-The-Road-Not-Taken">broken most of the stories</a> about ExxonMobil's research on and subsequent public denial of climate change, that the subpoena is 18 pages long and “seeks

documents from Exxon related to its research into the causes and

effects of climate change, to the integration of climate change findings

into business decisions, to communications with the board of directors

and to marketing and advertising materials on climate change.”

InsideClimate News also published some of the things demanded by Schneiderman's office, including the following:

-Documents on climate change prepared for or by industry groups including the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Oil & Gas Association and the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association.

-Documents related to Exxon's support or funding of advocacy groups involved in climate change.

-Marketing and advertising

documents about climate change, including communications to employees

and spokesmen about how to discuss the subject, as well as

advertisements and other public-facing documents.

</blockquote>

“‘Exxon Knew’ just joined the category of truly serious scandals,” Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, <a target="_blank" href="http://350.org/press-release/bill-mckibben-on-ny-attorney-generals-exxon-investigation/">said in a press statement</a>.

“New York’s attorney general has shown great courage in holding to

account arguably the richest and most powerful company on Earth. We hope

that other state attorney generals and the federal Department of

Justice, and the Securities Exchange Commission will show

similar fortitude.”

Two of the three Democratic Party presidential candidates have also weighed in on The Times' story on Twitter.

The evidence suggests Exxon lied about climate change to protect their profits. If it's true, they broke the law. <a target="_blank" href="https://t.co/iAmVIbTIVc">https://t.co/iAmVIbTIVc</a>

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/662373801913622529">November 5, 2015</a></blockquote>

I applaud <a target="blank" href="https://twitter.com/AGSchneiderman">@AGSchneiderman</a> for investigating <a target="blank" href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ExxonKnew?src=hash">#ExxonKnew</a>. I urge other state Attorneys General to do the same. -O’M

— Martin O'Malley (@MartinOMalley) <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/MartinOMalley/status/662369501695123457">November 5, 2015</a></blockquote>

As the old adage goes, things just got a whole lot more interesting.==
...F<a href="http://ecowatch.com/news/energy-news/fracking-2/">racking</a>

and natural gas may have brought Big Coal to its knees, but

governmental complicity with the recklessness of the outlaw coal

industry has left coal-mined regions like my native southern Illinois in

utter ruin and despair.

Mr. Peabody and the rest of the Chapter

11 coal cats should be going to criminal court—not bankruptcy court. And

their enablers in government service and their bankrolled political

cheerleaders should be held accountable, as well.

While President Obama’s proposed Power

Plus Plan calls for millions in reclamation and reforestation projects,

retraining programs for unemployed coal miners and bolstered pension

plans for retired miners, it fails to take into account the huge reckoning coal-mined communities have <a href="https://reckoninginappalachia.com/" target="_blank">paid with their health, lives and livelihoods.</a>

Coal-mined communities don’t need more

flawed social programs that feed a failed system—they need to be on the

front line of regeneration and revival, a showcase for new economies in <a href="http://ecowatch.com/?s=renewables">renewable energy</a>, energy efficiency and tech industries, local food and agriculture, underwritten by decades of sacrifice.

From Appalachia to Illinois to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/dear-mr-peabody-no-ones-l_b_5175560.html" target="_blank">Black Mesa in Arizona</a>

to Montana and the 20 coal-mined states, a health and humanitarian

crisis from the lethal fallout of decades of mining continues to rage

under the auspices of flawed regulatory measures, blatant disregard for

civil rights and media indifference.

<a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/4/mountaintop-removal-mining-a-crime-against-appalachians-health.html" target="_blank">Lung cancer, birth defects and heart problems</a> will plague Appalachian communities for generations.

Huge toxic coal slurry impoundments,

where the deadly refuge of coal processing hovers in the hills and

forests like time bombs, will poison watersheds and threaten entire

communities for years.

Black lung disease will still whittle away at the lives of workers for generations.

Underground fires will burn unabated for decades.

Streams and creeks contaminated by strip mine discharges will remain contaminated and without aquatic life.

Coal companies and barons who have openly flaunted workplace safety and environmental laws will walk away free.

Long controlled and owned as vassal

colonies by absentee corporations—Mr. Peabody sank his first coal mine

in southern Illinois 1895, more than a half century after slaves had

been legally forced into first mines in the land of Lincoln—coal-mined

communities have been denied any economic diversification development.

Unbelievably, in 2016, it’s still that way.

And it ain’t going away, even after Mr.

Peabody packs up his last taxpayer-funded draglines and bulldozers and

the parade of well-meaning environmentalists moves elsewhere. And it’s

not the first time our regions have been left with the wreckage: As my

coal miner granddaddy reminded me, Mr. Peabody and the coal companies

abandoned our southern Illinois region in the 1930s and left a picture

of “almost unrelieved, utter economic devastation,” according to the

government report <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/the-historic-cost-of-the_b_438405.html" target="_blank">Seven Stranded Coal Towns</a>.

Despite churning out record amounts of coal and profits, southern

Illinois remained one of the most depressed regions in the country,

given over to “hopeless poverty.”

Eight decades later, the requiems we

write for coal uselessly parrot those headlines—unless we learn from our

mistakes, atone for our regulatory disasters and hold coal mining

outlaws accountable.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

<a style="color: #008000;" href="http://ecowatch.com/2016/03/21/peabody-energy-bankruptcy/">World’s Largest Coal Company Expected to File for Bankruptcy as Stock Price Tanks</a>
<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><div data-canvas-width="262.65999999999997" style="left: 336.883px; top: 1280.6px; transform: scaleX(0.806365);" align="left">KERRISDALE CAPITAL INVESTMENT </div><div data-canvas-width="202.43679999999995" style="left: 349.283px; top: 1303px; transform: scaleX(0.8084);" align="left">CASE STUDY COMPETITION</div><div data-canvas-width="421.9254" style="left: 285.033px; top: 166.384px; transform: scaleX(0.9682);" align="left">From hero to zero: Peabody Energy Corp.</div><div data-canvas-width="274.0374" style="left: 406.083px; top: 258.999px; transform: scaleX(1.05331);" align="left">Company Overview and brief market analysis</div><div data-canvas-width="137.48" style="left: 200.833px; top: 333.413px; transform: scaleX(0.896414);" align="left">Peabody Energy </div><div data-canvas-width="21.599999999999998" style="left: 833.967px; top: 333.413px; transform: scaleX(0.972243);" align="left">is the world’s largest private sector producer and distributor of </div><div data-canvas-width="155.51999999999998" style="left: 141.84px; top: 379.413px; transform: scaleX(0.908765);" align="left">coal. Present in 25 </div><div data-canvas-width="72.97999999999999" style="left: 298.433px; top: 379.413px; transform: scaleX(0.899507);" align="left">countries</div><div data-canvas-width="108.34" style="left: 382.483px; top: 379.413px; transform: scaleX(0.919694);" align="left">this company</div><div data-canvas-width="359" style="left: 496.283px; top: 379.413px; transform: scaleX(0.917689);" align="left">produces thermal coal for power generation </div><div data-canvas-width="299.18" style="left: 141.84px; top: 425.463px; transform: scaleX(0.925061);" align="left">as well as metallurgical coal used in </div><div data-canvas-width="80.95999999999998" style="left: 442.283px; top: 425.463px; transform: scaleX(0.921921);" align="left">producing</div><div data-canvas-width="36.74" style="left: 529.117px; top: 425.463px; transform: scaleX(0.869929);" align="left">steel.</div><div data-canvas-width="115.16000000000003" style="left: 576.917px; top: 425.463px; transform: scaleX(0.909038);" align="left">The company </div><div data-canvas-width="31.58" style="left: 693.117px; top: 425.463px; transform: scaleX(0.835818);" align="left">has </div><div data-canvas-width="124.92000000000002" style="left: 725.767px; top: 425.463px; transform: scaleX(0.913715);" align="left">been struggling</div><div data-canvas-width="202.29999999999998" style="left: 141.84px; top: 471.463px; transform: scaleX(0.910168);" align="left">with deteriorating prices</div><div data-canvas-width="127.35999999999999" style="left: 388.883px; top: 471.463px; transform: scaleX(0.874926);" align="left">, as the demand for </div><div data-canvas-width="73.11999999999999" style="left: 519.917px; top: 471.463px; transform: scaleX(0.877265);" align="left">coal was</div><div data-canvas-width="144.79999999999998" style="left: 141.84px; top: 517.463px; transform: scaleX(0.89245);" align="left">hit by low natural gas prices, increasing use of</div><div data-canvas-width="558.7199999999998" style="left: 296.433px; top: 517.463px; transform: scaleX(0.893047);" align="left">alternative energy sources and the global drive to reduce carbon </div><div data-canvas-width="306.08" style="left: 349.683px; top: 563.463px; transform: scaleX(0.897113);" align="left">emissions by cutting coal and other fossil fuel generated energy </div><div data-canvas-width="108.36" style="left: 656.117px; top: 563.463px; transform: scaleX(0.911226);" align="left">consumption.</div><div data-canvas-width="654.2399999999998" style="left: 200.833px; top: 609.463px; transform: scaleX(0.931524);" align="left">The company currently provides 10% of the electricity generated in the US and </div><div data-canvas-width="297.78000000000003" style="left: 141.84px; top: 655.463px; transform: scaleX(0.864467);" align="left">2% of the energy around the world.</div><div data-canvas-width="68.96" style="left: 447.283px; top: 655.463px; transform: scaleX(0.873833);" align="left">Peabody</div><div data-canvas-width="58.13999999999999" style="left: 523.317px; top: 655.463px; transform: scaleX(0.917759);" align="left">Energy</div><div data-canvas-width="266.81999999999994" style="left: 588.517px; top: 655.463px; transform: scaleX(0.851598);" align="left">is the market leader in the U.S. </div><div data-canvas-width="26.659999999999997" style="left: 251.433px; top: 701.297px; transform: scaleX(0.922491);" align="left">providing  6%</div><div data-canvas-width="302.64" style="left: 285.033px; top: 701.297px; transform: scaleX(0.864645);" align="left">of the total volume of coal produced</div><div data-canvas-width="108.14000000000001" style="left: 594.917px; top: 701.297px; transform: scaleX(0.892981);" align="left">(cf. Table 1) </div><div style="left: 705.167px; top: 701.297px;" align="left">-</div><div data-canvas-width="136.54" style="left: 718.967px; top: 701.297px; transform: scaleX(0.865272);" align="left">an equivalent to </div><div data-canvas-width="29.999999999999996" style="left: 141.84px; top: 747.297px; transform: scaleX(0.89955);" align="left">183</div><div data-canvas-width="221.11999999999998" style="left: 176.833px; top: 747.297px; transform: scaleX(0.896251);" align="left">275 thousand tons in 2013. </div></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
1/28unsecured bonds are trading at around 8.6 cents on the dollar.

The gross profit figure is barely sufficient to cover the interest expenses.

The firm is burning cash quarter over quarter.

Peabody Energy (NYSE:BTU) is the world's largest private coal company. The coal miner has majority interests in 26 coal operations located throughout all major coal producing regions in the United States and Australia. Moreover, it owns the North Antelope Rochelle mine located Wyoming. It is the largest coal mine. This one single mine produces approximately 12% of the America's coal. On a daily basis, 21 trains composed of 132 cars each are filled with the coal produced from the North Antelope Rochelle mine.

In my opinion, Peabody Energy owns the best coal mines in the world. Moreover, it is probably the most diversified player in the U.S with its operations in Australia. The problem does not reside in these aspects. The problem is its overleveraged balance sheet. The decent operating margin is dilapidated by the expenses associated with the debt load. In my opinion, the bankruptcy seems extremely probable.

This affirmation is corroborated by the credit analyst. As of January 14, the unsecured bonds are trading at 8.6 cents on the dollar for an impressive yield of 99%. The bankruptcy looks already priced-in. With the recent bankruptcy of Arch Coal, the sector's default rate stand at an unprecedented peak of 43%.

Over the last few years, 26 coal companies have gone bankrupt. Walter Energy, Alpha Natural Resources, Patriot Coal and Arch Coal are probably the best-known victims of the prolonged downturn. Consequently, 264 mines have closed according to the magazine OnEarth.

Peabody Energy, described as the largest coal company in the world, is the next coal giant <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/mar/16/coal-miner-peabody-energy-bankruptcy" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">facing bankruptcy</a>. The price of Peabody stock has dropped 97% over the past year and it recently warned its investors that it may seek bankruptcy protections from creditors.The company had recently reached a settlement with the New York Attorney General, over <a href="http://www.climateinvestigations.org/peabody_energy_investigtion_in_late_stages_new_york_attorney_general_probe" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">allegations</a> that it had misled its investors about the risk climate change posed to its longterm business. But that investigation was about the rights of shareholders and the price of their shares, not directly about Peabody's role in funding climate change denial. If the company does file for bankruptcy then much more may soon be revealed about coal funding for climate change denial and opposition to tackling climate change.
--ref'd<a href="http://www.climateinvestigations.org/peabody_energy_investigtion_in_late_stages_new_york_attorney_general_probe">http://www.climateinvestigations.org/peabody_energy_investigtion_in_late_stages_new_york_attorney_general_probe</a>Peabody Energy settled a multi-year investigation by the New York state attorney general's office last night, agreeing to make more truthful disclosures to investors about climate change-related risks to its coal mining operations.However the settlement fell far short of what some had hoped for given that the investigation of the world's largest private sector coal producer, originally launched in 2007 under then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, had been renewed in 2013 under current Attorney General Eric Schneiderman with further demands for information from the company.That fact, combined with the investigation launched by Schneiderman into ExxonMobil last Wednesday that is looking not only at investor disclosures about regulatory, litigation and other risks to the oil giant stemming from climate change but also at XOM's ties to climate denial, raised hopes that the Peabody probe might have been expanded to include Peabody's longstanding and robust support of climate denial. Instead, Schneiderman came away with a far more modest victory.Peabody <a title="agreed" href="http://ag.ny.gov/pdfs/Peabody-Energy-Assurance-signed.pdf" target="self" style="color: rgb(9, 45, 92); text-decoration: none;">agreed</a> to no longer pretend it couldn't estimate the potential impact of new greenhouse gas emissions regulations or taxes.  The AG's office found that Peabody hired a consultant who projected in March 2014 that a $20 per ton carbon tax would reduce coal demand for electric power generation in 2020 by between 38% and 53%.  This was not disclosed to investors.The company also agreed to no longer cherry-pick only the most generous future projections of coal use issued by the International Energy Agency, finding that "Peabody provided incomplete and one-sided" data from IEA, which is widely relied on as an authority on future global energy developments.Peabody <a title="minimized" href="http://www.peabodyenergy.com/content/120/press-releases" target="blank" style="color: rgb(9, 45, 92); text-decoration: none;">minimized</a> the significance of its agreement with the attorney general, noting in a press release that there is "no other action associated with this settlement, no admission or denial of wrongdoing and no financial penalty."The company claimed it "has always sought to make appropriate disclosures," and that "the most recent disclosures planned for the company's third quarter 2015 Form 10-Q address the matters raised by the New York Attorney General." Schneiderman, who had been under increasing pressure to investigate energy companies for allegedly covering up the hazards of fossil fuel use, issued an 18-page subpoena for a wide assortment of records from ExxonMobil dating back to January 1, 1977. The company must respond by December 4th.The news that Peabody was still under investigation accompanied Schneiderman's  announcement on November 6th of his investigation of ExxonMobil, which apparently will zero in on the contradiction between the company's own scientific research confirming the hazards of global warming and its subsequent funding of climate denial to protect its profits.Peabody was one of five corporations originally <a title="swept up" href="http://www.ag.ny.gov/press-release/energy-companies-subpoenas" target="blank" style="color: rgb(9, 45, 92); text-decoration: none;">swept up</a> in Cuomo's 2007 inquiry into alleged failures to adequately disclose the potential risks to their businesses from climate change in their annual reports to shareholders.  The other four were all utility companies - Dynegy, AES, Xcel and Dominion Resources - three of which were building or planning to build more coal-fired power plants. Dynegy, AES and Xcel settled within two years of receiving subpoenas. Now only Dominion remains."The general idea was to take this lens of transparency from the securities regulation world where you have to be transparent on all sorts of risks that you take with investors, especially if they're in the public market," said Matthew Gaul, former chief of the Investor Protection Bureau, a unit within the office of the New York's attorney general that along with its Environmental Protection Bureau, ran the investigation of the energy companies.A September 2007 <a title="letter" href="http://www.ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/press-releases/archived/peabody%20energy.pdf" target="blank" style="color: rgb(9, 45, 92); text-decoration: none;">letter</a> from the attorney general's office to Peabody Energy CEO Gregory Boyce expressed concern over the company’s plan to build new coal-fired power plants using conventional technology without the means to capture CO2 emissions, and noted that <a title="hasn't" href="http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2015/11/06/stories/1060027643" target="blank" style="color: rgb(9, 45, 92); text-decoration: none;">adding</a> these plants to the nation's existing coal fleet “will subject Peabody Energy to increased financial, regulatory, and litigation risks” that haven’t been disclosed to shareholders.  At the time, Peabody was a partner in building Prairie State, a coal-fired power plant in Illinois. The AG's letter warned that "Peabody Energy cannot excuse its failure to provide disclosure and analysis by claiming there is insufficient information concerning known climate change trends and uncertainties.”The three utilities that settled with Cuomo had to make <a title="changes" href="http://www.ag.ny.gov/press-release/attorney-general-cuomo-announces-agreement-aes-disclose-climate-change-risks-investors" target="blank" style="color: rgb(9, 45, 92); text-decoration: none;">changes</a> to what they disclosed to investors. They began explaining the financial risks arising from any future climate change-related regulations, laws, litigation, plus the actual physical impacts of climate change. (For example, increasingly frequent and violent downpours can flood a coal mine.)  And the three companies began disclosing their carbon emissions and projected increases along with how they planned to reduce them. The ExxonMobil investigation, which Schneiderman's office said could be expanded to the rest of the oil industry, seeks information about Exxon's cutting edge climate research dating back to the 1970s, first revealed in an investigative <a title="series" href="http://insideclimatenews.org/content/Exxon-The-Road-Not-Taken%20" target="blank" style="color: rgb(9, 45, 92); text-decoration: none;">series</a> by Inside Climate News, and two <a title="stories" href="http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-arctic" target="blank" style="color: rgb(9, 45, 92); text-decoration: none;">stories</a> published in the Los Angeles Times in conjunction with an investigative team from Columbia Journalism School.The AG's office is also seeking documents about ExxonMobil's funding of surrogates and slanted scientific research that tried to cast doubt on the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. The company <a title="spent" href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/index.php" target="blank" style="color: rgb(9, 45, 92); text-decoration: none;">spent</a> some $31 million on a wide variety of organizations and individuals in an effort to create the appearance of a controversy about climate science."We want to know how they used their research and knowledge," said a source with knowledge of Schneiderman's inquiry.  "In other words, if they were honest about how climate change would impact the oil business in the future. Or if they decided to send out a message to the public that this wasn't a problem for oil."And while most in the industry insist climate change only hit their radar in the late eighties, in fact increases in CO2 levels were being discussed in the scientific literature as far back as the 1940s, and concerns about human impacts on the "greenhouse effect" were a subject of concern within the U.S. government in the 1960s, making industry arguments about being in the dark about these issues far less credible.Schneiderman's investigators may find a case study in duplicity in the company's treatment of the Arctic climate crisis.Documents unearthed by the Columbia Journalism School/Los Angeles Times team show that, through the 1980s and early 1990s, the company <a title="knew" href="http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-arctic" target="blank" style="color: rgb(9, 45, 92); text-decoration: none;">knew</a> man-made climate change would affect polar regions more severely - many degrees more severely than more temperate regions of the globe. They knew enough to plan for both the worst and the best scenarios. ExxonMobil internal documents show a keen awareness of the need to <a title="told" target="blank" style="color: rgb(73, 77, 88);">harden</a> facilities in the Arctic against the more extreme weather of the future.  They also modeled the "up side" - that melting sea ice would lower operating costs and lengthen the warm weather drilling season. In 1992, an Exxon researcher <a title="told" href="http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-arctic" target="blank" style="color: rgb(9, 45, 92); text-decoration: none;">told</a> the company, "potential global warming can only help lower exploration and development costs" in the Beaufort Sea.Some 20 years later, ExxonMobil, along with its trade association the American Petroleum Institute,  embarked on a campaign of climate science denial specifically aimed at the Arctic.  Both API and ExxonMobil along with the Southern Company, a giant electric utility company, awarded grants titled "Arctic" to Dr. Willie Soon, a notorious climate denier affiliated with the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. ExxonMobil paid Dr. Soon over $335,000 from 2005 until 2010 while API paid the Smithsonian some $274,000 between 2001 and 2007.  Grant titles included the innocuous-sounding "Understanding Arctic Climate Change." Meanwhile, Soon published a now infamous <a title="paper" href="http://www.realclimate.org/docs/Soon_saved/DyckSoonetal07-PBpaper(1).pdf" target="blank" style="color: rgb(9, 45, 92); text-decoration: none;">paper</a> (Dyck, Soon 2007) called, "Polar Bears of Western Hudson Bay and Climate Change: Are Warming Spring Air Temperatures the 'Ultimate Survival Control Factor?The paper sought to show that polar bear populations were faring well, would survive warming in the region, and that the Hudson Bay area of the Arctic showed "no significant warming trend and are more likely identified with the large-amplitude, natural climatic variability that is characteristic of the Arctic. Any role of external forcing by anthropogenic greenhouse gases remains difficult to identify."Dr. Soon acknowledged in the paper that his "effort for the completion of this paper was partially supported by grants from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, American Petroleum Institute, and Exxon-Mobil Corporation."Since the the 1990s, attorneys general have gone to court and prevailed in a wide variety of causes, from illegal drug company marketing to firearms regulation. When Mississippi's attorney general sued them in 1994,  Big Tobacco had never lost a smoking and health lawsuit and was a rogue enterprise, outside the ambit of federal oversight. Four years later, with all fifty AGs having followed Mississippi's lead, the industry signed a historic settlement that banned ads targeting children, dissolved the industry's front organizations, paid the states $246 billion in damages and paved the way for federal regulation of tobacco products in 2009.Schneiderman has by far the most powerful investigative toolkit of any attorney general.  The state's Martin Act, designed specifically to attack investor fraud, prohibits "all deceitful practices contrary to the plain rules of common honesty," an extraordinarily broad mandate.  And unlike federal securities laws, no proof of intent to deceive is required under the Martin Act, and neither damage resulting from the fraud nor reliance upon the fraud by investors has to be proven. The act is often used in conjunction with the state's Executive Act, which grants additional power to investigate fraud in the context of any business activity.With the broad powers granted under the Martin and Executive Acts, Attorney General Schneiderman may be able to change the behavior of the oil industry even if no other attorney general enters the fray, just as his predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, forced changes in the climate change-related risks utilities must disclose.It's notable that the utilities surrendered to Cuomo without any charges being filed - all he had to do was open an investigation. Perhaps this was partly because the Martin Act allows the attorney general to pursue both civil and criminal cases - simultaneously, if he so chooses - while also stripping the company under investigation of legal protections it would normally be afforded.=<a href="http://www.globalpossibilities.org/peabody-energy-worlds-largest-private-coalminer-may-file-for-bankruptcy/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">http://www.globalpossibilities.org/peabody-energy-worlds-largest-private-coalminer-may-file-for-bankruptcy/</a><div class="contentmeta-container js-content-meta js-football-meta u-cf contentmeta-container--twitter " style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The world’s largest private coal mining company is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, driven to the brink of collapse by plummeting energy prices around the world, cheaper and less polluting rivals such as natural gas, and widespread economic uncertainty.</div><div class="contentarticle-body from-content-api js-articlebody" data-test-id="article-review-body" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">US mining giant Peabody <a class="u-underline" href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/energy" data-link-name="auto-linked-tag" data-component="auto-linked-tag" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Energy</a> announced in New York on Wednesday that it is facing the prospect of filing for bankruptcy protection, a legal strategy to shield it from its creditors while it restructures, after failing to make a routine interest payment on its debts.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">The company, based in St Louis, <a class="u-underline" href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/missouri" data-link-name="auto-linked-tag" data-component="auto-linked-tag" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Missouri</a>, is a huge presence in American and Australian mining and was owned for a time during the 1990s by Britain’s Hanson plc industrial conglomerate.</div><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/11/25/coal-not-answer-energy-poverty-and-here-s-why" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/11/25/coal-not-answer-energy-poverty-and-here-s-why</a>refs:<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/11/11/peabody-energy-goes-offense-new-pr-campaign-designed-sell-same-old-dirty-coal">http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/11/11/peabody-energy-goes-offense-new-pr-campaign-designed-sell-same-old-dirty-coal</a>Despite what you may have heard about the <a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/king-coal-dying-slow-death-america?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(51, 153, 204);">death of the coal industry</a>, Peabody Energy is ramping up mining activities and going on the offensive, pushing “clean coal” on the world’s poor with a disingenuous but aggressive PR campaign. And for good reason: Peabody has got to sell the coal from <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/10/-sp-the-real-story-of-us-coal-inside-the-worlds-biggest-coal-mine" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(51, 153, 204);">the world's largest coal mine</a> to someone.

Speculation is rife that the new GOP-led Senate will join with its <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/11/05/climate-deniers-congress-take-3-5-times-much-money-dirty-energy-interests" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(51, 153, 204);">similarly fossil fuel-beholden</a> House colleagues to usher in a new era of coal. Peabody, the world’s largest privately held coal company, isn’t waiting around to find out.

The company has teamed with public relations firm Burson-Marsteller—the notorious PR giant that helped Big Tobacco attack and distort scientific evidence of the dangers of smoking tobacco—to launch Advanced Energy for Life, a desperate attempt to shift the discussion around coal away from its deleterious effects on health and massive contributions to climate change and instead posit the fossil fuel as a solution to global poverty.

The aim of this PR offensive, according to a piece by freelance journalist Dan Zegart and former DeSmog managing editor Kevin Grandia (<a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/lists/the-fossil-fuel-resistance-meet-the-new-green-heroes-20130411/kevin-grandia-the-muckraker-19691231" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(51, 153, 204);">one of Rolling Stone’s “Green Heroes,”</a> and deservedly so), the reason for Peabody’s charm offensive is simple: there’s money to be made selling coal in Asian markets, and Peabody aims to make it—as long as initiatives to combat global warming emissions don’t intervene. Which makes Burson-Marsteller the perfect ally:<blockquote style="margin: 1.5em 30px; line-height: 18.59px;">Burson-Marsteller, which has a long history of creating front groups to rehabilitate the images of corporate wrongdoers, helped Philip Morris, maker of Marlboro, tackle the Asian market, where Burson fought anti-smoking regulations and developed crisis drills for Philip Morris personnel in Hong Kong on how to handle adverse scientific reports.
 </blockquote>As the US produces a glut of cheap natural gas, the EPA’s <a href="http://www2.epa.gov/carbon-pollution-standards/clean-power-plan-proposed-rule" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(51, 153, 204);">Clean Power Plan</a> seeks to set emissions standards that would make building new coal-fired power plants all but impossible impossible, and the domestic demand for coal drops, Peabody’s value as a company has dropped as well, from $20 billion to just $3.7 billion in the space of three years. The company is in desperate need of new business if it’s to even stay afloat.
China has emerged as an especially important market for Peabody. But already there are signs that China may be realizing what a Faustian bargain coal really is. Coal use in the country <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/22/chinas-coal-use-falls-for-first-time-this-century-analysis-suggests" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(51, 153, 204);">dropped for the first time this century</a> after doubling in just the past decade. And <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/09/23/china-create-national-cap-and-trade-program-obama-admin-must-bypass-u-s-senate-climate" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(51, 153, 204);">China recently announced it was creating a national cap and trade program</a> to lower its greenhouse gas emissions.

This is where Burson-Marsteller and Advanced Energy for Life PR campaign come in.

“Energy poverty. It’s the world’s number one human and environmental crisis,” an Advanced Energy for Life ad reads. And the solution to this crisis? That mythical fuel “clean coal,” naturally.

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority stepped in and stopped Peabody and Burson-Marsteller from using the term “clean coal” in the ad, because in addition to the carbon pollution cooking our climate, coal is also responsible for <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/coal-power-industry-united-states-facts" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(51, 153, 204);">mercury pollution and acid rain-causing sulfur dioxide pollution</a>. But it was the stunning hypocrisy of <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/20/3473654/clean-coal-misleading-public/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(51, 153, 204);">Peabody disguising its sales pitch as some kind of altruistic attempt to alleviate global poverty</a> that caused the World Wildlife Fund to bring a case before the UK’s ASA in the first place.

Peabody was undeterred by the ASA’s adverse ruling, even crowing <a href="http://www.peabodyenergy.com/Investor-News-Release-Details.aspx?nr=844" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(51, 153, 204);">in a press release</a> that its “right to assert its opinion that global energy poverty – which impacts half the world's population – is the number one human and environmental crisis for society today” had been upheld.

The company’s intent with the PR blitz is obvious: “By stalling carbon limits, say critics, Peabody, an American company, hopes to buy itself time to shift from selling domestic coal here in the U.S. to exporting American coal to Asia or mining Asian and Australian coal and selling it abroad,” Zegart and Grandia write.

Peabody is currently in the process of exploiting the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/10/-sp-the-real-story-of-us-coal-inside-the-worlds-biggest-coal-mine" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(51, 153, 204);">largest coal mine in the world</a>, the North Antelope Rochelle mine in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. The mine is as big as Washington, D.C., some 100 square miles, and contains an estimated 3 billion tonnes of coal.

GRDIAN: “It would take Peabody 25 or 30 years to mine it all.” And that is exactly what Peabody plans to do. “On an average day, 21 long freight trains full of coal leave North Antelope Rochelle bound for 100 power plants across the country. But the company says that’s still not enough.”

President Obama's “all of the above” energy strategy has led to coal exports growing to some 100 million tonnes per year over the past three years. These exports are seen as a key lifeline for the ailing coal industry, as the EPA's Clean Power Plan will, for the first time, place limits on carbon emissions from power plants, further imperiling the domestic demand for coal.

Plus, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/09/22/photos-record-breaking-crowd-400K-marches-climate-justice-new-york" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(51, 153, 204);">demands for climate action are growing louder</a> and louder, and the true costs of the mining process are getting attention too. LJ Turner, a Wyoming rancher who has lost dozens of heads of cattle to pneumonia exacerbated by dust from Peabody’s mine, told the Guardian:<blockquote style="margin: 1.5em 30px; line-height: 18.59px;">We are making a national sacrifice out of this region. Peabody coal and other coal companies want to keep on mining, and mine this country out and leave it as a sacrifice and they want to do it for their bottom line. It’s not for the United States. They want to sell it overseas, and I want to see that stopped.</blockquote>This, of course, is precisely what Peabody’s Advanced Energy for Life PR campaign seeks to distract our attention from: The very real consequences that mining and burning coal are having on people right now, and will continue to have if we don’t rein in global warming emissions, of which coal is the single largest contributor.

Far from a solution to global poverty, coal will make climate change worse and thus <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/31/climate-change-poor-suffer-most-un-report" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(51, 153, 204);">disproportionately impact the lives of people living in poverty</a>, those who have done the least to contribute to the problem and are the least equipped to deal with the consequences of rising sea levels, more and more extreme weather events, and lower crop yields.

But the official position of Peabody, conveniently enough, is that none of that is a result of our use of coal because climate change is not manmade.

As [uk grd link nix]“Peabody’s official position on climate science is divorced from scientific reality. But their grasp of the politics of coal clearly is not.”shook hardy and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manatt,Phelps%26_Phillips">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manatt,Phelps%26_Phillips</a><a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/peabody-energy-white-house-greenhouse-gas-benign">http://www.alternet.org/environment/peabody-energy-white-house-greenhouse-gas-benign</a>In an official submission to the White House earlier this year, U.S. coal giant Peabody Energy claims that greenhouse gas is a “non-existent harm” and a “benign gas that is essential to all life.”The March 2015 submission from Peabody further claims that “while the benefits of carbon dioxide are proven, the alleged risks of climate change are contrary to observed data, are based on admitted speculation, and lack adequate scientific basis.”It has become increasingly rare, especially in the last few years as countries and corporations have begun to take the issue of climate change more seriously, to see a publicly-traded company like <a href="https://www.google.ca/finance?cid=666300" target="blank" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">Peabody Energy (NYSE: BTU)</a>making claims that are so contrary to the well-documented scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are negatively impacting our climate, health and way of living. While there are thousands of peer-reviewed scientific documents available on the impacts of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, the Peabody climate change document relies heavily on claims made in newspaper opinion articles and by organizations with known connections to the fossil fuel industry.An analysis of the 304 footnote citations in the Peabody document finds that opinion articles published in media outlets, primarily the Wall Street Journal, were cited as supporting evidence 41 times ,and groups with historical ties to the fossil fuel industry (e.g. <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/cato-institute" target="blank" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">Cato Institute</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Coalition_for_Clean_Coal_Electricity" target="blank" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity</a> and the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/global-warming-policy-foundation" target="blank" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">Global Warming Policy Foundation</a>) were cited 64 times. Articles cited from peer-reviewed scientific journals made up only 8% of the evidence cited in Peabody's arguments:<div alt="" class="media-image" height="402" width="613" style="line-height: 25px; width: 600px; height: 393px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><img alt="" class="media-image" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.alternet.org/files/peabody_white_house_climate_change.png" style="border: none; width: 600px; height: 393px;" height="402" width="613" /></div>Here are some of the key quotes from the Peabody climate change document:“There are no demonstrated foreseeable effects of any GHG emissions.” (pg.3)“Increases in CO2 emissions worldwide have led to prosperity, not to the predicted global temperature increases or adverse effects.” (pg.4)“The relationship between GHG emissions and any climate change has not been proven…” (pg.10)“There are so many uncertainties and flaws in the data and models on which global warming predictions depend that they are not fit for reasoned decisionmaking.” (pg.24)The 71-page document was signed by Peabody Energy senior executives and its outside legal council from the firms <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Shook,Hardy%26_Bacon" target="blank" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">Shook, Hardy & Bacon</a> and Massey & Gail.It was submitted to the White House's Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) on March 24, 2015. The document is an official submission by Peabody addressing the company's concerns regarding new policies the government has proposed that would treat greenhouse gas emissions and considerations regarding climate change as part of environmental impact reviews under the US government's <a href="http://www2.epa.gov/nepa" target="blank" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">National Environmental Policy Act</a> (NEPA).In a nutshell, NEPA requires that all projects involving a US federal government agency must include an environmental assessment. Right now, the White House is considering whether to add climate change and greenhouse gas impacts as a part of the environmental assessment criteria.This revision to the NEPA criteria could create major challenges for companies heavily invested in fossil fuels. Peabody Energy is a pure-play coal mining company, in that they are not diversified in other energy sectors. As Peabody's senior vice president of government relations, Fred Palmer <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2011/mar/08/fred-palmer-peabody-coal-interview" target="blank" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">made clear in a 2011 interview</a> with The Guardian: "We're 100% coal. More coal. Everywhere. All the time."The White House CEQ first sought comment on the proposal to include climate change and greenhouse gas effects in NEPA in 2010.Peabody Energy submitted comments during that period as well through the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP.

In that 2010 submission to the White House's CEQ, Peabody struck a much different tone, not arguing about whether climate change and greenhouse gas are a risk, but instead pointing out how the coal company was aiming to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions through advances in technology: <blockquote style="line-height: 25px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Peabody supports continual emissions reductions, including those from C02, toward the ultimate goal of near-zero emissions from coal. Peabody is committed to, and invests in, projects to advance technologies and is a global leader in developing clean coal solutions. Peabody takes its environmental stewardship seriously.</blockquote>Last week, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/08/exxon-climate-change-1981-climate-denier-funding" target="blank" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">it was revealed</a> that another fossil fuel giant, <a href="https://www.google.ca/finance?cid=663876" target="blank" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM)</a>, was aware of the potential negative consequences of climate change as early as 1981, but then funded climate denial and anti-science groups for the ensuing three decades. This raises all sorts of issues according to the former lawyer who led a watershed tobacco corruption case on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice.In that case, the Justice Department <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/The_U.S.Government%27s_racketeering_case_against_Big_Tobacco" target="blank" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">filed a racketeering suit</a> against the major US tobacco companies alleging they had purposefully and fraudulently misled the public about the health risks of smoking tobacco. Commenting on the Exxon news, the lead DOJ lawyer in that case against the tobacco industry, Sharon Eubanks, said the revelations could significantly worsen the fossil fuel industry’s liability picture:<blockquote style="line-height: 25px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It starts to look like a much longer conspiracy. It’s like what we discovered with tobacco – the more you push back the date of knowledge of the harm, the more you delay any remediation, the more people are affected. So your liability can grow exponentially as the timeline gets longer.</blockquote>At some point, the question of who knew what and when will follow on climate change, just like it did for Big Tobacco and the link between their product and lung cancer. You can <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/comment_letter_regarding_draft_nepa_guidance_on_consideration_of_the_effects_of_climate_change%20%281%29.pdf" target="blank" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">click here to download the 2010 Peabody submission to the White House.</a>A full copy of the March 2015 PDF document is available for download here: <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Comments-of-Peabody-Energy-Corp%20%28downloaded%20July%203%2C%202015%29.pdf" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">Peabody Energy submission on greenhouse gas and climate change to the White House.</a>Peabody did not respond to multiple requests for comment.YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE<a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/gop-governors-line-defy-obamas-new-climate-rules" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">GOP Governors Line Up to Defy Obama's New Climate Rules</a><a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/how-climate-deniers-are-creating-nightmare-they-most-fear" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">How Climate Deniers Are Creating the Nightmare They Most Fear</a><a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/are-koch-brothers-preventing-chris-christie-acting-climate-change" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">Are the Koch Brothers Preventing Chris Christie From Acting on Climate Change?</a><a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/gop-congressman-lamar-smith-declares-war-nasa-and-epa-climate-science-research" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">GOP Congressman Lamar Smith Declares War on NASA and EPA Climate Science Research</a><a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/secretive-donors-gave-us-climate-denial-groups-125-million-over-three-years" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">Secretive Donors Gave U.S. Climate Denial Groups $125 Million Over Three Years</a><a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/heres-what-gop-presidential-debate-climate-change-might-be-based-actual-quotes" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration: none;">Here's What a GOP Presidential Debate on Climate Change Might Be Like — Based on Actual Quotes</a>==http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/peabody-energy-asks-a-judge-to-strike-lyrics-of-protest/article_a6e17f4d-46b1-52e9-961e-fd5443aea795.htmlCHEYENNE, Wyo. • Peabody Energy Corp. wants a judge to strike lyrics of a strip-mining protest song from a federal lawsuit filed by environmental activists who claim they were jailed for demonstrating at a company shareholders meeting.The activists, Thomas Asprey and Leslie Glustrom, sued Peabody, the Northern Wyoming Community College District and a college district police officer. They claim campus police jailed them on the company's orders during the 2013 shareholders meeting in Gillette.<div style="line-height: 18px; width: 378px; float: right; margin-left: 2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div id="ym_724545649249033469" class="ym"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Peabody has asked a federal judge not only to dismiss the case but to strike lyrics of the 1971 John Prine song, "Paradise," which criticized Peabody's mining practices in Kentucky, from their complaint. Peabody says the lyrics tarnish its name....<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">--

Oh dear. <a href="http://ecowatch.com/?s=peabody" style="line-height: 25.2000007629395px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s linear; -webkit-transition: color 0.2s linear; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Peabody Energy</a> is foolishly going after the famous <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/John-Prine/49424414445" target="blank" style="line-height: 25.2000007629395px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s linear; -webkit-transition: color 0.2s linear; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">John Prine</a> song, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEy6EuZp9IY" target="blank" style="line-height: 25.2000007629395px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s linear; -webkit-transition: color 0.2s linear; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Paradise</a>” in federal court and <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/peabody-energy-asks-a-judge-to-strike-lyrics-of-protest/article_a6e17f4d-46b1-52e9-961e-fd5443aea795.html" target="blank" style="line-height: 25.2000007629395px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s linear; -webkit-transition: color 0.2s linear; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">asking a judge</a> to strike song lyrics from federal court filings.Here are the lyrics that cite Peabody’s role in strip mining Muhlenberg County in western Kentucky.“And Daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County“Down by the Green River where paradise lay?”“Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in askingMister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away”Peabody is picking on a great folk singer and a song that was released in 1971. The song has been covered by John Denver, Jimmy Buffet, John Fogerty and many others. Peabody’s stock price is down more than <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/06/24/heres-why-peabody-energy-corporations-stock-is-slu.aspx" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; -webkit-transition: color 0.2s linear; transition: color 0.2s linear; background: transparent;">85 percent over the last year</a>, selling at less than $2 a share. It has been <a href="http://www.bidnessetc.com/46216-heres-why-peabody-energy-corporation-btu-stock-is-sinking-today/" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; -webkit-transition: color 0.2s linear; transition: color 0.2s linear; background: transparent;">kicked out</a> of the stock exchange because its stock has slumped so low. But apparently they have plenty of money to demand removal of John Prine song lyrics in federal court.

===

http://ecowatch.com/2015/02/12/carl-pope-why-they-hate-clean-power-rule/

carl pope

The vicious coal industry/right-wing attack on President Obama’s proposed Clean Power Rule is not fundamentally about the rule itself. Substantively, the proposal is simply the fulfillment of one of George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign promises—to clean up carbon pollution from power plants.

...

Then there is the argument, best explained by David Roberts in Grist, that states should be able to comply with EPA rules using flexible approaches, but EPA cannot consider these opportunities.

EPA wants to allow states to reduce emissions not only by cleaning up individual power plants, but also by encouraging energy efficiency and other system wide reforms. Critics argue that Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act allows power companies this kind of flexibility in meeting EPA’s standards once they are set, but that EPA cannot consider such flexibility in setting the standard. Again the courts will decide how the law should be read. But allowing flexibility is clearly good public policy. If inefficiencies in the electric sector are driving up pollution and it’s cheap to clean it up, why shouldn’t state standards reflect that opportunity?

Finally, Peabody Coal hired Harvard constitutional law scholar Lawrence Tribe to thunder that the Clean Power rule will rend the fabric of American society by depriving the states of their autonomy and his client, Peabody, of its property.

This argument is so difficult to make that a lawyer of Tribe’s caliber was clearly needed. (And why Tribe, whose career was built on protecting vulnerable clients like he disabled wrongly deprived of their pension benefits should take Peabody as a client, a company which exploited federal bankruptcy law loopholes to strip thousands of long time workers, many disabled, of health care and pensions is perplexing.

Fortunately Tribe fails. His brief for Peabody offers standard constitutional principles, but applies them to utterly phantasmagoric facts, perhaps provided by Peabody. Ignoring decades of regulation of power plant pollution, and the signature by three US Presidents on international agreements calling for halting global warming, Tribe begins by claiming that there is an established national policy of favoring coal and leaving its pollutants unregulated. He then argues that the Clean Power Rule upends that policy. It thus… represents a radical shift in federal policy that upsets settled, investment-backed expectations…”  Therefore the Rule violates the 5th Amendment because it effectively destroys the value of Peabody’s vast coal reserves.

But the rule does not even regulate Peabody. Its only impact will be fewer customers for less coal—but dozens of previous EPA rules have similarly impacted the market for various products, including coal. Tribe bases his 5th amendment taking claim on an allegation that the Clean Power Rule’s “intent” is to shut down all coal usage in the U.S.—which is perfectly preposterous, whatever I and climate scientists might like EPA to do. The rule will leave plenty of coal plants up, running and interested in Peabody’s coal—if the price is right.

Tribe also claims that the rule “seeks to commandeer state governments in violation of the Tenth Amendment.” Why? Because. The Proposed Rule goes to great lengths to appear as though it permits states some degree of freedom, but in truth it offers only Potemkin choices. The state is given leeway to “assign the emission performance obligations to its affected (power plants),” but only “as long as, again, the required emission performance level is met.”

This last sentence is true—and irrelevant. Under the proposed rule EPA sets the emission limit for each state. The standard must be met—or EPA will write its own plan for the state. But this is how the Clean Air Act has worked since 1970. EPA sets standards. States can meet them. If they fail EPA writes its own plan. Tribe never even hints at why carbon pollution from power plants should be different from fluoride pollution from chemical factories.

Tribe’s overall argument on behalf of Peabody is also in shocking contrast to his earlier views on the role of EPA in regulating carbon dioxide. In 2010 he argued that the courts lacked legal standing to take up the issue of nuisance damages from climate change, precisely because EPA had been delegated to regulate global warming pollutions:

“Congress, through the Clean Air Act and other measures, has empowered the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases, and that agency has begun to do so, prodded by a Supreme Court ruling in favor of Massachusetts when the state sued the EPA to compel it to take up the problem. The courts should reject the political and administrative roles that would be thrust upon them by litigants dissatisfied with Congress’s decision to entrust the EPA with this challenging mission.”

An old legal saw says, “When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When the law is on your side, argue the law. When neither is on your side, pound the table.” It’s sad to watch Larry Tribe pound the table—but neither the facts nor the law are on his side.

The real arguments against the Clean Power Rule are quite different—they are that carbon pollution should not be regulated at all, because global warming is not a sufficiently serious threat. But these arguments were dismissed by the Supreme Court years ago—so opponents of the EPA plan have been forced back on desperate legalisms to hold back the future—whose outlines I will look at in my next two postings.

==

<a href="http://www.alternet.org/print/environment/why-big-coal-pretending-be-savior-developing-world">http://www.alternet.org/print/environment/why-big-coal-pretending-be-savior-developing-world</a>

==

see 28th

<a href="https://www.facebook.com/TakeBackStLouis">https://www.facebook.com/TakeBackStLouis</a>

july 9 2014?

Yesterday, Governor Nixon signed the Peabody-Slay amendment into law. In response, the Take Back St. Louis campaign released the following statement:

Today, as the Slay-Peabody amendment is signed into law, Mayor Francis Slay has picked his side of history -- and it’s the side of Big Coal. In the process, Mayor Slay has attempted to silence the voices of over 22,000 St. Louis residents who signed the Take Back St. Louis initiative, depriving them of a vote on stopping giving incentives to coal companies to create a green economy. Instead, Mayor Slay has made it clear that his allegiances are to Peabody, not to his constituents. Mayor Slay and Peabody lobbyists worked hand in hand, whipping votes to pass this amendment. It is clear who our Mayor works for -- and even more clear the work that we need to do to make St. Louis a city that works for everyone, not just Big Coal.

Despite this amendments, restrictions on incentives to coal mining corporations are just a small piece of the Take Back St. Louis initiative. The Take Back St. Louis initiative is fundamentally about what kind of local economy we want to have -- one that continues to give huge tax breaks to big corporations or one that invests in a local green economy. The conversation about the future of our economy is one that over 22,000 people who signed the Take Back St. Louis initiative want to have. Over the next months, that conversation -- about how to create an economy that works for everyone, that keeps resources local and that doesn’t rely on fossil fuels -- will continue regardless of the Slay-Peabody amendment.

<a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/morning_call/2014/07/nixon-blocks-ballot-measures-restricting.html" rel="nofollow nofollow" target="_blank" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/morning_call/2014/07/nixon-blocks-ballot-measures-restricting.html</a>

===

On the other hand, the worst-ranked companies on environmental impact were dominated by financial institutions, including <a href="http://corporate.troweprice.com/ccw/home.do" style="line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">T. Rowe Price</a>, which earned an Environmental Impact Score of zero, tied for last place with <a href="http://www.peabodyenergy.com/" style="line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">Peabody Energy</a>, the world's largest private-sector coal company. How so? Because in Newsweek’s methodology, financial investors are judged by the company they keep — that is, the environmental impacts of the firms in their investment portfolios. By comparison, some chemical and heavy manufacturing companies, like Huntsman, Goodyear, and 3M, scored in the 40s and 50s in environmental impact. That's a bit of cognitive dissonance endemic of trying to apply consistent standards across every sector of the economy.

--

evil confirmed shining  <a href="http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2013/04/peabody-coal-seized-1-million-navajo.html">http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2013/04/peabody-coal-seized-1-million-navajo.html</a>

wiki

In 1964, Peabody Energy (then Peabody Western Coal), a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_company" title="Public company" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">publicly traded</a> energy company based in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States" title="Midwestern United States" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Midwestern United States</a>, signed a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract" title="Contract" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">contract</a> with the Navajo Tribe and two years later with the Hopi Tribe, allowing the company mineral rights and use of an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer" title="Aquifer" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">aquifer</a>. The contract was negotiated by prominent natural resources attorney John Sterling Boyden, who claimed to be representing the Hopi Tribe while actually on the payroll of Peabody.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_Peabody_Coal_controversy#cite_note-1" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[1]</a> It offered unusually advantageous terms for Peabody and was approved despite widespread opposition. The contract is also controversial because of misrepresentations made to the Hopi and Navajo tribes.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_Peabody_Coal_controversy#cite_note-2" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[2]</a>

Peabody Energy developed two coal <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_mine" title="Strip mine" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">strip mines</a> on the Black Mesa reservation: the Black Mesa Mine and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayenta_Mine" title="Kayenta Mine" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Kayenta Mine</a>.

Peabody Energy pumps water from the underground Navajo Aquifer for washing coal, and, until 2005, in a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slurry_pipeline" title="Slurry pipeline" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">slurry pipeline</a> operation to transport extracted coal to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohave_Generating_Station" title="Mohave Generating Station" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Mohave Generating Station</a> in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughlin,_Nevada" title="Laughlin, Nevada" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Laughlin, Nevada</a>. With the pipeline operating, Peabody pumped, on average, 3 million gallons of water from the Navajo Aquifer every day.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_Peabody_Coal_controversy#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[3]</a> The aquifer is the main source of potable <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundwater" title="Groundwater" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">groundwater</a> for the Navajo and Hopi tribes, who use the water for farming and livestock maintenance as well as drinking and other domestic uses. The tribes have alleged that the pumping of water by Peabody Energy has caused a severe decline in potable water and the number of springs. Both tribes, situated in an arid semi-desert, attach religious significance to water, considering it sacred, and have cultural, religious, and practical objections to over-use of water.

Peabody's Black Mesa Mine used the slurry to pump its coal through pipes 273 mi (439 km) away, where the coal could be filtered and used in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohave_Generating_Station" title="Mohave Generating Station" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Mohave Generating Station</a> in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughlin,_Nevada" title="Laughlin, Nevada" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Laughlin, Nevada</a>. The generating station produces energy for the southern parts of Arizona, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California" title="California" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">California</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada" title="Nevada" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Nevada</a>. This was the only coal slurry operation in the country and only plant that used groundwater in such a way.

Coal from the Kayenta mine goes on a conveyor belt to a silo where it is then shipped to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_Generating_Station" title="Navajo Generating Station" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Navajo Generating Station</a> coal plant.

The Black Mesa Mine's last day of operation was December 31, 2005. The Office of Surface Mining approved Peabody's permit request to continue operations at the mine on 22 December 2008. However, in January 2010, an administrative law judge, on appeal of that approval, decided that the Final EIS did not satisfy the National Environmental Policy Act because it did not take into account changed conditions, and vacated the approval.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_Peabody_Coal_controversy#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[4]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_Peabody_Coal_controversy#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[5]</a>

Operations at the Kayenta Mine continue today.

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Surface_Mining">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Surface_Mining</a>

The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM or OSMRE) is a branch of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_the_Interior" title="United States Department of the Interior" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">United States Department of the Interior</a>. It is the federal agency entrusted with the implementation and enforcement of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Mining_Control_and_Reclamation_Act_of_1977" title="Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977</a> (SMCRA), which attached a per-ton fee to all extracted coal in order to fund an interest-accruing trust to be used for reclamation of abandoned mine lands,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Surface_Mining#cite_note-GIS_Mine_Post-2" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[2]</a> as well as established a set environmental standards that mines must follow while operating, and achieve when reclaiming mined land, in order to minimize environmental impact.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Surface_Mining#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[3]</a> OSM has about 500 employees,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Surface_Mining#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[4]</a> who work in either the national office in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_DC" title="Washington, DC" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Washington, DC</a> or of the many regional and field offices(<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.arcc.osmre.gov/OSMregions.shtm" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) 100% 50% no-repeat, url(data:image/svg+xml;base64,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) 100% 50%;">OSM's Three Regions</a>).

OSM has three main functions:

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Regulating active mines</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Reclaiming lands damaged by surface mining and abandoned mines</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Providing resources for technical assistance, training, and technology development <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://[http//www.osmre.gov/science/Science.shtm%5D" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) 100% 50% no-repeat, url(data:image/svg+xml;base64,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) 100% 50%;">[2]</a></li>

</ul>

<h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border: none; display: inline; line-height: 1.3; background: none;">Contents</h2>

[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Surface_Mining#" id="togglelink" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">hide</a>] </div>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Surface_Mining#Regulating_Active_Mines" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">1 Regulating Active Mines</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Surface_Mining#Reclaiming_abandoned_mine_lands" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">2 Reclaiming abandoned mine lands</a>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-3" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Surface_Mining#Initiatives" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">2.1 Initiatives</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-4" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Surface_Mining#Related_legislation" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">3 Related legislation</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-6" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Surface_Mining#References" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">5 References</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-7" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Surface_Mining#External_links" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">6 External links</a></li>

</ul>

</div>

<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Regulating Active Mines[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Office_of_Surface_Mining&action=edit&section=1" title="Edit section: Regulating Active Mines" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h2>

The Office of Surface Mining is responsible for the enforcement of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Mining_Control_and_Reclamation_Act_of_1977" title="Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977</a>; this includes setting regulatory guidelines. The actual regulation of mines is primarily done on a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_government" title="State government" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">state</a> level and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tribal_government&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Tribal government (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">tribal</a> level, but OSM is charged with inspection of the state programs to meet the standard of quality. OSM regularly inspects state programs to make sure they are meeting the required standards; if they do not meet the required standards the OSM can take over. For example, when in the fiscal year of 2003 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri" title="Missouri" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Missouri</a> was unable to meet the federal requirements due to a lack of funding, OSM stepped in to assume partial control of the state program.

OSM took control of the following in Missouri:

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Training, examination, and certification of blasters</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Areas unsuitable for mining</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Small Operator Assistance</li>

</ul>

OSM continued to run the above parts of Missouri's mining program until Missouri improved its program, which took place on Feb. 1, 2006. Missouri now receives federal funding.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Surface_Mining#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[5]</a>

<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Reclaiming abandoned mine lands[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Office_of_Surface_Mining&action=edit&section=2" title="Edit section: Reclaiming abandoned mine lands" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h2>

Abandoned mine lands are lands and waters adversely impacted by inadequately reclaimed surface coal mining operations on lands that were not subject to the reclamation requirements of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Mining_Control_and_Reclamation_Act_of_1977" title="Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Surface Mining Law</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Surface_Mining#cite_note-6" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[6]</a> Environmental problems associated with abandoned mine lands include surface and ground water pollution, entrances to open mines, water-filled pits, unreclaimed or inadequately reclaimed refuse piles and minesites (including some with dangerous highwalls), sediment-clogged streams, damage from landslides, and fumes and surface instability resulting from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_seam_fire" title="Coal seam fire" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">mine fires</a> and burning coal refuse. Environmental restoration activities under the abandoned mine reclamation program correct or mitigate these problems.

<h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 1.6; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Initiatives<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;">[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Office_of_Surface_Mining&action=edit&section=3" title="Edit section: Initiatives" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>

The <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.coalcountryteam.org/" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) 100% 50% no-repeat, url(data:image/svg+xml;base64,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) 100% 50%;">Appalachian Coal Country Team</a> was founded in response to requests from watershed groups throughout coal country. The Coal Country Team arms community organizations and watershed-based projects with the training, tools, and volunteer support necessary to help local citizens become effective environmental stewards, community leaders, and accelerators of change in places indelibly marked by the environmental legacy of pre-regulatory coal mining.

OSM's <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.mcrcc.osmre.gov/bats/" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background: linear-gradient(transparent, transparent) 100% 50% no-repeat, url(data:image/svg+xml;base64,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) 100% 50%;">Bat conservation project</a> was begun December 15, 1998 when OSM signed a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorandum_of_understanding" title="Memorandum of understanding" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">MOU</a> with Bat Conservation International, Inc. in order to establish a framework for cooperative efforts between the two organizations to maintain and increase the conservation of bats and their habitats. Under this agreement, OSM would (1) Consider the conservation of bats and their habitats in the development and implementation of abandoned mine land (AML) reclamation standards and recommendations to States and Indian Tribes; (2) Provide assistance in the development of AML programs to help manage bats and their habitats; (3) For Federal Programs, monitor non-emergency AML shaft and portal areas for bat activity prior to reclamation; (4) As appropriate, require the use of bat gates to seal the shafts of portals where bat habitation is known and would be endangered if sealed otherwise. OSM will encourage the States and Tribes to do the same; and (5) Promote the education of OSM staff, State agencies, and Indian Tribes as to: the beneficial aspects of conserving bats, tested methods to safeguard bat habitat and public health, and ways to mitigate for loss of bat roosts and habitat.

<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Related legislation[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Office_of_Surface_Mining&action=edit&section=4" title="Edit section: Related legislation" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h2>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preventing_Government_Waste_and_Protecting_Coal_Mining_Jobs_in_America(H.R.2824;_113th_Congress)" title="Preventing Government Waste and Protecting Coal Mining Jobs in America (H.R. 2824; 113th Congress)" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Preventing Government Waste and Protecting Coal Mining Jobs in America (H.R. 2824; 113th Congress)</a> is a bill that, if passed, would amend the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Mining_Control_and_Reclamation_Act_of_1977" title="Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977</a> to require state programs for regulation of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_mining" title="Surface mining" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">surface coal mining</a> to incorporate the necessary rule concerning excess spoil, coal mine waste, and buffers for perennial and intermittent streams published by the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement on December 12, 2008.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Surface_Mining#cite_note-2824sum-7" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[7]</a> The bill also would require OSM to assess the effectiveness of that rule after five years of implementation and to report its findings to the Congress. Finally, the bill would prevent OSM from issuing a new rule regarding stream buffer zones until the agency completes the report required under the bill.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Surface_Mining#cite_note-cbo2824-8" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[8]</a></li>

</ul>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CONSOL_Energy_Mine_Map_Preservation_Project" title="CONSOL Energy Mine Map Preservation Project" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">CONSOL Energy Mine Map Preservation Project</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Mine_Map_Repository" title="National Mine Map Repository" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">National Mine Map Repository</a></li>

</ul>

===

PEABODY MISSOURI

yikes, CU meets local ordinances:

Early in April, coal industry executive Shaun McCutcheon won big when the Supreme Court swept away limits on how much money wealthy donors can contribute to federal political campaigns. But in St. Louis, Mo., coal interests are trying to prevent people from even voting.

This story began when ordinary citizens joined together and took a stand against both climate change and their city’s destructive practice of granting enormous tax breaks to big business while cutting funding for public services. They talked to thousands of residents who were upset that St. Louis keeps giving away tens of millions of dollars of badly needed public money to Peabody Energy (the world’s largest private-sector coal company) and the lobbyists, banks, and law firms that enable it. And after hearing over and over again that “there oughta be a law” against corporate welfare for polluters, they did what we learned in civics class: they wrote a law that would ban public financial incentives to unsustainable energy producers and their major business partners.

They didn’t just write the law: Under the banner of Take Back St. Louis, they walked door-to-door, talking to friends, neighbors, and strangers about their idea. They collected over 22,000 signatures — more than 10 percent of all the voters in St. Louis — on a petition for a ballot initiative. The city’s elections board verified the signatures, and began preparing to print ballots.

This is where you might expect to hear about a vigorous election campaign, with arguments from both sides put to the voters, a spirited debate about the future of St. Louis and our planet, and finally, the voters making their choice at the ballot box. You might even expect to hear about the coal company spending millions of dollars to fight the initiative in the days before the vote.

But you’d be wrong: There was no vote. Instead, the coal company’s lawyers rushed to court and asked a judge to block the election on the grounds that the law would unfairly discriminate against the coal company and its business partners, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. The judge agreed, and cited the Supreme Court’s infamous Citizens United decision for the theory that business entities “are entitled to constitutional protection as citizens.” He issued a preliminary injunction blocking the vote, and scheduled a trial for March 31.

At the trial, Take Back St. Louis provided evidence about the environmental damage caused by burning coal, and the damage to the fabric of St. Louis caused by the city’s penchant for giving away public dollars to big business. The other side didn’t put any witnesses on the stand. The judge may make his final decision any day now.

Not everyone will agree that this ballot initiative is the best policy, and that’s fine. The Take Back St. Louis folks think they can convince a majority of St. Louis voters, and they’re willing to take on the coal interests in a contest for votes. But first, the court has to get out of the way. Now that the judge has the evidence, he has a chance to get this right, lift his injunction, and let the vote proceed.

Whether or not you think that giving tax breaks to coal companies and their business partners is a good idea, we should all agree that this is a question for voters, not judges. Because it was bad enough when coal companies could simply open their checkbooks to flood elections with unlimited spending; now they won’t even let people vote.

Ron Fein is the Legal Director for Free Speech For People, an organization dedicated to challenging the misuse of corporate power and restoring republican democracy to the people. he was on DN

http://grist.org/business-technology/do-coal-companies-have-more-rights-than-voters/

---

http://www.takebackstlouis.com/the_initiative

---

may 30

On Tuesday, a St. Louis judge threw out a ballot initiative that would amend the city charter to prohibit tax breaks for fossil fuel companies and their major business partners. Before residents even had a chance to vote.

The story began when citizens took a stand against both climate change and St. Louis’ destructive practice of granting tax breaks to big business while cutting funding for public services. They wrote a law and collected enough signatures to put it on the ballot for a public vote.

But nobody can vote.

Coal allies, fearful that the initiative would pass, pursued a two-pronged strategy to prevent it from ever reaching the ballot. And the success (so far) of that strategy shows why the democratic system is rigged in favor of big corporations and special interests.

First, the court challenge. This week, the judge issued a final order preventing St. Louis residents from voting on the initiative. The judge theorized that state law doesn’t allow cities to make rules about who gets tax breaks, and that the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause prevents voters from saying that they don’t want to give tax breaks to coal companies and their business partners. On the latter point, the judge opined that, under the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, “business organizations are ‘persons’ entitled to equal protection as well as other constitutional rights.”

Second, the legislative challenge. While the case was pending, the mayor’s office pushed a curious amendment to an obscure state bill. In the middle of a bill about county prosecutors and sewer districts, you’ll find a provision that specifically prohibits the city of St. Louis from passing, by ballot measure, any restrictions on tax breaks for coal mining companies. There’s only one coal mining company in St. Louis known to receive city tax breaks: Peabody Energy.

So in court, the claim is that coal companies’ constitutional rights are violated by a citizen initiative to stem the flow of special tax breaks. And in the Legislature — where Peabody donors spent almost half a million dollars in the last two elections — the legislators slip in a special provision preventing St. Louis voters from taking a vote on whether to give tax breaks to Peabody.

Is democracy in St. Louis only for those who can pay? The office of the mayor — whom Peabody funds — has helped to both challenge the initiative in court and lobby the Legislature to prevent St. Louisans from voting on city policy.

We’re at a turning point. The Supreme Court keeps striking down common-sense rules to limit the influence of wealthy donors and corporate interests in our political system. Next week, the U.S. Senate is holding a hearing on a constitutional amendment to restore our ability to limit the influence of money in politics, and the full Senate will vote on it this year.

Ultimately, this isn’t just about tax breaks for one coal company in one city. It’s about our democracy, and why we must fight to reclaim it.

Ron Fein is the legal director of Free Speech For People, and co-counsel to the Take Back St. Louis campaign, along with a Missouri-based legal team. Stuart Keating is a St. Louis attorney with a practice specializing in environmental and corporate law, and is co-counsel to the Take Back St. Louis campaign.

---

links http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/judge-keeps-take-back-st-louis-initiative-off-ballot/article_2a1a22aa-21d8-5577-890a-a9401aae3c16.html

may 27/14

Opponents of the “Take Back St. Louis” initiative succeeded Tuesday in their effort to block the measure from going before voters in the city.

St. Louis Circuit Judge Robert Dierker issued an order prohibiting the city’s Election Board from putting the measure on a ballot.

Dierker’s ruling is a defeat for Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, or MORE, which led a petition effort to block tax incentives for any company that engages in “unsustainable” energy production — or does $1 million a year in business with such an entity.

Opponents filed suit Jan. 31 to keep the initiative off the April 8 ballot. The suit described the proposed city charter amendment as “intentionally arbitrary and vague” and “disastrous public policy.” It said many businesses could be blocked from receiving city services, perhaps unknowingly because of vague definitions in the measure.

In his 24-page ruling, Dierker said the proposal would “exclude a variety of enterprises from qualifying for benefits under the statutory regime of economic incentives or, (in MORE’s) parlance, corporate welfare.”

MORE’s main target is Peabody Energy, which received tax breaks from the city when it expanded its headquarters in 2011. The group has said tax breaks would be better directed to help small businesses and revitalize poor parts of St. Louis.

Backers of the initiative said that, although they were disappointed by Dierker’s decision, the setback would be temporary. Supporters said in a statement that they were confident an appellate court would put the measure before voters in August or November.

The Take Back St. Louis initiative was begun to correct what the statement said were Mayor Francis Slay’s “failings in gouging the St. Louis public schools and other public programs in order to subsidize corporations.”

Organizations active in the Take Back St. Louis effort will continue to support those who organize against “unsustainable energy producers” such as Peabody and hold the St. Louis Development Corp. accountable for creating living-wage jobs, initiative backers said.

Dierker’s ruling is in a suit filed by Jane Dueker, a lawyer and former Peabody lobbyist.

He ruled that the “manifest purpose” of MORE’s effort “is not so much to advance the use of approved fuels, as to punish enterprises which deal in the disfavored fuels and to punish the enterprises which deal with the disfavored energy producers for their presumed role in furthering the business of the disfavored producers.”

Tim Bryant covers commercial real estate, development and other business stories for the Post-Dispatch. He blogs at Building Blocks, the Post-Dispatch development blog.

--

6 may mayor/state block: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/political-fix/slay-s-office-turns-to-legislature-to-block-local-ballot/article_ec94707c-78ad-5edc-8895-fc1f8e7b2164.html

=

==

===

Jim Talent, a former Republican Senator and one of Mitt Romney’s top campaign advisors, has played an instrumental role in the Romney camp’s positions on energy.  Specifically, Talent has pushed for greater consumption and mining of coal to meet America’s energy needs.

What the campaign failed to mention is that the lobbying firm that Talent is still on the payroll with lists one of the largest coal-producing companies in the country as one of its top clients.

And although Talent is <a href="http://www.salon.com/2011/08/30/jim_talent_mitt_romney/" target="" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 153, 204); text-decoration: none;">not registered as a lobbyist</a> in Washington, D.C.(thereby making it illegal for him to engage in lobbying activities,) his <a href="http://mercurypublicaffairs.com/staff-member/senator-james-talent" target="" style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 153, 204); text-decoration: none;">website clearly states</a> that “lobbying” is one of the services he is able to personally provide for clients.

<a href="http://www.republicreport.org/2012/coal-lobbyist-outfront-romney/" target="" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 153, 204); text-decoration: none;">David Halperin has the story</a> at Republic Report:

===

<div class="post-meta" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 800; line-height: 20px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(55, 47, 43); letter-spacing: 1px; text-transform: uppercase; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">POSTED AT 4:29 PM BY <a href="http://www.republicreport.org/author/david-halperin/" title="Posts by David Halperin" class="url fn" rel="author" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 800; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(55, 47, 43); text-decoration: underline; letter-spacing: 1px; text-transform: uppercase;">DAVID HALPERIN</a></div>

Greenpeace has posted these <a href="http://photo.greenpeace.org/C.aspx?VP3=ViewBox_VPage&VBID=27MZVNDJTQ2ML&STID=27MZIFVATO96&PN=0&CT=Story" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">stark images</a> of the destruction Sandy brought to the New Jersey shore. The devastation on the ground is heartbreaking, and Americans are grateful for the courage and determination of people responding to the crisis. At the same time, it’s imperative that we start asking why we have seen so much extreme weather lately — and what kind of leadership it will take to truly address the crisis.

In the wake of the disaster, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo <a href="http://statepolitics.lohudblogs.com/2012/10/30/cuomo-we-have-a-new-reality-when-it-comes-to-these-weather-patterns/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: underline; cursor: pointer;">said</a>, “There has been a series of extreme weather incidents. That is not a political statement. That is a factual statement. Anyone who says there’s not a dramatic change in weather patterns, I think is denying reality.” Today, Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Bobby Rush (D-IL) <a href="http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Upton-Whitfield-Hurricane-Sandy-Letter-PR-2012-10-31_0.pdf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">called</a> for congressional hearings, writing, “Hurricane Sandy is exactly the type of extreme weather event that climate scientists have said will become more frequent and more severe if we fail to reduce our carbon pollution.”

Unfortunately, big energy companies have spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying, advertising, and <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/planet-2/report/2010/3/dealing-in-doubt.pdf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">propaganda</a> aimed precisely at denying the powerful evidence that burning fossil fuels is contributing to climate change — and at blocking common sense energy reforms. And while Mitt Romney has <a href="http://boingboing.net/2012/09/04/mitt-romney-climate-change-is.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">flip-flopped</a> on these issues, he has surrounded himself with people tied to the climate denial industry.

Romney’s campaign press secretary Andrea Saul previously worked, from 2005-07, at the Washington DC lobbying and public affairs firm DCI Group, where, on behalf of their client ExxonMobil, <a href="http://www.polluterwatch.com/blog/science-denial-and-andrea-saul-%E2%80%93-romney-2012-campaign-spokesperson" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">she worked on a campaign</a> seeking to undermine global warming evidence and policy changes. Saul was listed as a contact person on a 2006<a href="http://www2.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/03-30-2006/0004330403&EDATE=" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">press release</a> that stated, ”Coming off one of the most devastating hurricane seasons in recent memory, many are quick to blame the strength and frequency of these storms on global warming. Leading climate scientists, however, say there is no link between increased storm activity and a massive change in global climate.”  Matt Rhoades, Romney’s campaign manager, also worked at DCI, from 2007-10.

In addition, while both Romney and President Obama have praised “clean coal” — even though there’s <a href="http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/coal-oil-gas/4339171" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">no such thing</a>, at least not yet — Romney’s campaign is deeply connected to the coal industry, which is the <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/climate-change/coal/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">biggest human-made source of carbon dioxide emissions</a> and a <a href="http://www.fightcleanenergysmears.org/behind_the_smears.cfm" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">major funder of climate denial</a>.

Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy, the nation’s largest privately-owned coal company, hosted a $1.7 million fundraiser for the campaign this year, and his firm’s employees have given Romney over $120,000.

Last fall, the Romney campaign released an energy policy paper that included a statement by Romney adviser and former Senator Jim Talent blaming government regulation for America’s energy challenges: “The problem is not that America does not have energy. The problem is that our government—alone among the governments of the world—will not allow its own people to recover the energy that they possess.” Where can such energy be found? Talent writes, “America has hundreds of years of coal reserves.’’ <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/jim-talent-s-profile-rises-as-top-romney-adviser/article_b201c725-01f9-5194-a840-da7de14707d3.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">Talent</a>, a top candidate for Romney’s <a href="https://www.stlbeacon.org/#!/content/27078/talent_as_romney_advissr" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">cabinet</a>, has a day job: <a href="http://www.mercurypublicaffairs.com/leadership" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">co-chairman of Mercury Public Affairs</a>, a D.C. lobbying and communications firm. As the Boston Globe first reported last year, Mercury lobbies for St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, the world’s biggest private sector coal company. Peabody has paid Mercury nearly <a href="http://www.boston.com/2011/09/09/web-talent/Vmtsu918Yd0ioJ6QU6nZAO/story.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">$700,000</a> in the past <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000020856&year=2012://" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">six years</a>. The Romney energy paper did not disclose that Talent’s firm was earning money from the coal industry when Talent praised coal as a pillar of America’s energy future for centuries to come.

Newsweek ranked Peabody energy 500th out of 500 — dead last — in its environmental ranking of America’s 500 largest corporations in <a href="http://greenrankings2009.newsweek.com/companies/view/peabody-energy" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">2009</a> and <a href="http://coalgeology.com/2010-newsweek-green-rankings-deeply-flawed-peabody-energy-nyse-btu/7603/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">2010</a>, because of the impact of mining and burning coal and because of Peabody’s aggressive stance against regulation. (The company managed to move up in the ratings for 2011 — to <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/features/green-rankings/2011/us.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">492</a>.) Peabody is a corporate leader in <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/scientific_integrity/a-climate-of-corporate-control-report.pdf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">denying the dangers of global warming</a>. Peabody’s website <a href="http://www.peabodyenergy.com/content/224/Video-Gallery/Energy-Access-For-All" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">says today</a>, “The greatest crisis society confronts is not a future environmental crisis predicted by computer models but a human crisis today that is fully within our power to solve… with coal” (ellipses in original).

Peabody is also a member of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a coal industry group that has spent millions campaigning against efforts to halt global warming. A leaked 2004 “<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/leaked-clean-coal-strategy-memo-peabody-energy" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">strategy letter</a>” from the president of that organization to Peabody’s CEO outlines plans to oppose the McCain-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill ”that would be highly injurious to coal-based electricity” and to “sow discord” among Northeast states committed to a greenhouse gas reduction plan. Peabody has spent about $42 million on lobbying in Washington since 2005.

A U.S. President should not take advice from people who have worked to advance climate denial efforts, which have already caused immense harm.

This article also appears on <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/davidhalperin/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; color: red; text-decoration: none;">Huffington Post</a>.

===

==

Falling on the 100th anniversary of theLudlow coal miners' massacre, a growing movement of citizens groups will gather on Saturday afternoon in St. Louis to join the great Washington University sit-in against Peabody Energy.

The pillars of Big Coal are crumbling in St. Louis this week -- according to Wall Street analysts, and as an extraordinary grassroots movement holds Peabody and its university hosts and investors accountable for its legacy of ruin amid climate change, a failed regulatory system, and a proposed strip mine expansion that will effectively destroy the farming community of Rocky Branch, Illinois.

And for coal mining families across the nation, the Ludlow Massacre of children, women and immigrant union coal miners, is one of the most defining cautionary tales of injustice and rallying cries for action in the American coalfields that still resound today: No one's loss of life, liberty and health for coal industry profits is acceptable collateral damage.

A century later, the indefatigable students at Washington University have inspired the nation with their nearly 2-week sit-in, now joined by students at Southern Illinois University and across the nation, and are asking the same questions about their university's tieswith Peabody Energy'sclimate change-denying mining operations.

In a line: No one's loss of life, liberty and health in Rocky Branch, Illinois -- on Black Mesa, in Arizona, or the Bear Run strip mine in Indiana, or across the globe -- should be acceptable collateral damage for the Attorney General in Illinois or for Washington University trustees or anyone in the United States, in order to pander to Peabody's state-subsidized profit line.

When the Saline County board voted earlier this week to grant Peabody the right to make potentially disastrous road changes in Rocky Branch to facilitate a proposed strip mine expansion--even though Peabody has yet to receive the proper EPA permits--one commissioner simply dismissed the inevitable destruction as "only at 12 households affected by this."

Only 12 households?

Memo to Saline County commissioners: We all live in Rocky Branch, if you consider the toxic fallout of the strip mining operations on our water, land and climate.

Rocky Branch is not "only 12 households," but the deeply rooted and historic community of war veterans, retired coal miners, business owners, farmers, preachers, parents and grandparents, and tax-payers who have the same civil rights and constitutional rights to environmental protection as anyone else.

This week, in fact, marks the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail," who reminded us in 1963: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly."

In an age of climate change and the need for immediate action, never has that sentiment been more compelling.

In the tradition of King and the civil rights movement, students and community advocates at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale also held protests for divestment from Peabody yesterday.

Mother Jones, the great "Miner's Angel" and immigrant union organizer, who is buried near St. Louis in our southern Illinois Progressive Miners' cemetery, once reminded the nation of the lessons from Ludlow, where coal company guardsman murdered innocent children, women and striking union miners:

"No one listened. No one cared. The tickers in the offices of 26 Broadway sounded louder than the sobs of women and children. Men in the steam-heated luxury of Broadway offices could not feel the stinging cold of Colorado hillsides where families lived in tents. Then came Ludlow and the nation heard. Little children roasted alive make a front page story. Dying by inches of starvation and exposure does not."

Are Washington University trustees, investors, the Illinois Attorney General, and the nation listening to the students and communities about the Peabody crisis today?

===

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Gary Salamido (North Carolina <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Chamber_of_Commerce" title="Chamber of Commerce" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Chamber of Commerce</a>), <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_State_Chairmen" title="ALEC State Chairmen" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">State Chair</a> of the Year</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Rep. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Fred_Steen" title="Fred Steen" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Fred Steen</a>, II (R-NC), <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_State_Chairmen" title="ALEC State Chairmen" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">State Chair</a> of the Year</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Rep. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Peter_Illoway" title="Peter Illoway" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Peter Illoway</a> (R-WY), <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_State_Chairmen" title="ALEC State Chairmen" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">State Chair</a> of the Year</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Jody Levin (Levin Strategic Resources; lobbies for <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Verizon" title="Verizon" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Verizon</a>), <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_State_Chairmen" title="ALEC State Chairmen" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">State Chair</a> of the Year</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Wendy Lowe (<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Peabody_Energy" title="Peabody Energy" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Peabody Energy</a>), <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_State_Chairmen" title="ALEC State Chairmen" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">State Chair</a> of the Year<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_Award_Winners#cite_note-SLC_Agenda-1" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; white-space: nowrap; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">[1]</a></li>

</ul>

---

alec 40th

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Controversial Peabody Energy Stands Firm as an ALEC "Chairman"</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The next level of funding, dubbed "Chairman," comes with a $50,000 price tag. ALEC's funding brochure notes that giving this amount to ALEC for the conference gets four invitations to all VIP events, four conference registrations, a VIP photo opportunity, and advertising. At this fee level, donors can get the opportunity to have a "workshop" with legislators or the introduction to one of its luncheons.</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The only repeat donor at this level from 2012 is Peabody Energy, more widely known as Peabody Coal, which was immortalized in song for its strip mining: "And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County down by the Green River where paradise lay? Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking... Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."</div>

</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Peabody is the world's largest privately held coal company.</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It has mines in Wyoming and other states (Illinois, Indiana, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona), and it is a major exporter of American coal to other countries.

</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One of the workshops for ALEC legislators at the conference was entitled "The Economic Benefits and Political Challenges to Coal Exports." That workshop touted the benefits of expanded export terminals on the West Coast for selling coal to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Peabody Energy has contracts to export at least 24 million tons of coal through the SSA Marine terminals in California. Other ALEC seminars and sessions in Chicago touted how to bust unions and push so-called "right-to-work" laws that undermine union organizing and the power of labor in the private sector.

</div>

<div>Workers Rally to Expose Peabody's Efforts to Avoid Paying Their Pensions</div>

<div>Since January of this year, thousands of miners [12] and their families have protested Peabody spinning off its eastern United States coal mining operations -- where many workers were represented by the United Mine Workers of America -- in order to get rid of what its CEO Gregory Boyce called "legacy liabilities [13]," a fancy word for the earned retirement pensions and health care obligations of the men and women who toiled in underground mines for decades building Peabody's wealth. The operations that were spun off were dubbed "Patriot Coal," a corporation that has sought to escape its obligations to miners through federal bankruptcy proceedings.</div>

</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">At the first of several rallies near Peabody's headquarters and a federal courthouse in St. Louis that is considering the bankruptcy petition, numerous miners -- including the president of United Mine Workers of America, Cecil Roberts -- have been arrested for civil disobedience.</div>

</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The UMWA's Roberts decried Peabody for its role in what he called a "scam" to deprive hardworking miners of their retirement futures and access to life-saving health care benefits, claiming that the corporations may "have $1,000 an hour lawyers, but they've got $1 an hour morals," according to a report on that rally. The local leader of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists called the effort to discharge the pension obligations "despicable and criminal."</div>

</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Peabody Makes Billions; Peabody's CEO Paid Nearly $15,000 a Day in Total Compensation</div>

</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to Forbes magazine, Boyce (Peabody's CEO) is one of the top 25 highest paid CEOs in America this year, with a total annual compensation package of $30.7 million [14] (or the equivalent of $14,759 per day in total compensation). When Boyce created Patriot Coal, he boasted [13] that his maneuver would reduce Peabody's "legacy liabilities by roughly $1 billion," and his Chief Financial Officer bragged that Peabody's "retiree health care liability and related expense will be reduced by 40%..."</div>

</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Peabody's revenue in 2012 was more than $7 billion. While the U.S. and global economies have staggered since the Wall Street meltdown in late 2008, Peabody's income has risen by nearly 33% in the past three years (which is roughly the same period since it loaded up Patriot Coal with its pension debt). Over the past decade, Peabody has spent millions on lobbying as well as more than a million on campaign contributions to politicians, in addition to untold sums on its legal and PR teams.</div>

</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Peabody is one of nine private sector funders of ALEC's conference at the "Chairman" level, down from eleven last</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">year and down from the nineteen special interests funding ALEC at this level at its 2011 conference in New Orleans.</div>

</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Peabody Joins Other Climate Change Deniers as Top Funders of ALEC</div>

</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">An industry front group, which Peabody has invested in, is also funding ALEC at the $50,000 silver rate for the conference: the "American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity" (ACCCE), which was previously known as the "Center for Energy and Economic Development" (CEED).

</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to a memo leaked [15] to DeSmog Blog in 2009, CEED reported to its investor, Peabody, on the execution of ongoing plans to counter efforts to regulate coal and address climate change. That PR plan included opposing any government control of "greenhouse gases," orchestrating efforts to block the Environmental Protection Agency from new efforts to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, opposing regional climate change agreements that mandate carbon trading rules, and blocking efforts to regulate mercury, the neurotoxin released from the burning of coal which has poisoned lakes and oceans restricting the level of safe consumption of seafood by pregnant women, children and others. One of the key parts of the coal industry strategy was to "sow discord."</div>

</div>

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">These policies are echoed in the ALEC playbook, which includes numerous bills or resolutions that would make it harder to regulate carbon [16] or address global climate changes [17], as well as efforts to limit [18] regional climate change agreements and to block [19] the regulation of coal ash.</div>

==

Gregory Boyce, Peabody Coal CEO

Misdeeds: Along with his Board and shareholders, surely one of the most malignant men of the 21st century. Boyce's mission in life is to see that the world burns as much coal as possible, in spite of scientists' warnings that this path is already heating the planet and destroying life. Pays lobbyists to fight regulation of coal plants' emissions of cancer-causing mercury, sulfur dioxide, and nitrous oxide.

Claims that the vast amount of CO2 emissions from coal plants can somehow be sequestered and stored. Hedges against eventual regulation of US coal plants by developing export markets to Third World countries, then pretends that he's doing it to help the poor. Believes that the interests of Peabody stockholders and executives are far more important than starvation, death, and species extinction. Boyce is Lucifer in a $5000 suit.

Corporate Teats: In addition to running Peabody, Boyce helps to coordinate efforts by coal trade groups, utilities, and the Chamber of Commerce to help them continue to poison the atmosphere.

Most Egregious Lie: "Only once we have a growing, vibrant, global economy providing energy access and an improved human condition for billions of the energy impoverished can we accelerate progress on environmental issues such as a reduction in greenhouse gases."

==

vice: secret task force: task force head Joe Kelliher ask lobby Dana Contratto wish list il duce 17 API fill in the bl exec order becomes 13211 verbatim fed rel dir James Ford, dereg , no jud review p 17 !! [ = Halib Loophole?]  3/1 Irl F Engelhardt and fred palmer ceo and VP peabody met tf dir lundquist, sec of eng S Abraham, b2 eco advisor Larry Lindsey; stock offer IPO coming; 3/16 task rept hype coal 3/21 321 IPO got 420$mil, 60 over predicted

===

ross g:

Particularly pleased by Bush's flip-flop was Irl Englehardt, chair of the Peabody Group, the country's biggest coal company. Englehardt had donated $250,000 to the Republican National Committee, and served as an adviser to the Bush-Cheney Energy Transition Team. On May 17, 2001, when the Cheney task force unveiled its new energy plan, it not only called for an expanded role for nuclear power and the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, but for the construction of between 1,300 and 1,900 new power plants, most of them powered by coal. Within a week of the plan's unveiling, the Peabody Group -- a privately held entity for its entire 120-year life -- made an initial public offering (IPO) of shares and went public. Overnight, its stock jumped from $24 to $36.

===

<h2>Contents</h2>

[<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Peabody_Energy_earlier_lobbying_disclosure_details#" class="internal" id="togglelink">hide</a>] </div>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Peabody_Energy_earlier_lobbying_disclosure_details#Peabody_Energy_Lobbying_in_2009">1 Peabody Energy Lobbying in 2009</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Peabody_Energy_earlier_lobbying_disclosure_details#Peabody_Energy_Lobbyists_in_2008">2 Peabody Energy Lobbyists in 2008</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Peabody_Energy_earlier_lobbying_disclosure_details#Articles_and_resources">3 Articles and resources</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-4"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Peabody_Energy_earlier_lobbying_disclosure_details#References">3.1 References</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-5"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Peabody_Energy_earlier_lobbying_disclosure_details#Related_SourceWatch_articles">3.2 Related SourceWatch articles</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-6"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Peabody_Energy_earlier_lobbying_disclosure_details#External_resources">3.3 External resources</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-7"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Peabody_Energy_earlier_lobbying_disclosure_details#External_articles">3.4 External articles</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

</ul>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

<h3>Peabody Energy Lobbying in 2009</h3>

According to an official disclosure report filed with the House clerk's office, Peabody Energy spent $820,000 on lobbying expenses in the first quarter of 2009. During the period from January to March, the company lobbied on coal, mine safety, energy tax credits, and global warming issues. Christopher Leahy, a former policy coordinator for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Ursula Wojciechowski, a former staff member of several House subcomittees, were among those registered as Peabody lobbyists.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Peabody_Energy_earlier_lobbying_disclosure_details#cite_note-0">[1]</a>

<h3>Peabody Energy Lobbyists in 2008</h3>

In May 2008, Peabody disclosed that it had spent almost $1.3 million in the first quarter of the year to lobby Congress on coal-related legislation, including coal-to-liquid fuels, global warming, tax credits, and other issues.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Peabody_Energy_earlier_lobbying_disclosure_details#cite_note-1">[2]</a>

The Center for Public Integrity lists Peabody Energy's 2008 lobbyists, based on public disclosure documents, as being<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Peabody_Energy_earlier_lobbying_disclosure_details#cite_note-2">[3]</a>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Holland_%26_Hart&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Holland & Hart (page does not exist)">Holland & Hart</a> LLP which was paid $120,000 in 2008;</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Kirkpatrick_%26_Lockhart_Preston&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston (page does not exist)">Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston</a> which was paid $80,000 in 2008;</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_F._Hohlt&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Richard F. Hohlt (page does not exist)">Richard F. Hohlt</a> who was paid $16,000 in 2008;</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Stinson_Morrison_Hecker&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Stinson Morrison Hecker (page does not exist)">Stinson Morrison Hecker</a> which was paid $360,000 in 2008;</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Gephardt_Group&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Gephardt Group (page does not exist)">Gephardt Group</a>, LLC which was paid $480,000 in 2008;</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Dickstein_Shapiro&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Dickstein Shapiro (page does not exist)">Dickstein Shapiro</a> LLP which was paid $770,000 in 2008;</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Crowell_%26_Moring" title="Crowell & Moring">Crowell & Moring</a> LLP which was paid $50,000 in 2008.</li>

</ul>

===

Greenpeace has posted these <a href="http://photo.greenpeace.org/C.aspx?VP3=ViewBox_VPage&VBID=27MZVNDJTQ2ML&STID=27MZIFVATO96&PN=0&CT=Story">stark images</a> of the destruction Sandy brought to the New Jersey shore. The devastation on the ground is heartbreaking, and Americans are grateful for the courage and determination of people responding to the crisis. At the same time, it's imperative that we start asking why we have seen so much extreme weather lately -- and what kind of leadership it will take to truly address the crisis.

In the wake of the disaster, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo <a href="http://statepolitics.lohudblogs.com/2012/10/30/cuomo-we-have-a-new-reality-when-it-comes-to-these-weather-patterns/">said</a>, "There has been a series of extreme weather incidents. That is not a political statement. That is a factual statement. Anyone who says there's not a dramatic change in weather patterns, I think is denying reality." Today, Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Bobby Rush (D-IL) <a href="http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Upton-Whitfield-Hurricane-Sandy-Letter-PR-2012-10-31_0.pdf">called</a> for congressional hearings, writing, "Hurricane Sandy is exactly the type of extreme weather event that climate scientists have said will become more frequent and more severe if we fail to reduce our carbon pollution."

Unfortunately, big energy companies have spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying, advertising, and <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/planet-2/report/2010/3/dealing-in-doubt.pdf">propaganda</a> aimed precisely at denying the powerful evidence that burning fossil fuels is contributing to climate change -- and at blocking common sense energy reforms. And while Mitt Romney has <a href="http://boingboing.net/2012/09/04/mitt-romney-climate-change-is.html">flip-flopped</a> on these issues, he has surrounded himself with people tied to the climate denial industry.

Romney's campaign press secretary Andrea Saul previously worked, from 2005-07, at the Washington DC lobbying and public affairs firm DCI Group, where, on behalf of their client ExxonMobil, <a href="http://www.polluterwatch.com/blog/science-denial-and-andrea-saul-%E2%80%93-romney-2012-campaign-spokesperson">she worked on a campaign</a> seeking to undermine global warming evidence and policy changes. Saul was listed as a contact person on a 2006 <a href="http://www2.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/03-30-2006/0004330403&EDATE=">press release</a> that stated, ''Coming off one of the most devastating hurricane seasons in recent memory, many are quick to blame the strength and frequency of these storms on global warming. Leading climate scientists, however, say there is no link between increased storm activity and a massive change in global climate."  Matt Rhoades, Romney's campaign manager, also worked at DCI, from 2007-10.

In addition, while both Romney and President Obama have praised "clean coal" -- even though there's <a href="http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/coal-oil-gas/4339171">no such thing</a>, at least not yet -- Romney's campaign is deeply connected to the coal industry, which is the <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/climate-change/coal/">biggest human-made source of carbon dioxide emissions</a> and a <a href="http://www.fightcleanenergysmears.org/behind_the_smears.cfm">major funder of climate denial</a>.

Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy, the nation's largest privately-owned coal company, hosted a $1.7 million fundraiser for the campaign this year, and his firm's employees have given Romney over $120,000.

Last fall, the Romney campaign released an energy policy paper that included a statement by Romney adviser and former Senator Jim Talent blaming government regulation for America's energy challenges: "The problem is not that America does not have energy. The problem is that our government--alone among the governments of the world--will not allow its own people to recover the energy that they possess." Where can such energy be found? Talent writes, "America has hundreds of years of coal reserves.'' <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/jim-talent-s-profile-rises-as-top-romney-adviser/article_b201c725-01f9-5194-a840-da7de14707d3.html">Talent</a>, a top candidate for Romney's <a href="https://www.stlbeacon.org/#%21/content/27078/talent_as_romney_advissr">cabinet</a>, has a day job: <a href="http://www.mercurypublicaffairs.com/leadership">co-chairman of Mercury Public Affairs</a>, a D.C. lobbying and communications firm. As the Boston Globe first reported last year, Mercury lobbies for St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, the world's biggest private sector coal company. Peabody has paid Mercury nearly <a href="http://www.boston.com/2011/09/09/web-talent/Vmtsu918Yd0ioJ6QU6nZAO/story.html">$700,000</a> in the past <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000020856&year=2012://">six years</a>. The Romney energy paper did not disclose that Talent's firm was earning money from the coal industry when Talent praised coal as a pillar of America's energy future for centuries to come.

Newsweek ranked Peabody energy 500th out of 500 -- dead last -- in its environmental ranking of America's 500 largest corporations in <a href="http://greenrankings2009.newsweek.com/companies/view/peabody-energy">2009</a> and <a href="http://coalgeology.com/2010-newsweek-green-rankings-deeply-flawed-peabody-energy-nyse-btu/7603/">2010</a>, because of the impact of mining and burning coal and because of Peabody's aggressive stance against regulation. (The company managed to move up in the ratings for 2011 -- to <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/features/green-rankings/2011/us.html">492</a>.) Peabody is a corporate leader in <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/scientific_integrity/a-climate-of-corporate-control-report.pdf">denying the dangers of global warming</a>. Peabody's website <a href="http://www.peabodyenergy.com/content/224/Video-Gallery/Energy-Access-For-All">says today</a>, "The greatest crisis society confronts is not a future environmental crisis predicted by computer models but a human crisis today that is fully within our power to solve... with coal" (ellipses in original).

Peabody is also a member of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a coal industry group that has spent millions campaigning against efforts to halt global warming. A leaked 2004 "<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/leaked-clean-coal-strategy-memo-peabody-energy">strategy letter</a>" from the president of that organization to Peabody's CEO outlines plans to oppose the McCain-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill "that would be highly injurious to coal-based electricity" and to "sow discord" among Northeast states committed to a greenhouse gas reduction plan. Peabody has spent about $42 million on lobbying in Washington since 2005.

A U.S. President should not take advice from people who have worked to advance climate denial efforts, which have already caused immense harm.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/davidhalperin/in-sandys-wake-top-romney_b_2051367.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

===

<h1 class="title-blog">The Desperate Plight of Retired Coal Miners</h1>

<div class="blog_padding relative" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entrybyline="entryByline" style=" padding-top: 15px;">Posted: 02/28/2013 5:20 pm</div>

</div>

I got an email from David Miller, a retired West Virginia coal miner and former president of a United Mine Workers' local, that made me both sad and angry. "Myself and other retired and active miners got on a bus at the Ohio Valley Mall and went to St. Louis to protest at Peabody coal," Miller wrote. "Some of the retirees were in their 70's. I sat listening while they spoke of their medical conditions to each other. Some had cancer, some problems breathing and many did not get around very well. These men took a bus trip that was about 11 hours each way to protest. The protest was on 2-13-13. Ten men were arrested."

These men who had worked at many different mines were there protesting at a time when they should have been playing with their grand kids and enjoying their senior years. They were there because they risked losing their pension and health benefits. They had mined the coal without which our lights would grow dim and there would be no steel to build our cities, and this was what was greeting them.

Their problems began back in 2007 when Peabody spun off a new company that they named Patriot Coal. They gave it 13 percent of the larger company's coal reserves, but a whopping 40 percent of future health care liabilities from 8,400 miners. These are massive obligations based largely on long past union contracts, and coal companies do whatever they can to get rid of them. Patriot went ahead and acquired a subsidiary of Arch Coal called Magnum Coal and loaded up with 2,300 more retirees health obligations. All told Patriot was saddled with $1.37 billion in future obligations according to The New Republic.

And then Patriot declared bankruptcy. The United Mine Workers is suing Peabody and Arch, saying they can't walk away from their obligations in such a blatant fashion.

This isn't the first time coal companies have figured out a way to avoid social responsibility. It's basically a way of doing business. Years ago, the A.T. Massey Coal Company figured out that they would mine the richest seams, give the lesser seams to their subsidiaries and the worst seams to contractors. In a brilliant series in 1993, the Charleston Gazette's Paul Nyden wrote that in the previous 13 years, the Massey contract operations "left behind more than $200 million in debts in Southern West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky alone."

Peabody and Arch seem to be following in a business tradition. The companies argue that they had no idea that Patriot would fail and it's not their problem.

David Miller and several thousand other retired miners think otherwise. "Do you think area newspapers print labor issues so people will know what is going on?" Miller asks. "Or do they just print stories that favor the radical right? What side is West Virginia Congressman David McKinley, Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia attorney general Patrick Morrisey, and Governor Earl Ray Tomblin on?"

Those are all good questions.

===

gets wyo blm coal cheap  <a href="http://grist.org/news/our-coal-such-a-steal-peabody-energys-sham-auction-goes-down/">http://grist.org/news/our-coal-such-a-steal-peabody-energys-sham-auction-goes-down/</a>

also

Yesterday, Peabody Coal signed a deal with the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_21376769/peabody-gets-lease-mine-coal-near-hayden-at">lease an additional 400 acres</a> at its Twentymile Mine in northwest Colorado. Peabody will be paying 25 cents for each ton of coal; there are an estimated 3.2 million tons in the expanded tract.

Coal from the nearby Uinta Basin with similar characteristics (like energy yield and sodium content) <a href="http://www.eia.gov/coal/news_markets/">sells for $35.60 per ton</a>. Safe to assume that the Twentymile coal will sell at a similar price.

http://grist.org/news/peabody-coal-signs-sweetheart-deal-with-government-to-expand-existing-mine/

===

UCS 5/12

Peabody Energy Corporation, which produces coal, was ranked the most obstructionist of any of the companies. It spent more than $33m to lobby Congress against environmental measures and supporting trade groups and think tanks which spread disinformation about climate science, the researchers found.

<a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/scientific_integrity/a-climate-of-corporate-control-report.pdf">http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/scientific_integrity/a-climate-of-corporate-control-report.pdf</a>

There's no better example of how capitalism profits from overheating the planet than Boyce. As head of the world's largest publicly held coal company, Boyce is the darling of Wall Street, beloved for his crisp management style, nice suits and political muscle. To keep America addicted to coal, Peabody spent $5 million on lobbying last year, arguing that any attempt to limit carbon pollution will jack up energy prices and destroy the U.S. economy. But Boyce's concern for America hasn't stopped him from going global with a vengeance, expanding operations in China and Australia, and planning a huge export terminal to ship coal to the Far East. His most self-serving moment came in September, when he unveiled the "Peabody Plan to Eliminate Energy Poverty and Inequality." The greatest global danger, Boyce declared, is "not a future environmental crisis predicted by computer models" but the "human crisis" of 3.6 billion people who lack easy access to electricity. The solution? More coal, which Boyce laughably referred to as "the only sustainable fuel with the scale to meet the primary energy needs of the world's rising populations." It was the kind of statement that made sense back in 1910. A century later, it's a recipe for climate catastrophe.

The Dark Lord of Coal Country

-----

Peabody Energy, previously Peabody Coal Company, is the largest private-sector coal company in the world.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-0" title="">[1]</a> In 2006, Peabody sold over 247 million tons of coal. The company's coal fuels approximately 10% of the electricity generated in the United States and 3% of electricity generated throughout the world. Peabody sells coal to over 350 electricity generating and industrial plants in 15 countries. By 2006, the company had 10.2 billion tons of proven and probable coal reserves. It holds majority interests in 40 coal operations located throughout the United States and in Australia and Venezuela. In addition, Peabody owns minority interests in two mines through joint venture arrangements. In the United States, company-owned mines are located in Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Illinois, and Indiana. Peabody's largest operation is the North Antelope-Rochelle Mine located in Campbell County, Wyoming, mining more than 87 million tons of coal annually.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-1" title="">[2]</a>

In 2010, Peabody Energy had a total revenue of $6.9 billion. Its CEO, Gregory Boyce, made an annual compensation of $9.6 million that same year. The company is a member of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Legislative_Exchange_Council" title="American Legislative Exchange Council">American Legislative Exchange Council</a> (ALEC).

Kelly Mader, Vice President of State Government Relations, is on the ALEC Private Enterprise Board as of 2011.

<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Template:About_ALEC&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Template:About ALEC (page does not exist)">Template:About ALEC</a>

Summary

A November 2007 presentation to investment analysts by the President of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=BHP_Billiton" title="BHP Billiton">BHP Billiton</a> Coal, Dave Murray, noted that Peabody had a one percent share of the global coal export trade, making it the twelfth largest coal exporter in the world.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-2" title="">[3]</a>

Peabody also previously owned coal mines in West Virginia and Kentucky. The company spun-off these assets into the independently-traded <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Patriot_Coal_Corporation" title="Patriot Coal Corporation" class="mw-redirect">Patriot Coal Corporation</a> in October 2007.

Peabody was Nos. 497 and 453 on the Fortune 500 list of companies in 2005 and 2006, respectively. The coal mining lobby donated $10,423,347 to members of Congress. Of that, the top three major contributors included <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Arch_Coal" title="Arch Coal">Arch Coal</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=CONSOL_Energy" title="CONSOL Energy">CONSOL Energy</a> and Peabody Energy.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-3" title="">[4]</a>

The company's third-quarter 2010 profits more than doubled, with revenue rising to $1.86 billion from $1.67 billion. The increase was driven by a 36 percent rise in Australian sales, increases in Trading and Brokerage business activity, and rising imports to China, India and other parts of Asia for both steel-making metallurgical coal and thermal coal which is used in power generation.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-4" title="">[5]</a> For the fourth-quarter of 2010, Peabody stated that their profits doubled due to global demand for coal.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-5" title="">[6]</a> For the first quarter of 2011 Peabody reported their quarterly profits were up 32% due to higher coal prices.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-6" title="">[7]</a>

<h2>Contents</h2>

[<a href="javascript:toggleToc()" class="internal" id="togglelink">hide</a>]</div>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#History">1 History</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Peabody_CEO_makes_.2411.95_million_in_2008">2 Peabody CEO makes $11.95 million in 2008</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Former_Peabody_lobbyist_appointed_to_key_role_for_Indiana_Department_of_Environmental_Management">3 Former Peabody lobbyist appointed to key role for Indiana Department of Environmental Management</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Legislative_Issues">4 Legislative Issues</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Lawsuit_filed_in_Boone_County.2C_WV">4.1 Lawsuit filed in Boone County, WV</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Lawsuit_against_Peabody_Coal_operations_on_tribal_lands">4.2 Lawsuit against Peabody Coal operations on tribal lands</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Global_production_outlook">5 Global production outlook</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Peabody_in_Australia">5.1 Peabody in Australia</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Peabody_in_China">5.2 Peabody in China</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Powder_River_Basin_coal_and_Europe">5.3 Powder River Basin coal and Europe</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Exports_to_Japan">5.4 Exports to Japan</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Peabody_in_Indonesia">5.5 Peabody in Indonesia</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Peabody_wants_Mongolia_to_be_next_Powder_River_Basin">5.6 Peabody wants Mongolia to be next Powder River Basin</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Interest_in_Bangladesh">5.7 Interest in Bangladesh</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Peabody.27s_production_in_Wyoming">6 Peabody's production in Wyoming</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Proposed_Millennium_Bulk_Logistics_Longview_Terminal">6.1 Proposed Millennium Bulk Logistics Longview Terminal</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Proposed_Terminal:_Gateway_Pacific_Terminal">6.2 Proposed Terminal: Gateway Pacific Terminal</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Citizen_action">7 Citizen action</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Black_Cross_Movement_targets_Kayenta_Mine">7.1 Black Cross Movement targets Kayenta Mine</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#.22Puff_Puff.22_inhalers">7.2 "Puff Puff" inhalers</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Leaked_memo_on_coal_marketing_strategies">8 Leaked memo on coal marketing strategies</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Coal_gasification">9 Coal gasification</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#.27Clean_Coal.27_Booster">10 'Clean Coal' Booster</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Campaign_contributions_by_Peabody_Energy">11 Campaign contributions by Peabody Energy</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Lobbying">12 Lobbying</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Peabody_Energy_and_Climategate">12.1 Peabody Energy and Climategate</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Peabody_Energy_Lobbying_in_2009">12.2 Peabody Energy Lobbying in 2009</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Peabody_Energy_Lobbyists_in_2008">12.3 Peabody Energy Lobbyists in 2008</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Coal_projects_sponsored_by_Peabody_Energy">13 Coal projects sponsored by Peabody Energy</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Mines_owned_by_Peabody">14 Mines owned by Peabody</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Peabody_announces_development_of_new_mine_in_Indiana">14.1 Peabody announces development of new mine in Indiana</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Peabody_closes_last_mine_in_Vermilion_County.2C_Illinois">14.2 Peabody closes last mine in Vermilion County, Illinois</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Mining_Expansion">14.3 Mining Expansion</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Coal_India_in_Discussions_with_Peabody">14.4 Coal India in Discussions with Peabody</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Reference_in_song">15 Reference in song</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Contact_information">16 Contact information</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Articles_and_resources">17 Articles and resources</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#Related_SourceWatch_articles">17.1 Related SourceWatch articles</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#References">17.2 References</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#External_resources">17.3 External resources</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#External_articles">17.4 External articles</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

</ul>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

<h2>History</h2>

The origins of Peabody Energy starts with the founding of Peabody, Daniels & Company by Francis Peabody and a partner.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-7" title="">[8]</a> The company bought coal from established mines and sold it to homes and businesses in the Chicago area. Francis soon bought out his partner, and, in 1890, he incorporated the company as Peabody Coal Company. In 1895, the company began operating its first mine, in Williamson County, Illinois. In 1913, the company won its first long-term contract to supply a large electric utility. Such contracts to electric utilities is how Peabody makes most of its money today. The corporation went public in 1929 with a listing on the Midwest Stock Exchange, and, in 1949, was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

While Peabody was profitable during its early years, it hit hard times in the early 1950s. To address the situation, it entered into merger talks with Sinclair Coal company. The merger occurred in 1955, resulting in the move of Peabody's headquarters to St. Louis. The merged company, however, retained the Peabody name. Under the leadership of coal-veteran Russell Kelce, the company expanded production and sales, and purchased a mine in Queensland, Australia, its first outside of North America.

In 1968, the company was purchased by the Kennecott Copper Corporation. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, however, challenged the purchase as an antitrust violation. In 1976, the FTC ordered Kennecott to divest itself of Peabody. The newly-created Peabody Holding Company purchased the Peabody Coal business of Kennecott for $1.1 billion. A consortium of companies controlled Peabody-Holding. In 1990, Hanson PLC, one of the owners of Peabody Holding, bought out the rest of the owners. Peabody was eventually bought by a unit of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Lehman_Brothers" title="Lehman Brothers">Lehman Brothers</a>, which brought the company public as Peabody Energy Corporation in 2001. The IPO for Peabody Energy raised proceeds of $456 million.

<h2>Peabody CEO makes $11.95 million in 2008</h2>

The total compensation for Peabody CEO Gregory Boyce in 2008 was $11.95 million, up from $8.58 million in 2007. Boyce’s salary increased 7.5 percent to $1.05 million, and his yearly bonus was $2.07 million. He was also credited with $7 million in stock and $1.7 million in options, some of which reflects previous years' awards. During 2008, he received stock with a fair value of $2.4 million, as well as stock options valued at $1.8 million. Peabody’s earnings per share increased 162 percent over the previous year.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-8" title="">[9]</a>

<h2>Former Peabody lobbyist appointed to key role for Indiana Department of Environmental Management</h2>

In April 2009, David Joest was appointed assistant commissioner for the Office of Legal Counsel of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM), which puts him in charge of civil enforcement and criminal investigations of the state's largest polluters. For the last 25 years, Joest has been a registered lobbyist for Peabody. He has fought enviromental agencies and prevented tougher environmental rules in both Indiana and Michigan. In Indiana, he has represented Peabody against the Indiana Department of Natural Resources in legal challenges over permits and defended the company against enforcement from the Indiana DEM. Environmentalists have expressed concern over a conflict of interest, saying that the appointment coincides with Peabody's efforts to open new mines in Indiana.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-9" title="">[10]</a>

<h2>Legislative Issues</h2>

<h3>Lawsuit filed in Boone County, WV</h3>

In February 2009, about 250 people filed suit against coal companies they allege poisoned wells in two communities in southern West Virginia. The lawsuit contends that coal companies pumped waste coal slurry empty mines, and that underground cracks allowed the waste to pollute the aquifer. However, the state Department of Environmental Protection says it has been unable to link the wells to the injection site.

The lawsuit targets eight coal companies, including <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Massey_Energy" title="Massey Energy">Massey Energy</a>, Peabody Energy and subsidiary Pine Ridge Coal, and West Virginia's Federal Coal Co.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-10" title="">[11]</a>

In April 2009, a settlement agreement was reached and was awaiting judge approval. The settlement calls for the coal companies to contribute $45,000 to a fund to provide drinking water to residents in the Seth-Prenter area. The companies stated as part of the agreement that the payment does not constitute any admission of guilt and is inadmissible in court.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-11" title="">[12]</a>

<h3>Lawsuit against Peabody Coal operations on tribal lands</h3>

On September 30, 2010, a coalition of Native American and conservation groups filed a lawuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining (OSM) for withholding records relating to Peabody Energy’s coal-mining operations on tribal lands in northeast Arizona. OSM has so far refused to publicly release pertinent records, including the current operating permit for Peabody's coal mining. According to Nikke Alex, executive director of the Black Mesa Water Coalition, “For decades, OSM has quietly issued permits to Peabody in a way that has thwarted meaningful public involvement and community understanding of Peabody’s mine operations. OSM’s permitting actions have a direct and irreparable impact on our community. These records must be released to the public.”<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-12" title="">[13]</a>

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Black_Mesa_Water_Coalition" title="Black Mesa Water Coalition">Black Mesa Water Coalition</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Biological_Diversity" title="Center for Biological Diversity">Center for Biological Diversity</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Dine_Citizens_Against_Ruining_Our_Environment" title="Dine Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment">Dine Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment</a> (Dine CARE), <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sierra_Club" title="Sierra Club">Sierra Club</a> and TO’ Nizhoni Ani. Plaintiffs are being represented by attorneys Brad Bartlett and Travis Stills of the Energy Minerals Law Center in Durango, Colorado.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-13" title="">[14]</a>

<h2>Global production outlook</h2>

Addressing potential investors in Manhattan on June 17, 2010 Gregory Boyce, the chairman and chief executive or Peabody Energy, stated that “a long-term supercycle for coal,” driven by rapidly growing demand in Asia, would be extremely profitable. A company press release explained:

<dl>

<dd>

<dl>

<dd>Boyce observed that coal has been the world’s fastest-growing fuel this past decade, with demand growing at nearly twice the rate of natural gas and hydro power and more than four times faster than global oil consumption. “It’s stunning that any mature commodity could expand nearly 50 percent in a decade and speaks to the strong appetite for the products we fuel, as well as coal’s abundance and stable cost,” he said. Coal demand is also expected to grow faster than other fuels in coming decades.</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

<dl>

<dd>

<dl>

<dd>Asia-Pacific nations are leading a historic global build-out in coal-fueled electricity generation. More than 94 gigawatts of new generation are expected to come on line in 2010, representing 375 million tonnes of coal consumption per year. If growth continues at the current pace, generators would add another 1 billion tonnes of new coal demand every three years.</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

Richard K. Morse of Stanford responded to Peabody's statement saying, "While Peabody’s PR has taken some creative turns in the past (framing access to coal as a human right), this document reflects a reality that we are watching closely at Stanford: Coal is the world’s fastest growing fossil fuel (for the 8th year now) and likely will be for the next 10-20 at least. According to BP’s 2010 Statistical Review of World Energy released this month, coal now occupies a greater share of the world’s energy mix than at any point since 1970."<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-14" title="">[15]</a>

<h3>Peabody in Australia</h3>

In October 2006, Peabody completed an acquisition of Excel Coal Limited, an independent coal company in Australia. Peabody paid $1.52 billion for Excel and also assumed $227 million of Excel's debt. At the time, Excel owned three operating mines and three-development stage mines in Australia. Additionally, Excel had an estimated 500 million tons of proven and probable coal reserves.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-15" title="">[16]</a> Peabody owns five other mines in Australia, which are all located in Queensland. Most of the Australian production is low-sulfur, metallurgical coal.

<h3>Peabody in China</h3>

In October 2008, three years after the opening of its Beijing office, Peabody announced an estimated $2.5 billion project to pursue a large-scale coal mine and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Coal-to-liquids" title="Coal-to-liquids" class="mw-redirect">coal-to-liquids</a> plant in Inner Mongolia. The plant, which would convert coal into methanol, would be developed by a group that includes Peabody, Inner Mongolia Jitong Railway Group Ltd., and the Chinese government. The mine would produce 10 to 20 million tons of coal per year. The project is a first for an American coal company in China. The company is also considering projects in Mozambique.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-16" title="">[17]</a>

In January 2011, Peabody Energy announced two partnerships with Chinese energy companies to build coal mines near newly planned power plants in China. China Huaneng Group, the largest power generator in China, and California-based Calera Corp., agreed to develop a 1,200-megawatt power plant and adjacent coal mine in China's Inner Mongolia. Peabody would operate the surface mine. Huaneng and Calera plans to convert a percentage of the plant's <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Carbon_dioxide" title="Carbon dioxide">carbon dioxide</a> emissions into cement and other building materials. In the second project, Peabody said it will partner with Yankuang Group Co. to develop a 20-million-ton-per-year surface coal mine to fuel a 2,000-megawatt power plant in the Zhundong region of Xinjiang in northwestern China. The massive project also includes a facility to convert coal to natural gas. Peabody expects the Xinjiang region to nearly triple its coal production by 2015 to increase its output to 1 billion metric tons by 2020.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-17" title="">[18]</a>

During January 2011 it was also announced that U.S. based <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Coal" title="Peabody Coal" class="mw-redirect">Peabody Coal</a>, China Huaneng Group and Calera Corporation agreed to pursue the development of a <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Clean_coal" title="Clean coal" class="mw-redirect">clean coal</a> project in the Xilinguole Region of Mongolia. The energy project would include a 1200 MW coal-fired power plant. The proposed plant would seek to capture a portion of carbon dioxide (CO2) and convert it into green building materials, advancing carbon capture technology. The plant would be fueled by a 12 million tonne per year surface mine operated by Peabody Coal.

It was stated that China Huaneng would serve as the power plant operator. Calera would use its technology to convert CO2 into solids that can be used as cement building materials. As of 2011, engineering plans were underway, with more announcements to come later in the year.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-18" title="">[19]</a>

<h3>Powder River Basin coal and Europe</h3>

In 2008, Peabody began sending coal from Wyoming to Europe, first by rail to the Mississippi River, then by vessel through the Gulf of Mexico.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-worc-19" title="">[20]</a> It was announced in October 2010 that Peabody Energy was planning to increase the exporting of coal from its Powder River Basin mines to European markets. Peabody exports Powder River Basin coal through existing ports to Europe, Chile and Asia. It is also looking at building a large coal export facility in Oregon. Peabody has contracted 90% of its 2011 production from the Powder River Basin mines, but the company stated that it has coal volumes available for 2012 and 2013.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-20" title="">[21]</a>

<h3>Exports to Japan</h3>

A 2011 Western Organization of Resource Councils Report, <a href="http://www.worc.org/userfiles/file/Coal/Exporting_Powder_River_Basin_Coal_Risks_and_Cost.pdf" class="external text" title="http://www.worc.org/userfiles/file/Coal/Exporting_Powder_River_Basin_Coal_Risks_and_Cost.pdf" rel="nofollow">"Exporting Powder River Basin Coal: Risks and Costs"</a> noted that Peabody is shipping coal to Japan from the California coast.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-worc-19" title="">[20]</a>

<h3>Peabody in Indonesia</h3>

In December 2010, Peabody Energy signed a deal to receive coal from PT Supra Bara Energi (SBE) in Indonesia. The coal from SBE's mine in East Kalimantan will be exported to customers located in the Asian Pacific Rim through Peabody's COALTRADE international Singapore trading hub. Over the next five years, Peabody plans to supply several million tons of coal from SBE's Indonesian mine.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-zack-21" title="">[22]</a>

In February 2011, Peabody Energy said it had reached an agreement to source two million tons of coal for export from Indonesia's PT Cahaya Energi Mandiri. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The coal will be secured over two years from a mine in East Kalimantan. Peabody has done three term deals in recent months that account for 5.5 million tons of Indonesian coal.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-22" title="">[23]</a>

<h3>Peabody wants Mongolia to be next Powder River Basin</h3>

In June 2010, Peabody Energy executives announced that Wyoming's <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Powder_River_Basin" title="Powder River Basin">Powder River Basin</a> model for mining coal should be applied to nations around the world in order to "lift growing populations out of poverty." Fred Palmer, senior vice president of government relations for Peabody, spoke at the International Advanced Coal Technologies Conference in Laramie, WY. Palmer called coal "a matter of human rights" in that "cheap coal offers a higher standard of living for all." Peabody Energy - and other companies - are eyeing a coal field in Mongolia to apply the Powder River Basin model of cheap and abundant coal leasing. Peabody, which operates three coal mines in the Powder River Basin, has argued against climate change legislation at the national and international level, pushing instead for <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Coal_gasification" title="Coal gasification" class="mw-redirect">coal gasification</a> and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Carbon_sequestration" title="Carbon sequestration" class="mw-redirect">carbon sequestration</a> technologies, under the name <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Clean_coal" title="Clean coal" class="mw-redirect">clean coal</a>. Others believe the scenario of building Powder River Basin-sized coal fields would have a devastating impact in terms of climate change.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-23" title="">[24]</a>

<h3>Interest in Bangladesh</h3>

Petrobangla’s coal mining subsidiary <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Barapukuria_Coal_Mining_Company" title="Barapukuria Coal Mining Company">Barapukuria Coal Mining Co. Ltd</a> (BCMCL) operates an underground coal mine at Barapuluria in the Dinajpur District in Bangladesh. The 2,500-acre underground mine includes 650 acres of agricultural land on the surface. Barapukuria's existing mining contract with a Chinese company will expire in 2011, and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody" title="Peabody" class="mw-redirect">Peabody</a> has expressed interest in mining the area. In March 2011, Barapukuria had a proven reserve of around 389 million tons of coal, and the company expects to extract 10 to 20 per cent of the total reserves through underground mining within the next 30 years. The government has so far extracted less than four million tons of coal from the mine.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-24" title="">[25]</a>

The International Accountability Project reports that mining operations at Barapukuria have destroyed roughly 300 acres of land, impacting about 2,500 people in seven villages, as land subsidence of over one meter in depth has destroyed crops and lands and damaged homes. People in 15 villages have also reportedly lost their access to water, as huge quantities of water pumped out for the Barapukuria mine caused a rapid drop in water levels.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-kh-25" title="">[26]</a>

<h2>Peabody's production in Wyoming</h2>

In January 2009, Peabody announced plans to reduce its yearly production of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Powder_River_Basin" title="Powder River Basin">Powder River Basin</a> coal production by 10 million tons because of the economic downturn and weakening demand worldwide. Peabody's three Wyoming coal mines, which include North Antelope Rochelle Complex, Caballo and Rawhide, produced a total of approximately 143.5 million tons in 2008. together produced about 143.5 million tons in 2008, according a Casper Star-Tribune estimate. North Antelope Rochelle accounted for almost two thirds of that total. The company, which employs over 1,700 miners in the state, does not expect a significant loss of jobs in spite of the production slowdown.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-26" title="">[27]</a>

Demand for coal to generate electricity to produce steel in China and India has increased in recent years. Peabody Energy announced on October 20, 2009 that demand for coal in these countries will grow 7 to 8 percent annually over the course of the next five years. The company says that coal from Mongolia will supply China while coal from Australia will handle the increased Asian demand. Peabody president Richard Navarre noted that production at Peabody's mines in the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Powder_River_Basin" title="Powder River Basin">Powder River Basin</a> will also help supply the growing market in China and India.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-27" title="">[28]</a>

In November of 2009 the bank HSBC released a report entitled, "The Green Side of Black" that made estimates about coal's involvement in the future of the U.S. energy economy. In it, the bank reported that coal, even under cap-and-trade, will be a lucrative industry in the future. The author of the report also stated that Wyoming's <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Powder_River_Basin" title="Powder River Basin">Powder River Basin</a> will be growing faster than other coal regions in the United States. The HSBC report stated that in <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Arch_Coal" title="Arch Coal">Arch Coal</a> and Peabody Energy will be especially prosperous because of their extensive involvement in the Powder River Basin.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-28" title="">[29]</a>

For more information on the proposed port developments in the western United States please visit the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Coal_exports_from_northwest_United_States_ports" title="Coal exports from northwest United States ports">Coal exports from northwest United States ports</a> article.

<h3>Proposed Millennium Bulk Logistics Longview Terminal</h3>

In September 2010 Peabody Energy announced that "Coal's best days are ahead." Peabody stated that exports of coal from the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming will be central to its expansion goals. The Oregonian in September 2010 reported that Northwest ports, and in particular ports in Portland, Oregon, may be used in the future to export coal to Asia. The Port of Portland said it doesn't have the space for coal exports in the short-term, but its consultants cited coal as a potential long-term market if it adds terminals on West Hayden Island.

In early November 2010 Australia-based <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ambre_Energy" title="Ambre Energy">Ambre Energy</a> asked Cowlitz County officials in southern Washington State, which borders Oregon, to approve a port redevelopment that would allow for the export of 5 million tons of coal annually. On November 23 Cowlitz County officials approved the permit for the port redevelopment, which is to be located at the private Chinook Ventures port in Longview, Washington. Coal terminals also are proposed at two other sites along the Columbia River.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-29" title="">[3</a>

Environmentalists stated that they would oppose any such actions, arguing that coal contributes to pollution and global warming.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-30" title="">[31]</a> Early discussion of how many jobs the port would produce was roughly twenty total.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-31" title="">[32]</a>

In November 2010 Powder River Basin coal producer Cloud Peak Energy CEO Colin Marshall stated that a coal port on the West Coast was "absolutely more than a pipedream."

Other Powder River Basin producers, including top US coal miner Peabody Energy, have talked about the potential for a new export facility on the West Coast, with Oregon and Washington being mentioned as the top locations of choice.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-32" title="">[33]</a>

Groups including the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sierra_Club" title="Sierra Club">Sierra Club</a> and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Columbia_Riverkeeper" title="Columbia Riverkeeper">Columbia Riverkeeper</a> have vowed to stop the industry's expansion into Asia, a market currently dominated by coal from Australia and Indonesia.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-33" title="">[34]</a>

<h3>Proposed Terminal: <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Gateway_Pacific_Terminal" title="Gateway Pacific Terminal">Gateway Pacific Terminal</a></h3>

The <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Gateway_Pacific_Terminal" title="Gateway Pacific Terminal">Gateway Pacific Terminal</a> is a proposed terminal at Cherry Point near Ferndale, Washington, and would have a maximum capacity of about 54 million tons. On February 28, 2011, SSA Marine applied for state and federal permits for the $500 million terminal, triggering formal environmental review. If approved, the terminal would begin construction in early 2013 and operations in 2015.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-js-34" title="">[35]</a>

On March 1, 2011, Seattle-based SSA Marine announced it had entered into an agreement with St. Louis-based Peabody Energy to export up to 24 million metric tons of coal per year through the Gateway Pacific Terminal. Goldman Sachs owns a portion of SSA Marine's parent company. According to Peabody, the terminal in Whatcom County would serve as the West Coast hub for exporting Peabody's coal from the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Powder_River_Basin" title="Powder River Basin">Powder River Basin</a> of Wyoming and Montana to Asian markets. The project would ramp up potential <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=U.S._coal_exports" title="U.S. coal exports">U.S. coal exports</a> to Asia from Washington state. Another coal export terminal proposed in Longview, the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Millennium_Bulk_Logistics_Longview_Terminal" title="Millennium Bulk Logistics Longview Terminal">Millennium Bulk Logistics Longview Terminal</a> in southwest Washington, has drawn environmental opposition. That Millennium Bulk Logistics terminal would be a joint venture between Australia-based <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ambre_Energy" title="Ambre Energy">Ambre Energy</a> and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Arch_Coal" title="Arch Coal">Arch Coal</a>.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-st-35" title="">[36]</a>

Environmental groups have appealed to Washington's Shoreline Hearings Board over a permit awarded for the port by Cowlitz County commissioners.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-st-35" title="">[36]</a>

According to Gateway Pacific Terminal's website the company plans on providing a "highly efficient portal for American producers to export dry bulk commodities such as grain, potash and coal to Asian markets." Additionally, the site contends that the "Gateway project will generate about 4,000 jobs and about $54 million a year in tax revenue for state and local services. Once in full operation, it's estimated that Gateway will provide almost $10 million a year in tax revenue, create about 280 permanent family-wage jobs directly, and nearly 1,400 additional jobs through terminal purchases and employee spending."<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-36" title="">[37]</a>

<h2>Citizen action</h2>

<h3>Black Cross Movement targets Kayenta Mine</h3>

In November 2010 the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Black_Cross_Movement_Against_Coal" title="Black Cross Movement Against Coal">Black Cross Movement</a> planted symbolic black crosses in front of the Navajo Nation's <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Kayenta_Mine" title="Kayenta Mine">Kayenta Mine</a> in New Mexcio, which was named in the spring of 2010 as one of the most dangerous mines in the country.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-37" title="">[38]</a>

<h3>"Puff Puff" inhalers</h3>

In May 2011, as part of Asthma Awareness Month, a hoax website allegedly made by Peabody Energy, offered free "Puff Puff" inhalers to anybody living within 200 miles of a coal plant.

In addition to the re-branded inhalers, which promised to make asthmatic kids "show others who's cool at school," the company also stated they would pledge $10 towards medication as a part of its <a href="http://coalcares.org/index.html%7C" class="external text" title="http://coalcares.org/index.html|" rel="nofollow">Coal Cares</a> campaign. The website contained printable activities for youth. While visiting, one could also read up on why Peabody believed investing in coal was a better bet than alternatives such as solar and wind. The website was a hoax and denounced by Peabody officials.

A group called Coal Is Killing Kids, worked with the Yes Lab an extension of the Yes Men activist team, for a month and a half to develop the fake site.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-38" title="">[39]</a>

After the prank, Peabody sent a <a href="http://www.coalcares.org/peabodythreat.pdf" class="external text" title="http://www.coalcares.org/peabodythreat.pdf" rel="nofollow">letter</a> to the groups, accusing them of misleadingly infringing upon Peabody's trademark and trade name. In response, Coal is Killing Kids and the Yes Men said they would "cease falsely suggesting that Peabody cares about kids made sick by coal."<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-39" title="">[40]</a>

<h2>Leaked memo on coal marketing strategies</h2>

In January 2009, a 2004 leaked memo to then Peabody CEO Irl F. Engelhardt from Steve Miller, who was President of the Center for Energy and Economic Development (now called <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Coalition_for_Clean_Coal_Electricity" title="American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity">American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity</a>), detailed the public relations and lobbying strategies being used to counteract issues including climate change, mercury, plant development, and EPA rulings. Miller details methods used to "sow discord" among regions seeking to limit greenhouse gas emissions.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-pdf-40" title="">[41]</a><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-grandia-41" title="">[42]</a>

Other strategies revealed in the memo include:<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-pdf-40" title="">[41]</a><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-grandia-41" title="">[42]</a>

<ul>

<li>On climate change: "In the climate change arena, CEED focuses on three areas: opposing government-mandated controls of greenhouse gases (GHG), opposing 'regulation by litigation', and supporting sequestration and technology as the proper vehicles for addressing any reasonable concerns about greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere."</li>

<li>More on climate change: "Our belief is that, on climate change like other issues, you must be for something rather than against everything. The combination of carbon sequestration and technology is what we preach and we are looking for more members in the choir."</li>

<li>On regional cap and trade programs: "More than a year ago, New York Governor Pataki proposed an eleven-state regional CO2 cap and trade program. CEED has been engaged in this effort from its beginning. Persuading Pennsylvania and Maryland (as major coal-consuming states) to stay on the sidelines, rather than signing onto this initiative, has been one element of our strategy. The other element is to pose voluntary sequestration and technology as the correct policy, rather than mandatory controls."</li>

<li>On mercury: "Our strategy in dealing with mercury has been two-fold: prevent states from taking precipitous or unwarranted action to regulate mercury and engage in the federal rulemaking to protect the interests of coal-based electricity."</li>

<li>More on mercury: "In 2003, the Quicksilver Caucus with Environmental Council of States (ECOS) tried to pass a resolution calling for the "virtual elimination" of mercury. CEED worked in a coalition with other organizations and companies to convince many states that the Quicksilver strategy was not the right approach and the "virtual elimination" verbiage failed."</li>

<li>On proposed CO2 regulation by the EPA: "About a dozen states sued the EPA last year alleging that the agency must regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act. CEED was the lead organization for outreach to the vast majority of state attorneys general who intervened on the Bush Administration's side in new litigation designed to force CO2 regulation under the Clean Air Act."</li>

</ul>

<h2>Coal gasification</h2>

On August 30, 2007, Ernie Fletcher, the governor of the U.S. state of Kentucky, signed into state law a bill that will provide approximately $300 million in incentives to Peabody to build a <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Coal_gasification" title="Coal gasification" class="mw-redirect">coal gasification</a> plant in that state.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-ForbesKY-42" title="">[43]</a> The incentives comes in the form of breaks on sales taxes, incentive taxes and coal severance taxes.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-ForbesKY-42" title="">[43]</a>

On January 25, 2008, Peabody and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=GreatPoint_Energy" title="GreatPoint Energy">GreatPoint Energy</a> of Cambridge, MA announced an agreement between the companies where Peabody Energy became a minority investor in GreatPoint Energy, and that Peabody would be the coal supplier for GreatPoint's coal gasification process. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-gpe-43" title="">[44]</a><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-acqgpe-44" title="">[45]</a> The two companies will collaborate on building coal gasification plants near Peabody's mines in the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Powder_River_Basin" title="Powder River Basin">Powder River Basin</a>. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-gpe-43" title="">[44]</a> Peabody's investment will be used to bring GreatPoint Energy's technology to a commercial scale. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-gpe-43" title="">[44]</a> The agreement also included creating an observer role for Peabody Energy on GreatPoint Energy's Board of Directors. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-gpe-43" title="">[44]</a>

On February 18, 2010, GreatPoint and Peabody announced that the companies would work together to develop coal-to-gas and coal-to-hydrogen plants in and beyond the U.S.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-ctgcth-45" title="">[46]</a> The hydrogen could be both used for electricity and sold to industries<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-ctgcth-45" title="">[46]</a>. Synthesized natural gas could be transported through existing pipelines.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-ctgcth-45" title="">[46]</a> The companies plan to use carbon capture and storage in the process.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-ctgcth-45" title="">[46]</a> Peabody plans to use captured carbon "to extract even more oil out of once-depleted oil reserves".<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-kvolk-46" title="">[47]</a> The companies have not announced any details such as locations, costs, or timeline for the prospective plants.

In March 2010 Peabody invested $15 million into Calera. The company says it has developed technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and other industrial facilities. With the addition of waste water or brine, the company used carbon dioxide to produce cement and other building materials. Critics do not believe Calera's technology will actually decrease carbon dioxide. Ken Caldiera PhD, a professor at the Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology, studies carbon sequestration and stated that from the publicly available info about Calera’s technology, it seems to go "in the wrong direction and will tend to increase and not decrease atmospheric CO2 content."<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-47" title="">[48]</a>

<h2>'Clean Coal' Booster</h2>

In December 2008, Peabody Energy announced that it would contribute $2 million in funding for the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Clean_Coal_Technology_Center" title="Clean Coal Technology Center">Clean Coal Technology Center</a> in the University of Wyoming's School of Energy Resources. In a media release Peabody stated that the grant "will focus on economic and energy analysis and will support the Technology Center's work in advanced coal utilization research and interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate programs for energy-related careers. It will also serve as a catalyst for technology transfer to key stakeholders. A multidisciplinary economic and energy analysis of the Powder River Basin's contribution to America's economy will be part of the initial and ongoing research."<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-48" title="">[49]</a>

At the same time, Peabody also announced that it would contribut $5 million over five years to the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Consortium_for_Clean_Coal_Utilization" title="Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization">Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization</a> at Washington University. This was described in a media release as a project designed to "bring university researchers, industries, foundations and government organizations together to research <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Clean_coal" title="Clean coal" class="mw-redirect">clean coal</a> technology, making St. Louis the nation's center for clean coal research."<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-announce-49" title="">[50]</a> The project will be run by the university's <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Center_for_Advanced_Renewable_Energy_and_Sustainability" title="International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability">International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability</a>(I-CARES).

<h2>Campaign contributions by Peabody Energy</h2>

<a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?cycle=2010&strID=C00110478" class="external text" title="http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?cycle=2010&strID=C00110478" rel="nofollow">Open Secrets</a> reports that in 2010, Peabody's PAC spent $211,534 on lobbying and political contributions. A full list of federal candidates they contributed to in 2009-2010 can be seen <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgot.php?cycle=2010&cmte=C00110478" class="external text" title="http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgot.php?cycle=2010&cmte=C00110478" rel="nofollow">HERE</a>.

Peabody is a major contributor to both Republican and Democratic candidates for Congress, having contributed $272,300 to members of the 110th Congress (2007-2008). Contributions like this from from fossil fuel companies to members of Congress are often seen as a political barrier to pursuing clean energy.

FollowTheCoalMoney lists $138,200 in contributions from Peabody Energy to members of the House of Representatives in the 110th Congress (2007-2008) as being<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-50" title="">[51]</a>

<ul>

<li>$14,200 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roy_Blunt" title="Roy Blunt">Roy Blunt</a>;</li>

<li>$10,000 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jerry_F._Costello" title="Jerry F. Costello" class="mw-redirect">Jerry F. Costello</a>;</li>

<li>$9,500 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_C._Boucher" title="Frederick C. Boucher" class="mw-redirect">Frederick C. Boucher</a>;</li>

<li>$6,000 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_M._Shimkus" title="John M. Shimkus" class="mw-redirect">John M. Shimkus</a>;</li>

<li>$4,000 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ed_Whitfield" title="Ed Whitfield">Ed Whitfield</a>;</li>

<li>$3,500 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Joe_Linus_Barton" title="Joe Linus Barton" class="mw-redirect">Joe Linus Barton</a>;</li>

<li>$3,000 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Michael_Avery_Ross" title="Michael Avery Ross" class="mw-redirect">Michael Avery Ross</a>;</li>

<li>$3,000 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bart_Gordon" title="Bart Gordon">Bart Gordon</a>;</li>

<li>$2,800 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Shelley_Moore_Capito" title="Shelley Moore Capito">Shelley Moore Capito</a>;</li>

<li>$2,750 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frederick_Stephen_Upton" title="Frederick Stephen Upton" class="mw-redirect">Frederick Stephen Upton</a>;</li>

<li>$2,500 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=David_D._Boren" title="David D. Boren" class="mw-redirect">David D. Boren</a>;</li>

<li>$2,500 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Charles_W._Dent" title="Charles W. Dent" class="mw-redirect">Charles W. Dent</a>;</li>

<li>$2,300 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Steny_Hamilton_Hoyer" title="Steny Hamilton Hoyer" class="mw-redirect">Steny Hamilton Hoyer</a>;</li>

<li>$2,000 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Eric_Cantor" title="Eric Cantor">Eric Cantor</a>;</li>

<li>$2,000 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_J._Barrow" title="John J. Barrow" class="mw-redirect">John J. Barrow</a>;</li>

<li>$2,000 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Geoffrey_C._Davis" title="Geoffrey C. Davis" class="mw-redirect">Geoffrey C. Davis</a>; and</li>

<li>$2,000 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Charlie_Melancon_Jr." title="Charlie Melancon Jr." class="mw-redirect">Charlie Melancon Jr.</a></li>

</ul>

FollowTheCoalMoney lists $134,100 in contributions from Peabody Energy to members of the House of Representatives in the 110th Congress (2007-2008) as<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-51" title="">[52]</a>

<ul>

<li>$31,900 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mitch_McConnell" title="Mitch McConnell">Mitch McConnell</a> (R-KY)</li>

<li>$30,200 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_D._Rockefeller" title="John D. Rockefeller" class="mw-redirect">John D. Rockefeller</a> (D-West Virginia); and</li>

<li>$7,000 to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_A._Barrasso" title="John A. Barrasso" class="mw-redirect">John A. Barrasso</a> (West Virgina)</li>

</ul>

More information on specific coal companies and representatives can be found at <a href="http://www.FollowTheCoalMoney.org" class="external text" title="http://www.FollowTheCoalMoney.org" rel="nofollow">FollowtheCoalMoney.org</a>, a project sponsored by the nonpartisan, nonprofit <a href="http://www.priceofoil.org" class="external text" title="http://www.priceofoil.org" rel="nofollow">Oil Change International</a> and <a href="http://www.appalachianvoices.org" class="external text" title="http://www.appalachianvoices.org" rel="nofollow">Appalachian Voices</a>.

<h2>Lobbying</h2>

Peabody spent $$1,360,000 on lobbying in the first 5 months of 2011 and $4,680,000 in 2010.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peabody_Energy#cite_note-52" title="">[53]</a>

<a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientlbs.php?id=D000020856&year=2010" class="external text" title="http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientlbs.php?id=D000020856&year=2010" rel="nofollow">Lobbying firms</a> include: Bryan Cave LLP; Dickstein Shapiro LLP; Gephardt Group; Holland & Hart; International Government Relations Group; John Hancock & Assoc; K&L Gates; Mercury; MML&K Government Solutions; Peabody Investments; Richard F Hohlt; <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Shook,Hardy%26_Bacon" title="Shook, Hardy & Bacon">Shook, Hardy & Bacon</a>; Spectrum Consulting Group; and Stinson, Morrison & Hecker.

A full list of bills lobbied for in 2011 can be seen <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientbills.php?id=D000020856&year=2011" class="external text" title="http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientbills.php?id=D000020856&year=2011" rel="nofollow">HERE</a>. A list for 2010 can be seen <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientbills.php?id=D000020856&year=2010" class="external text" title="http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientbills.php?id=D000020856&year=2010" rel="nofollow">HERE</a>.

Dory

<a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/alec-and-exxonmobil-push-loopholes-in-fracking-chemical-disclosure-rules/#43921">Today, 10:16 a.m.</a>

</div>

Peabody Energy Corp Lobbyists

Aliferis, Scott D

K&L Gates, LLP   Lobbyist  