EDF

promoted to primary 4/15

doing hvy lift on methane (eg API 180 BS )

EDF tag:https://blogs.edf.org/energyexchange/category/methane-2/

bak 4 22

html steadfast

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mark kelly lead school testimony 5 26

The Trump administration gave out free passes to pollute to every company that requested one—including a copper smelter in Arizona spewing lead and arsenic into the air just one mile from an elementary school. | EDF Action

truthout 11/18  https://truthout.org/articles/michael-bloomberg-backs-fracking-and-invests-in-fossil-fuels/

...

Big Green Cover

There are a range of self-professed environmental organizations that provide Bloomberg with cover to pose as a climate hero even as he remains dedicated to investing in and promoting fossil fuels. These groups – sometimes referred to as “Big Green,” who “greenwash” for the oil and gas industry – are funded and closely tied to the very same corporate interests that drive the fossil fuel sector. (See our coverage of the New York League of Conservation Voters for an example of this).

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is one such organization that vouches for Bloomberg. Last year, for example, EDF executive director Diane Regas wrote a fawning review of Climate of Hopefor Forbesmagazine. It reads like a Bloomberg press release. The review is entirely uncritical, celebrating “Bloomberg’s eloquent call to action” while not even mentioning his enthusiasm for fracking and new oil and gas infrastructure, let alone his fossil fuel investments. This is probably not coincidental, since Regas discloses that Bloomberg Philanthropies supports the EDF (this is putting it lightly – he has given millions to the group).

The EDF has raked in tens of millions in donations from conservative billionaire families like the Waltons and Wall Street interests like Goldman Sachs and Bloomberg. Its board of trustees includes multi-billionaire Julian Robertson, a housing crisis profiteer and senior advisor to energy investment firm Tiger Infrastructure Partners (which is currently proposing a new fracked-gas plant in New York State), Stanley Druckenmiller, also a multi-billionaire who invests in fossil fuels; and Katherine Lorenz, president of the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation, which rests upon George Mitchell’s fracking fortune.

The EDF has a history of using its environmental mask to provide cover for oil and gas interests. For example, as we showeda few years ago, it helped legitimize the Center for Sustainable Shale Development, a pro-fracking body dominated by the fossil fuel industry that issues certifications to fracking companies identifying them as “responsible” gas drillers.

Bloomberg has also given $80 million to the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign, which aims to retire the nation’s coal-fired power plants. Coal plants produce the highest levels of carbon emissions, and everyone should contribute to shutting them down. But it’s unfortunate that Bloomberg can use gestures like this to appear as a climate hero even as he continues to invest in and support fracking and pipeline expansion – also major drivers of climate change....

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hightower AN

...So, what should we make of a brand-spankin' new group with the incredible moniker ofCowboys for Liberty? What a positive name! Cowboys are seen as down-to-earth straight-shooters, and America is all about liberty. But wait, is this one of those Koch-funded, far-right-wing bands of angry, anti-government ranchers? Au contraire, as the old cowhands say. In fact, Cowboys for Liberty is an audacious, fun-loving network of hell-raising, climate-change activists who are out to expose, shame and defeat the corporate-serving profiteers behind the unconscionable climate-denier industry, instigated by Jim Marston of the Environmental Defense Fund.

With many of its members from Colorado, Montana, Oklahoma, Texas and other Western states, this new conservation coalition chose the cowboy image both to symbolize the True-West commitment to defending Mother Nature -- and as a spoof on the right-wing's intentional perversion of language and honest policies. One of their first targets? The most selfish of them all: climate-change deniers.

Yes, from time to time, a few individuals pop into the public eye who are so consumed by self-importance, self-righteousness, self-aggrandizement and all things selfish that they have no shame -- even when their narcissism does gross harm to others. These narcissists-doing-disastrous-damage are the climate-change denying clique of prominent polluters, politicos and propagandists are shamefully used their positions of power to enhance their own fame and fortune as glaciers melt, oceans rise, extreme weather expands, species perish and Earth itself spins toward being unlivable.

While these professional deniers acknowledge no shame, the feisty Cowboys have stepped forward to acknowledge it for them.They've established a Climate Deniers Hall of Shame, and it inducted its first class of infamous deniers. Among the honorees are Charles and David Koch, who've dumped more than $100 million into front groups spreading lies about climate change; Sen. Jim Inhofe, the dotty old dean of deniers, who has called global warming a conspiracy spawned by the Weather Channel; and the former CEO of Exxon Mobil,who secretly funded right-wing groups to issue hoked-up reports to discredit the science of climate change.

The Hall of Shame is fun, but it's not a prank. It's a real place to memorialize in perpetuity the names, faces and shameful actions of obtuse, avaricious individuals who've worked to put their petty selves above the very existence of humanity. Publicizing the nefarious efforts of these deniers reveals the importance of an informed and engaged citizenry. Otherwise, we end up ruled by a kakistocracy -- government by the worst people in our society.

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https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-sued-correspondence-heartland-institute-2548433710.html

EPA Sued Over Failure to Release Correspondence With Heartland Institute

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is being sued for its "unlawful and unreasonable delay" in responding to requests for information about the agency's communications with the Heartland Institute, according to a complaint by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

The Heartland Institute is an Illinois-based think tank that rejects the science of man-made climate change and has received funding from the Koch brothers and the fossil fuel industry.

The lawsuit centers around the EDF and SELC's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for communications between the EPA and the Heartland Institute in August and October of 2017, respectively.

The requests were made after Heartland Institute Communications Director Jim Lakely said last July, "The White House and the Environmental Protection Agency have reached out to the Heartland Institute to help identify scientists who could constitute a red team, and we've been happy to oblige."

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a climate change denier who has close ties to the fossil fuel industry, has long insisted on a nationally publicized "red team-blue team" debate that would pit climate skeptics against scientists who accept the facts about global warming. However, news emerged this week that White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly has reportedly put a stop to Pruitt's plan.

According to the complaint, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, the EPA acknowledged both requests and asked for some initial clarification, but has subsequently stopped communicating with SELC and provided vague responses to EDF's outreach that do not indicate any expectation of near-term progress on EDF's FOIA request.

There certainly appears to be some—and even extensive—contact between the EPA and the Heartland Institute. As seen below, the complaint states that the EPA's own search for correspondence between agency employees and Heartland yielded between 200 and 600 records.

The complaint by the Southern Environmental Law Center and the Environmental Defense Fund[img?]

Under the law, all federal agencies are required to respond to a FOIA request within 20 business days.

"EPA's efforts to promote climate change deniers and undermine peer-reviewed science behind closed doors is not only a failure of its mission, it is illegal," Kym Hunter, an attorney for the SELC, said in a statement. "The public has a clear and protected right to know what the EPA is doing and with whom they are communicating, including those pushing a climate-denier agenda."

The Heartland Institute has been labeled as "the primary American organization pushing climate change skepticism." Frontline reported that the think tank sent out 25,000 copies of its book, Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming,and an accompanying 10-minute DVD to 25,000 science teachers.

Just last week, the EPA sent out a press release that touted an op-ed written by Heartland Institute president Tim Huelskamp for The Hill titled, "Scott Pruitt is leading the EPA towards Greatness."

"Even as Americans face growing risks from climate change, Scott Pruitt continues to stonewall common-sense solutions and deny decades of mounting scientific evidence that the problem is real and serious," said Ben Levitan, an attorney for the EDF, in a statement. "Americans have a right to know who is influencing Pruitt's decisions, and who is shaping the agenda at the agency in charge of protecting our health and safety."

...

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/01/02/suing-spree-oil-and-gas-industry-risks-speech-chilling-precedents

In 2017, while the Trump administration absorbed media attention with its cries of “fake news,” the oil and gas industry was busy launching private legal actions across the U.S., attacking critics who presented information and opinions to the public.

Those lesser-noticed legal maneuvers, if successful in 2018, could create chilling new precedents, keeping important facts away from the public eye and making it more expensive and risky to talk about the fossil fuel industry's real and potential impacts on human health and the air, land, and water.

The past year brought some of the most aggressive lawsuits by the oil and gas industry against environmentalists in recent decades. They included legal moves aimed at preventing researchers from discussing their findings, motions painting political movements as for-profit conspiracies, and even a $5 million dollar lawsuit brought against a cancer patient whose tap water, state investigators determined years ago, was contaminated by gas drilling — by the company that is now suing him.

That lawsuit, filed by a shale gas drilling company, claims that a Pennsylvania landowner violated a non-disclosure agreement by talking to the press about his fouled drinking water, his home's plummeting property value, the impacts of truck traffic on his community, the poor air quality around his home since drilling and fracking began in the area, or other problems he believes the company itself caused.

These oil and gas industry cases — involving novel uses of conspiracy, defamation, and even wire fraud laws — represent new and concerted efforts by large corporations to make individuals and groups pay for presenting information and opinions to the public.

Cancer Patient Gagged

Dimock, Pennsylvania, landowner Ray Kemble, who was diagnosed with bladder cancer in March 2017, was sued in August by Cabot Oil and Gas, which drilled a series of Marcellus shale wells in Kemble's hometown.

Back in 2010 state environmental regulators concluded that Cabot Oil and Gas's drilling operations had contaminated the area's groundwater and ordered the company to cough up $4.6 million. In May 2016, federal health officials concluded that the drinking water in Dimock was indeed unsafe, and in December 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) long-awaited national study warned that hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has contaminated drinking water supplies across the U.S. (without directly commenting on Kemble's situation).

Cabot signed settlements with virtually all of the families drawing water from the contaminated Pennsylvania aquifer, though the precise terms of those agreements remain secret. A separate federal lawsuit, brought by two families down the road from Kemble, the Elys and the Huberts, was settled in September for an undisclosed amount, a sign that the Ely and Hubert settlement also includes a non-disclosure clause.

Cabot's new lawsuit argues that a 2012 settlement bars Kemble from “disparaging” the companyby discussing any harm he believes the company caused him — or even talking about things the company did after the settlement was reached.

But good luck finding out what exactly a settlement agreement between Kemble and the company might have said: In December, Cabot argued in court that it didn't need to provide the document at the heart of the case to the attorneys representing Kemble's co-defendents, nevermind the public.

Non-disparagement and non-disclosure agreements have been in the public spotlight lately amid the #MeToo scandals, after it came to light that powerful sexual harassers and assaulters frequently used the clauses to prevent those they assaulted from talking publicly.

Critics argue that non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements (NDAs) should also not be used in cases where the public health could be at risk, warning that NDAs could, for example, keep someone sickened after drinking bad water from warning their neighbors about the danger.

Legal experts have questioned whether courts would ever actually enforce such an order — so the case brought by Cabot against Kemble could set a significant precedent.

Cabot also sued Kemble's attorneys and the law firms where they work for representing Kemble in his earlier lawsuit against Cabot, which Kemble withdrew a few months after his cancer diagnosis (Kemble's attorneys have cited unspecified “new information” in explaining the decision to drop the case). Kemble's supporters say they fear that by including Kemble's attorneys in the lawsuit, Cabot is trying to make it harder for those harmed by powerful companies to find representation.

On December 21, 2017, Susquehanna County Judge Jason J. Legg allowed Cabot's claims against the attorneys to go forward, while admonishing Cabot for breaking Pennsylvania's Rules of Civil Procedure by claiming $5 million in damages, even though the rules forbade Cabot to name a specific figure higher than $50,000 in their complaint. The judge noted that the claiming damages of $5 million “may have been designed to attract media attention” and “likely” served no legitimate legal purpose.

To Kemble, the lesson is clear. “This is just a way to shut the people up of the county and of the state, and I just don’t think it’s right,” Kemble said, according to NPR's State Impact. “We the people have the right to talk.”

Stop Citing Working Paper, Gas Supplier Demands

In a December 11, 2017 letter, natural gas supplier Eversource Energy demanded that environmental advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) stop citing a study that found evidence that Eversource and another utility legally manipulated natural gas pipeline markets in ways that caused astronomical gas price spikes during cold snaps from mid-2013 to mid-2016.

That analysis found that Eversource and Avangrid booked pipeline capacity and then left it unused, driving down New England's natural gas supplies while demand was high, costing New England's power customers over $3.6 billion. This working paper, prepared by a group of researchers including an EDF economist, emphasized that researchers hadn't found that anything the company's did was illegal, but suggested that the laws might need reform.

Those price spikes have been heavily touted by pipeline builders, who say they prove that New England needs to build more pipelines to carry fracked natural gas to the northern states in winter. The new study calls into question whether gas shortages were caused by a lack of pipelines or a failure to fully use the ones already built.

“Limited pipeline capacity is indeed partly responsible for these extreme prices,” the researchers wrote. “But we also find strong evidence that two firms that held significant shares of the contracts to flow gas on the Algonquin Gas Transmission Pipeline — one of the two major pipelines serving New England — regularly restricted capacity to the region by scheduling deliveries without actually flowing gas.”

The cease and desist letter warns EDF that Eversource could sue the environmental group if it continues to cite claims the company describes as “unsupported by fact.”

EDF told DeSmog that the study has been presented for peer review, the method the scientific and academic communities use to ensure research is rigorous. “The Working Paper is going through the process for academic publication in a peer-review journal,” EDF spokesperson Jon Coifman told DeSmog. “Versions have been presented at several academic conferences and workshops.”

Cease and desist letters are often sought in defamation cases, which allow people and companies to sue when someone harms their reputation by deliberately spreading false factual claims — which means it's unusual to see a cease and desist letter sent over scientific analysis.

The study was authored by Levi Marks, PhD candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Charles Mason, Chair in Petroleum and Natural Gas Economics at the University of Wyoming, along with EDF researcher Kristina Mohlin, and Matthew Zaragoza-Watkins, Assistant Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt.

In November, Eversource and Avangrid were hit with a class action lawsuit over the same general allegations made in the study. The class action argues that the companies violated consumer protection and anti-trust laws, and unjustly enriched themselves by driving up power prices by 20 percent.

EDF has rebuffed the cease and desist demand. “We stand by the analysis and reject this obvious attempt to intimidate and chill legitimate public inquiry,” Coifman told UtilityDive shortly after receiving Eversource's letter.

Suing the Grassroots

In August, Dakota Access pipeline builder Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) filed a major lawsuit alleging racketeering and conspiracy by the grassroots environmental movement Earth First!, along with environmental groups Greenpeace and Banktrack.

The lawsuit accuses the non-profits of seeking to profit through environmental activism. “Maximizing donations, not saving the environment, is Greenpeace's true objective,” ETP's complaint alleges, while accusing pipeline opponents of violating anti-racketeering laws (meant to protect against mafia-style organized crime) and characterizing emails and tweets sent by Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) critics as wire fraud.

The lawsuit claims that ETP suffered nearly a billion dollars in damages and seeks to legally bar defendants from engaging in political protests. But civil rights advocates have taken issue with the coporation's approach.

“Defendants employed time-honored, lawful means to advance their views, protected by core constitutional rights of free speech and association,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief objecting to ETP's claims of racketeering, defamation, and conspiracy. “Under ETP’s theories, ordinary political speech that runs counter to a corporation’s business interests could expose the speaker to enormous, unwarranted liability.”

In December, attorneys for Earth First Journal, a publication whose name echoes the name of the activist group Earth First!, arrived in federal court to argue that Earth First! is a social movement based on a shared set of ideas, and not a legal entity like a corporation, and therefore isn't a thing that you can sue.

Earth First!, the journal's attorney said, lacks the sorts of characteristics you'd find at something like a corporation, like a leadership structure, employees, or even members.

Even if the oil industry's 2017 lawsuits don't make it very far, the specter of defending multi-million dollar legal claims could make non-profits and social movements nervous about publicly criticizing powerful corporations.

And that, opponents say, is exactly the point.

“Defending major lawsuits like these against deep-pocketed corporations is extremely expensive, time consuming, and stressful, particularly for cash strapped non-profits,” ACLU staff attorney Brian Hauss wrote in a December 6, 2017 postabout ETP's 231-page lawsuit. “If the courts have any sense, this case won’t get to trial. But ETP doesn’t need to win in court to do major damage.”

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The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act was introduced in the Senate this year, and is our best chance in a generation to solve this problem. But some are supporting provisions that would make us less safe from dangerous chemicals.

These provisions would allow new chemicals on the market without meeting a basic safety threshold, let companies continue to make trade secret claims to hide health information, and—most shockingly—create a virtually unlimited opportunity for the chemical industry to decide which chemicals get reviewed by EPA.

Tell the Senate: It's not reform if the chemicals industry gets to set the agenda and pull the strings.

If that happens, EPA could spend virtually all of its effort and resources evaluating chemicals that industry requests be evaluated, rather than those EPA identifies as the real risks. That means industry can tie up all the EPA's time with insignificant chemical reviews, while the real dangers continue to lurk in our homes, schools, and workplaces.

In contrast, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act fixes the biggest problems with our current law. It requires, for the first time, safety reviews for all new and existing chemicals. It explicitly requires protection of our most vulnerable populations, like pregnant women and children, and it makes more information available by limiting companies' ability to hide chemical safety data. And it places strict limits on industry-requested chemical reviews.  7/15

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?  Environmental Defense Fund is backing Republican Lindsey Graham, who supports the Keystone pipeline:

edf vol pgm http://grist.org/news/environmentalists-and-gas-companies-sing-kumbaya-create-voluntary-fracking-standards/

It all started with California's landmark bipartisan climate bill, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006—better known as AB32—which EDF co-sponsored, has defended in court and in public debate. The law authorized the state to establish a cap-and-trade carbon market with a declining emissions cap, reaching 1990 emissions levels by 2020.

In 2013, California launched North America's first economy-wide cap-and-trade program—currently covering 350 of the state's largest greenhouse gas polluters. The Golden State has also set rigorous standards for cleaner cars, renewable energy and low-carbon fuels, sparking innovations in the way utilities generate electricity, automakers design cars and refineries make fuel.

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pooley; 

Krupp EDF

founded by sci, but used litigation (sue the bastards0 other groups like SC also set up legal shops

Graff hired Roe (gr gpa founded what became pg&E) 60  '79 won suit vs pg&e 9used new PC), cancelled coal plant

Dudek, Goffman

Gramsci: pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will = revo 78

Only Jim Rogers went for acid rain PSI energy, big success, cheaper than predicted , b1 upped goal p 80

EDF ctr newt on weaken esa

...

24  keohanne at EDF did meta econ analyis found that cap and trade would slow down economy by 3 mos in 2030 208

edf's goldmark said they bs us for 10 years on sci, now trying to do the same on cost and we don't have 10 yrs to waste

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EDF Partners with Synagro, The World's Leader in Dumping Sewage Sludge on Farms and Gardens

It is interesting to contrast the NRDC position on :{sewage sludge:(style="background-color:#fff200;"):}: with that of the :{Environmental Defense Fund:(style="background-color:#fff200;"):}:. EDF creates formal corporate partnerships between itself and major corporations, such as the Carlyle Group with which it partnered in March, 2010. ^[9]^ The Carlyle Group, a private investment corporation, ownsSynagro, the world's largest company producing sewage sludge "compost" and "fertilizer," often called "biosolids," that is dumped on farms and gardens.

According to its own guidelines ^[10], EDF does not accept direct funding from corporations that are engaged "in any significant activities that are in direct conflict with EDF’s environmental protection objectives or activities." This is misleading, since EDF does aggressively seek funding from employees, board members and investors in such corporations, including its formal corporate partners such as Carlyle Group. And EDF also considers on a case by case basis donations from foundations set up by such corporations.

It would seem that by partnering with Synagro EDF is in fact endorsing the practices of Synagro in dumping sludge on farms and gardens, and in misleading millions of people by selling its sewage sludge products as "compost" and "natural organic fertilizer."

Such partnerships are extremely lucrative for EDF since it aggressively fundraises among the individuals on the Boards of Directors, in management, and who are investors in its partners. Meanwhile, the corporate partner such as Carlyle Group can greenwash itself by pointing to its partnership with one of the world's best funded Big Green environmental groups.

In the 1970s and 1980s EDF and other major environmental groups including Natural Resources Defense Council worked closely with the sewage industry and endorsed moves by the Environmental Protection Agency to rename toxic sewage sludge as "biosolids" and dump the waste onto farmland. Until May, 2011, when EDF requested it be removed, the following quote appeared on a sludge industry website showing endorsement of this practice.

"EDF and NRDC have been steadfast proponents of reusing biosolids of appropriate quality as the best biosolids management alternative. Biosolids can be a valuable natural resource."FRED KRUP, Executive Director - JOHN ADAMS Executive DirectorEnvironmental Defense Fund - Natural Resources Defense Fund"^[11]

EDF's Sean Crowley had the quote taken down, and he points out that there is no date or citation for the quote, which likely came from a consent decree among major environmental groups and the sewage sludge industry. While it is partnered with the world's largest sewage sludge company, Synagro of Carlyle Group, Crowley claims that EDF has no position what so ever on the practice of using agricultural farms and gardens as waste dumps for sewage sludge.

NRDC, on the other hand, became a critic of sludge dumping in 2002 and 2003, based on the dioxin contaminants in sewage sludge.