Video of litigation pitch adds to evidence that lawsuits seek dough to pay for pols’ pet projects
CLW readers will remember the admission — reflected in two independent sets of notes taken at a meeting at the Rockefeller family mansion at Pocantico — that governmental “climate” litigation is not actually about “combatting climate change” but is in fact about grabbing a “sustainable funding stream” for government executives upset over legislators refusing raise taxes or spend enough to satisfy the executives’ spending ambitions.
Recently, a video obtained via public records releases from a New Jersey municipality showed climate industry principals suggesting ways to spend the loot in the event of a settlement in the climate cases being jointly orchestrated throughout the country, which demand billions to satisfy purported damages from man-made climate change.
These billions are to be paid, one cannot help noticing, for the sin of producing and marketing something that the current President of the United States repeatedly implores producers to generate and sell more of and spend billions more on infrastructure to produce, “for at least another decade.″
Odd, yes, and a comment likely not appreciated among a crowd that is also pleading for the same President to sic his Department of Justice on their targets as a nice pincer move, as he promised he would (wouldn’t that now be awkward). But the climate plaintiff’s bar is proud of being “exceptionally creative and dedicated“.
The evidence continues to mount that the money is in fact to fund the litany of “green new deal”-style programs legislators won’t, like EV charging stations. As CLW wrote here:
Also notable is the chatter ca. 18:30 about the money they hope that lawsuits would bring in, how the tobacco lawsuits brought in (chuckles) quite hefty settlements, and how such lawsuits can fund “green economy” things politicians want.
“Another Window Into the Climate Litigation World,” CLW, 2/8/23
That discussion apparently got Energy Policy Advocates interested in the referenced coordination, and EPA has now shared with CLW some emails, between a climate-plaintiff recruiter and another NJ elected official, reaffirming that the same folks behind the lawsuits are also heavy promoters of the green schemes they dangle before potential plaintiffs as something a litigation payout could finance.
That’s an interesting point: these lawsuits — out of which the plaintiffs have promised many millions of dollars to be taken from purported taxpayer damages to a law firm that, public records state, is already being paid millions of dollars to file these lawsuits — are intended, with at least some of the money that’s left after that, to fund politicians’ and bureaucrats’ wish lists of green baubles and doodads.
While one obvious question involves these groups’ apparent, actual priority being finding various ‘sustainable funding streams’ to spend on such projects, this also raises an unavoidable question of which position is reality? Is it that these claimed damages are real and the money demanded is to pay for them? Or, are the parties being straight with each other when they correspond about wish-list items on which they might spend any litigation windfall?