This morning, Professor Laurence Tribe, a Constitutional law professor at Harvard University, will be testifying before a U.S. House’s Energy and Commerce subcommittee, and we fully expect that he will take aim at one of the most significant policies this country has ever undertaken to curb climate-disrupting carbon pollution -- the Clean Power Plan. Big polluters and their allies love to point to Tribe’s attacks on the EPA’s broadly popular policies, and for good reason: he’s on their payroll.
While using the Harvard name and reputation, there’s one aspect of Tribe’s portfolio that’s lesser-known: he’s done the dirty work for oil and coal companies that poison our air, our water, and our climate. Tribe’s disclosure form for Harvard Law lists clients ranging from the American Petroleum Institute to the Petroleum Marketing Association of America to the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound -- an organization with an innocuous enough name that was actually bankrolled by none other Bill Koch.
And, of course, there’s one of his latest clients: Peabody Energy, the nation’s largest coal company. Tribe is on board with Peabody as part of their efforts to attack the Clean Power Plan. He’s submitted comments to the EPA attacking the plan alongside Peabody, and now he’s set to do the same in front of a friendly audience in the Republican-held U.S. House.
Other legal scholars have already picked apart Tribe and Peabody’s arguments.
Lisa Heinzerling, a Professor of Natural Resources Law at Georgetown University, told ThinkProgress that “Tribe and Peabody Energy do not raise any new points that are relevant from a legal perspective in this document.” In fact, Heinzerling notes that they are based more on colloquial persuasion toward political minds than in legal grounding, saying arguments “are not made in a way that seems seriously pitched to legal actors. They seem much more like a kind of political declaration for an argument pitched to politicians.”
Richard Revesz, dean emeritus and Lawrence King Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, went even further, saying Tribe’s arguments are “flatly wrong.” Revesz further contested Tribe’s assertion that the Clean Power Plan was a “drastic change” from past Presidential action, noting that “For the past quarter of a century, each president, Democratic and Republican, has taken measures to regulate the emissions of existing power plants because they are the nation's largest sources of many harmful air pollutants.”
Indeed, despite Tribe’s lengthy credentials and powerful alliances, his earlier fights on behalf of big polluting industries haven’t been successful. Tribe fought against a foundational piece of the Clean Air Act, arguing against the National Ambient Air Quality Standards on behalf of the American Trucking Association, and lost in a unanimous Supreme Court ruling. He also helped develop an argument on behalf of General Electric that claimed the federal Superfund law (CERCLA) was unconstitutional. But, he came up short twice.
It’s all part of a disturbing trend of so-called experts pushing polluter propaganda to the public while collecting checks from the oil, gas, and coal industry. That’s why its important to remember that when Tribe testifies before Congress, we’ll be hearing what the coal industry wants us to think. Other scholars and the public have a different opinion entirely. In fact, millions of Americans have submitted comments in support of the Clean Power Plan. Poll after poll shows strong majorities support it and want it enacted. Now, its time we turn down the polluter propaganda and turn up the pressure to make sure distractions don’t derail this critically important effort to protect our families and our communities.