WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - A report that climate activist Elizabeth Klein has taken a high-level position with the Department of the Interior after the Biden Administration withdrew her nomination as deputy secretary is “contrary to the spirit” of an agreement that Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, and others made with the administration, according to Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance.
“To take someone who couldn’t win a Senate nomination and put her in a position with no Senate oversight is a slap in the face to Senator Murkowski,” Sgamma told Legal Newsline.
Klein’s appointment as senior counselor to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland was mentioned in a Law360 article about the Biden administration’s naming Tommy Beaudreau, with Latham & Watkins LLP, as the agency’s deputy secretary.
“Beaudreau is Biden's pick to serve as Interior Secretary Deb Haaland's deputy after the White House pulled the nomination of Elizabeth Klein, a former DOI staffer during the Clinton and Obama administrations, amid opposition from several key U.S. senators,” the article said. “However, Klein will still have a DOI role — she was appointed to serve as senior counselor to Haaland on Monday.”
Among other offenses against the energy industry, Klein ran the program at the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center (SEEIC) at New York University’s School of Law. The SEEIC is a Michael Bloomberg-funded project that placed climate activists, operating under the titles of special assistant attorneys general, in the offices of many blue state attorneys general.
The Bloomberg-funded lawyers have assisted in climate change lawsuits that some states have brought against BP, Citgo and Chevron, and more than 20 other fossil fuel companies alleging they are responsible for damage caused by climate change – suits, some defense lawyers say, rely more on PR campaigns than sound legal arguments.
Sgamma said that the program would be akin to the oil, gas and energy industry placing lawyers in the offices of state environmental protection offices.
“There would be an immediate and loud outcry,” she said, “and there should be. But no one in the media is objecting to the environmental lobby placing activists in AG offices. It’s a complete double standard.”
“There’s this sense that big corporations are bad,” she continued, “but what people don’t realize is that the environmental lobby is itself a big corporation. It raises hundreds of millions of dollars by scaring people.”