GAO sees this LinkedIn post, which appears to be a failed letter to the editor, waving lots of hands to muddle and distract from Massachusetts’s unfolding energy crisis and defend that crisis’s principal author, the current Governor, former Attorney General and all-the-while climate-policy activist Maura Healey.
This jeremiad, ostensibly railing against points made in a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Chris Horner—a lawyer for GAO on many issues including several relating to said Commonwealth and its energy insanity—was posted by someone familiar to GAO for his starring role over the years in Massachusetts public record productions (explained here and in more detail at ClimateLitigationWatch).
These records are notable for what they show about Mr. Bradely M. Campbell and his organization the Conservation Law Foundation’s exceedingly close relationship with Ms. Healey in her hellbent pursuit of the “climate’/Net Zero agenda through legislation, regulation and litigation.
Given the public record, this gentleman really doth protest too much.
First, it is of course true that more hydrocarbon energy supply leads to lower electricity rates, and the continued insistence otherwise, particularly in Massachusetts as laid out in Mr. Horner’s piece, is increasingly bizarre. Regardless, rather than make the obvious point that more supply lowers prices, Horner’s op-ed made the specific point that claims by Team Healey that restricting natural gas supply will lower rates has proved wrong. So naturally the answer is for more of the same.
Yes, as linked to in Horner’s WSJ piece, Healey bragged about blocking new gas pipelines not just in 2022 but specifically in 2017 in seeking the blessing of lawyers from a Michael Bloomberg project to help her do more of the same.
In that 2017 application, she bragged about doing this thanks to a study that was paid for by a $300,000 Barr Foundation donation to her office.
The Barr Foundation is, to say the least, a generous supporter of CLF’s efforts (giving CLF $20,686,000 from 2016-2023).
As to the implication the CLF-Healey tandem didn’t target specific pipelines, in a particular lawsuit (cited by Healey to Bloomberg’s group, above), just the idea of ratepayer financed pipelines… the semantics particularly fail the laugh test.
And, yes, the AGO argued that no pipelines were needed—having sagely “determined that the region is unlikely to face electric reliability issues in the next 15 years…” Someone might check. In such situations, maybe semantics is the best argument. Still, the AG’s own dismount when pronouncing her “expert study” findings was, delightfully, “Also today, Attorney General Healey provided a copy of the study to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for its consideration as part of the federal review of the Kinder Morgan Northeast Energy Direct pipeline project.” Not opposing it… just saying!
CLF is long-time Healey farm team, having staffed her efforts up with CLF lawyers including Melissa Hoffer and Christopher Courchesne. Also MA AGO under Healey was extraordinarily close with the Barr Foundation’s darling CLF, so much so that, after when the original recruiter for AG “climate nuisance” lawsuits, Matt Pawa, wrote that he and Campbell/CLF were coordinating on that, the AGO requested that not bring Campbell to his presentation on targeting Exxon in a climate suit (Campbell/CLW was at the infamous “delegitimize” meeting at the Rockefeller Family Fund, with some other familiar names). The optics AGO sought to avoid likely pertain to the fact that Healey and CLF were also at the same time teaming up for simultaneous, different suits against the company.
The question informed readers might ask, then, is on whose behalf is this sock puppetry: Healey, the Barr Foundation, or both?