The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may soon have to defend its adherence to climate science in court, if the Ohio-based coal company Murray Energy Corp. follows through on a threat to sue the agency. Company spokesperson Gary Broadbent has confirmed that the company intends to file at least two lawsuits “challenging the Obama administration’s War on Coal” in an email to the financial news group SNL.
Murray Energy Corp. already has one outstanding lawsuit against the EPA regarding its enforcement of the Clean Air Act. That’s in keeping with typically combative style of company founder Robert Murray, a prominent support of Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and an outspoken conservative. In an interview published on May 30, Murray previewed the upcoming lawsuits by saying he intended to take action against the EPA for “not telling the truth about global warming.”
“They are not telling hardly any truth about the science. The earth has actually cooled over the last 17 years, so under the Data Quality Act, they’ve actually been lying about so-called global warming,” he said. “This lawsuit will force them to not just take data from the environmentalists and publish it, as they have been doing, but to review that data and make sure it’s accurate.”
Murray made headlines during the 2012 election after he forced employees of his company to attend a Romney rally without pay. Shortly after the election he laid off 156 workers, saying he had been forced to do so by the voters’ decision to reject “capitalism, economic responsibility, and personal acceptance.” The company later began quietly rehiring.
Ned Resnikoff is an urban policy analyst, researcher, writer, and editor. His byline has appeared in a variety of publications, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Dissent, and The Nation. He writes the newsletter Public Comment, which can be found at publiccomment.blog. Recommended
