Activist groups at the heart of the climate litigation campaign have launched a new video featuring Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison promoting the climate lawsuit he filed this summer. The video was sponsored and created by the YEARS Project and Fossil Free Media and is being touted online by the ExxonKnews newsletter, demonstrating that the litigation campaign remains highly coordinated and politically motivated.

In the video, Ellison said he has high hopes that the Minnesota lawsuit filed against ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute will “set a precedent for the entire nation” and he regurgitated (frequently-debunked) “Exxon Knew” talking points about how oil companies “needed to stop lying to us” about what they knew when about the science of climate change.

Activist Groups Behind Video Are Players in Climate Litigation Campaign

The video shows that there continues to be ongoing coordination between Ellison’s government-funded office and the major environmental groups that are driving the climate litigation campaign. The slick production job came courtesy of Fossil Free Media and the YEARS Project, both of which are targeting energy companies over climate change. For example, Fossil Free Media is a nonprofit communications group founded earlier this year by 350.org co-founder Jamie Henn to advocate against fossil fuel development. 350.org has been a longtime supporter of these climate lawsuits. Henn, and fellow 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben, were present at a 2016 activist meeting that discussed strategies to “delegitimize” ExxonMobil.

Meanwhile, the YEARS Project, another nonprofit focused on multimedia production about climate change, is supported by many of the same foundations funding the climate litigation campaign, including the Tides Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Wallace Global Fund. Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmental activist and “Exxon Knew” promoter, is even listed as one of the group’s co-producers.

That’s not all. After it was released, the video was promoted by the EXXONKNEWS  newsletter, which launched a special issue to urge its readers to share the video. This newsletter, published several times week to promote climate lawsuits and other anti-energy activism, is a project of the Center for Climate Integrity – a key activist group supporting the climate litigation campaign and whose leaders persuaded Ellison to file the lawsuit.

This means that Ellison, a democratically elected government official paid by Minnesota taxpayers, outsourced communications about a government legal action to activist groups with direct political and financial interests in the outcome of the lawsuit this video promotes.

Ellison’s History of Coordination With Activists

This isn’t the first time that Ellison and environmental groups have coordinated around the Minnesota case. During a webinar hosted by activists in July to discuss the lawsuit, Fresh Energy, a Minnesota environmental group, admitted that CCI initially approached them with the idea of the attorney general’s office filing a climate change lawsuit and persuaded them to take it Ellison:

“[CCI] brought this concept to Fresh Energy in the fall of 2018, and Fresh Energy helped put this idea in front of Attorney General Keith Ellison shortly after he was sworn in,” said Fresh Energy Executive Director Michael Noble.

CCI has been among the biggest players of climate lawsuits filed in 2020 including those introduced by the cities of Hoboken, N.J. and Charleston, S.C. CCI’s parent organization, the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, is even bankrolling Hoboken’s case.

The coordination between activists and the attorney general’s office doesn’t stop there either. While working on the lawsuit, Ellison’s office had the help of two legal fellows, Leigh Currie and Peter Surdo, from the State Energy & Environment Impact Center (SEEIC) at the New York University School of Law.

The SEEIC was started in 2017 from a $6 million grant from another billionaire activist Michael Bloomberg. The program places midcareer attorneys in state attorneys general offices to support climate litigation and other environmental legal actions while paying for the salaries of these fellows to carry out government work.

Both Currie’s and Surdo’s names are listed as counsel on the Minnesota complaint, and Ellison praised their “excellent, excellent work” at a press conference, and during that July webinar, Noble said that the two legal fellows “have basically been working on this full-time over the last few months.” Ellison’s application to the SEEIC even mentioned his desire to file a climate lawsuit.

Conclusion

The Minnesota climate lawsuit and the video featuring Ellison appears to be yet another textbook example of anti-energy activists working hand-in-glove with government officials. This video, produced and promoted by leading figures in the climate litigation campaign, only raises more questions about who the driving force behind this lawsuit is actually.