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More Than Two Years Later, Politically-Motivated Investigation Should Be A Rallying Cry for Manufacturers

Just last week, the public heard from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s team at a federal court hearing regarding his office’s investigation targeted at energy manufacturers. The result? After two years, three million pages of documents, and a yet-to-be-tallied cost to New York state taxpayers, Schneiderman has brought zero legal charges. That’s right. It is now more than two years since Schneiderman officially launched his politically-motivated investigation, intent on finding evidence that energy manufacturers withheld important information about carbon emissions, with no results to show. The total cost of Schneiderman’s crusade has yet to be tallied.

More than the cost, though, there is something else that has yet to be fully disclosed to the public: the web of collaboration between Schneiderman and anti-manufacturing advocates. Schneiderman’s politically-motivated legal action is part of a larger, nationwide, coordinated campaign featuring leading figures in the environmental activist movement, professors like Harvard’s Naomi Oreskes, 350.org’s Bill McKibben, trial attorney Matthew Pawa and biased media members glad to tell a story falsely pitting manufacturers against the environment. The more light one shines on Schneiderman’s investigation, the more it becomes apparent that a political agenda is what he is really pursuing.

The fruitlessness of Schneiderman’s investigation is not surprising, but energy manufacturers are not letting down their guard. And manufacturers in other sectors should not either. The fight is far from over.