Peabody Is Paying Laurence Tribe to Fight Climate Plan

[wsj-responsive-image P="//art.wsj.net/api/photos/37799296/smartcrop?height=499&width=749" J="//art.wsj.net/api/photos/37799296/smartcrop?height=639&width=959" M="//art.wsj.net/api/photos/37799296/smartcrop?height=853&width=1280" caption="A dragline excavator mines coal in this aerial photograph taken above the Peabody Energy Somerville Central strip mine in Oakland City, Ind. The company is paying Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe at least $435,000 to lead its opposition to the Obama administration’s signature climate-change initiative." credit="Bloomberg News" placement="Inline" suppressEnlarge="false" ]

Peabody Energy Corp., the nation’s largest coal company, is paying at least $435,000 to Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe to lead its opposition to the Obama administration’s signature climate change initiative.

Peabody, which filed for bankruptcy in April, hired Mr. Tribe in 2014 to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, which seeks to cut U.S. power-plant carbon emissions, as unconstitutional.

“I’m not for sale—to the highest bidder or to anyone else,” Mr. Tribe wrote Friday in an email to The Wall Street Journal. “Both before and after I began working for Peabody, I’ve turned down plenty of much more lucrative offers because the causes I was asked to represent weren’t ones I believed in.”

Mr. Tribe, arguably the nation’s most prominent constitutional law professor, is a liberal advocate who once taught President Barack Obama at Harvard. His legal objections to the administration’s plan to limit power plant emissions are complicated, but in essence, they boil down to executive overreach. In March, Mr. Tribe testified before Congress and likened the administration’s environmental plan to a power grab.

“EPA is attempting an unconstitutional trifecta: usurping the prerogatives of the states, Congress and the federal courts all at once,” he said at the time. “Burning the Constitution should not become part of our national energy policy.”

Mr. Tribe’s work for Peabody has sparked media criticism that he’s a “traitor” and “sellout” as well as sparking criticism from two of his Harvard Law colleagues, Jody Freeman and Richard Lazarus. The two professors, both experts in environmental law, have called Mr. Tribe’s assertions that the Clean Power Plan is unconstitutional and “baseless” and said that if his name weren’t attached to these arguments, no one would take them seriously.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court issued a stay of the Clean Power Plan, casting a cloud over the administration’s climate-change legacy. Mr. Tribe said the notion that the court wouldn’t have done so but for his name and reputation is more insulting to the five justices who granted the stay than it is complimentary to him.

“That’s frankly ridiculous,” Mr. Tribe said Friday. “My name might get me in the door. But the arguments either stand or fall on their own.”

Peabody also donated $8,500 to a Washington, D.C.-based legal group known for filing lawsuits against climate scientists, according to recently filed bankruptcy-court papers.

Peabody made the gift in 2014 to the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, a nonprofit known for using Freedom of Information Act laws to unearth emails among climate scientists, environmentalists and regulators. The revelation about Mr. Tribe’s expected compensation from Peabody’s April’s chapter 11 filing through the end of the year also comes from a filing he made in Peabody’s bankruptcy case. It doesn’t list any amounts Peabody may have paid the lawyer before its bankruptcy. Mr. Tribe’s pay was first reported by Bloomberg News.

Peabody declined to comment about alliances with any specific organizations, but spokeswoman Beth Sutton said the company has a track record of supporting organizations that advocate sustainable mining, energy access and clean coal solutions.

“For instance, for more than two decades, Peabody has advocated the use of technology to lower greenhouse gas emissions, while also investing hundreds of millions of dollars in clean coal technologies,” she said.

Craig Richardson, E&E Legal’s executive director, said “E&E Legal provides information on how to defend economic liberty through the law. The funds received from Peabody were used to provide such information.”

High debt levels and low energy prices have pushed three of the top four American coal producers into bankruptcy. All three—Peabody, Arch Coal Inc. and Alpha Natural Resources Inc.—have revealed in bankruptcy-court filings that they have provided at least some fund to leading climate change skeptics.

Arch, the nation’s second-biggest coal miner, donated $10,000 to E&E before the coal company filed for bankruptcy protection in January. And Alpha Natural paid E&E senior legal fellow Chris Horner, author of “Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed,” $18,600 before it filed for chapter 11 last summer. Mr. Horner, a lawyer, has declined to discuss the work he performed for Alpha.

Write to Patrick Fitzgerald at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @PatFitzgerald23