While Americans continue to suffer high gasoline, diesel fuel, and energy prices, thanks in large part to Joe Biden’s anti-fossil fuel policies, a well-known actor has been working behind the scenes to do what he can to make energy cost more.
According to Fox News, which cited emails, Leonardo DiCaprio has been funding a law firm at the forefront of so-called climate-related ‘nuisance’ lawsuits:
Correspondence between Dan Emmett, a major philanthropist, and Ann Carlson — a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) climate professor — in 2017 revealed that the two worked with law firm Sher Edling to raise money for its efforts to sue oil companies over alleged climate change deception on behalf of state and local governments, according to the emails obtained by watchdog group Government Accountability & Oversight (GAO) and shared with Fox News Digital.
In their emails, Emmett and Carlson discuss how Chuck Savitt, Sher Edling’s director of strategic client relationships, had sought Emmett’s support and had already received support from Terry Tamminen in his role as the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation’s CEO, a title he held between 2016 and 2019. When the emails were exchanged, Carlson, who is now a senior Biden administration official, served as co-director of the UCLA Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment, the advisory board which Emmett still chairs.
Emmett wrote to Carlson on July 22, 2017: “Chuck Savitt who is heading this new organization behind the lawsuits has been seeking our support. Terry Tamminen in his new role with the DiCaprio Foundation has been a key supporter.”
In addition, Emmett forwarded a message sent to him by Savitt three days before, on July 19, seeking his support, records seen by Fox News indicate. In that email, Savitt noted that Sher Edling’s first legal actions were filed with the support of the Collective Action Fund for Accountability, Resilience and Adaptation, a fund that, at the time, was being managed by dark money group Resources Legacy Fund (RLF).
“Wanted to let you know that we filed the first three lawsuits supported by the Collective Action Fund on Monday,” Savitt had told Emmett. “These precedent setting cases call on 37 of the world’s leading fossil fuel companies to take responsibility for the devastating damage sea level rise – caused by their greenhouse gas emissions – is having on coastal communities.”
In addition, Savitt made an offer to set up a meeting between Emmett and Vic Sher, who is a partner at Sher Edling.
“The email correspondence took place two months before the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation publicly announced it would contribute $20 million in grants to various climate and conservation causes,” Fox News reported.
“The group’s announcement, which has since been deleted but remains archived, included a grant to the RLF ‘to support precedent-setting legal actions to hold major corporations in the fossil fuel industry liable,’ closely mirroring Savitt’s language,” the report continued.
Understand that the objective here was to break the fossil fuel companies or make the cost of doing business so high that prices for fuel would have permanently skyrocketed — even as the filthy rich DiCaprio would still retain the wealth to vacation wherever he wanted using fuel-guzzling planes to get there and fuel-guzzling super-yachts to entertain himself.
“These grantees are active on the ground, protecting our oceans, forests and endangered species for future generations – and tackling the urgent, existential challenges of climate change,” DiCaprio said at the time.
Fox News added:
Since its initial cases in July 2017 — filed on behalf of a city and two counties in California — Sher Edling has sued major oil companies on behalf of Delaware, Minnesota, Rhode Island, New York City, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Baltimore, Honolulu and several local governments across the country, alleging the companies have deceived the public about climate change.
“Obviously, the donors created — including DiCaprio — several purported arms’ lengths,” Chris Horner, a lawyer who represented the Government Accountability Office in the case involving the emails, told Fox News.
“This model used a couple of pass-throughs, by which DiCaprio and, it appears, Dan Emmett and others could run things, including DiCaprio’s foundation and Resources Legacy Fund, and they’re not seen as financing the assault,” Horner added.
DiCaprio obviously doesn’t care whether average people he depends on to buy his films and keep him wealthy can afford to fuel their vehicles or power their homes.
