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Leonardo DiCaprio’s non-profit basis awarded grants to a dismal cash team which, in flip, funneled cash to a regulation company spearheading local weather nuisance complaints national, in line with emails reviewed by means of Fox News Digital.
Correspondence between Dan Emmett, a significant philanthropist, and Ann Carlson — a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) local weather professor — in 2017 printed that the 2 labored with regulation company Sher Edling to lift cash for its efforts to sue oil corporations over alleged local weather alternate deception on behalf of state and native governments, in line with the emails got by means of watchdog team Government Accountability & Oversight (GAO) and shared with Fox News Digital.
In their emails, Emmett and Carlson talk about how Chuck Savitt, Sher Edling’s director of strategic shopper relationships, had sought Emmett’s make stronger and had already won make stronger from Terry Tamminen in his function because the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation’s CEO, a identify he held between 2016 and 2019. When the emails have been exchanged, Carlson, who’s now a senior Biden management reliable, served as co-director of the UCLA Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment, the advisory board which Emmett nonetheless chairs.
“Chuck Savitt who is heading this new organization behind the lawsuits has been seeking our support,” Emmett wrote to Carlson on July 22, 2017. “Terry Tamminen in his new role with the DiCaprio Foundation has been a key supporter.”
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Emmett mentions to Carlson that the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation has been a “key supporter” of Sher Edling’s litigation.
(Government Accountability & Oversight)
Emmett additionally forwarded a message Savitt despatched him 3 days previous on July 19, 2022 inquiring for his make stronger, in line with the information. Savitt discussed in that e-mail that Sher Edling’s first complaints have been filed with the make stronger of the Collective Action Fund for Accountability, Resilience and Adaptation, a fund controlled on the time by means of darkish cash team 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 instructed 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.”
Savitt additionally presented to arrange a gathering between Emmett and Vic Sher, a spouse at Sher Edling.
The electronic mail came about two months earlier than the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation publicly introduced it will give a contribution $20 million in grants to quite a lot of local weather and conservation reasons. The team’s announcement, which has since been deleted however stays archived, integrated a grant to the RLF “to support precedent-setting legal actions to hold major corporations in the fossil fuel industry liable,” carefully mirroring Savitt’s language.
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“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 mentioned on the time.
Tamminen added that the group believed it wanted “to do as much as we can now, before it is too late.” The announcement did not point out Sher Edling.
Vic Sher, a spouse at regulation company Sher Edling, speaks concerning the local weather litigation he’s fascinated with all over a digital panel in December. (American Museum of Tort Law/YouTube)
(American Museum of Tort Law/YouTube)
In February 2018, months after the preliminary e-mail alternate, Emmett instructed Carlson that she may point out to different potential donors that he and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation have been now “serious supporters” of Sher Edling’s ongoing litigation. The advice got here after Carlson requested whether or not she will have to ask New York philanthropist Andy Sabin to make stronger the trouble.
“You can tell him Terry’s organization and I are both serious supporters, that you are an advisor, that the science is there, that it could do more for the environment than just about anything going on if it succeeds,” Emmett mentioned within the e-mail Carlson.
In addition to the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation and the Emmett Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and JPB Foundation have contributed to the Collective Action Fund since 2017.
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Sher Edling’s web page states that the company is in particular devoted to representing “states, cities, public agencies, and businesses in high-impact, high-value environmental cases.” Since its preliminary circumstances in July 2017 — filed on behalf of a town and two counties in California — Sher Edling has sued primary oil corporations on behalf of Delaware, Minnesota, Rhode Island, New York City, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Baltimore, Honolulu and a number of other native governments around the nation, alleging the firms have deceived the general public about local weather alternate.
Most of the circumstances are ongoing with two, involving San Francisco and Oakland, Calfornia, on attraction earlier than a federal panel.
Dan Emmett emails Ann Carlson, announcing she will be able to point out to potential donors that he and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, on the time led by means of CEO Terry Tamminen, are “serious supporters” of Sher Edling’s litigation.
(Government Accountability & Oversight)
“Obviously, the donors created — including DiCaprio — several purported arms’ lengths,” Chris Horner, a legal professional who represented GAO within the case involving the emails, instructed Fox News Digital in an interview.
“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.
Overall, the RLF contributed greater than $5.2 million to Sher Edling between 2017 and 2020, in line with the crowd’s tax filings all over that duration. The group does not expose its donors and declined to verify who it up to now won cash from to fund Sher Edling’s litigation.
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“From 2017 to 2020, Sher Edling received grants from RLF to pursue charitable activities to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for the accuracy of information they had disseminated to consumers and the public about the role their products played in causing climate change,” an RLF spokesperson Mark Kleinman instructed Fox News Digital in an e-mail.
“RLF receives support from many funding entities, and its board of directors and staff make all decisions as to where the funding goes,” the spokesperson persisted.
Sher Edling declined to remark.
Leonardo DiCaprio is pictured all over a movie premiere on July 22, 2019. (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Experts have up to now raised considerations in regards to the supply of Sher Edling’s investment for its local weather litigation.
Michael Krauss, a regulation professor emeritus at George Mason University, famous in a 2020 Forbes article the association during which Sher Edling receives a payout from localities it represents if its circumstances are a hit whilst, on the identical time, it receives investment from tax-exempt teams, thereby taking away some possibility concerned with taking up such circumstances.
“Can a non-profit funnel donations to a for-profit law firm that has already determined a different form of compensation?” Kraus wrote. “May a law firm, which could be fabulously enriched on a contingent basis, ethically accept funding that is paid whether or not the client prevails?”
“If legislation through litigation is bad, what to make of legislation through litigation subsidized by taxpayers through charitable donations? We don’t have all the answers to these questions yet,” he persisted. “I think we deserve them.”
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Emmett, Tamminen, Sabin and the Earth Alliance, a company that subsumed the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation in 2019, did not reply to requests for remark.
