Seattle Seahawks owner finances lawsuit targeting coal leasing on federal lands

Mercer Island billionaire and Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen has jumped into the battle over the future of coal leasing on federal lands. A federal lawsuit financed by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, seeks to force the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to conduct a review of the effect of leasing coal on the global climate. “The leasing of coal from federal lands undermines President Obama’s climate policy goals,” Allen wrote in a column published in The Huffington Post. “We have no comprehensive understanding of air pollution and climate impact of the federal coal-leasing program because the Bureau of Land Management has failed to analyze the available data for more than three decades.” Allen wrote that climate change is due to “unprecedented amounts of carbon dioxide we are emitting through the combustion of fossil fuels,” and that he had seen the impacts in degraded coral reefs and retreating glaciers. The lawsuit was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., by the Western Organization of Resource Councils and Friends of the Earth, and the legal fight will be fully funded by Allen’s foundation for as long as it goes, according to Michael Meehan, a spokesman for Allen...more