As activists, blue states, and blue cities file climate change lawsuits by the hundreds, the reality is that those cases are only the tip of an iceberg.
This litigation is only the visible part of a well-financed effort to re-shape the world, especially the United States, through unelected judges and bureaucrats.
The goal of an extreme makeover is backed by a global network of the rich and powerful.
Other nations know that if America is hobbled by litigation and red tape, our rival nations will benefit.
A multitude of coordinated lawsuits filed by blue states and cities are underway against U.S. energy producers, asking the courts to impose edicts that bypass the political process.
These state and local governments serve as pawns for well-funded activist groups that provide financing and lawyers.
State attorneys-general and other local officials are the public face but behind the scenes are well-funded advocacy groups that provide much of the work, backed by dark money that sometimes come from countries that hope to benefit from hobbling America's energy producers.
This summer, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, chaired a hearing which focused on uncovering the role played by China in financing these climate lawsuits.
China's actions are difficult to monitor because its military, businesses, and government are intertwined with the Chinese Communist Party.
Such foreign money disappears into a tangled maze; it flows through multiple special interest groups that not only pay for litigation, but also organize “education” sessions for judges, politicians and foundations.
Critics claim China’s role is unproven because the money trail is so snarled and knotted. But according to Cruz, "The judiciary itself is being quietly captured and brainwashed, as left-wing nonprofits host closed-door trainings that indoctrinate judges to adopt the ideological goals of the climate lawfare machine."
One group that quietly tutors judges is the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP), a private group created by activists of the Environmental Law Institute.
Sitting judges are groomed and indoctrinated to be friendly toward climate change lawsuits; those closed-door sessions are bankrolled by a network of rich groups on the left.
Testimony to senators at the Cruz-led hearing warned of this effort to sway judges behind the scenes and out of the public eye, while those meetings are mislabeled as mere "education" rather than advocacy.
Recent court filings reveal how these private sessions overlap with the litigation itself.
In Oregon’s Multnomah County v. ExxonMobil, for example, it was revealed that lead attorney Roger Worthington failed to disclose his personal role in two Nature studies later cited as independent science.
Both were used to back the county’s $51 billion lawsuit over a 2021 heatwave.
Plaintiffs in the case said this concealment "harms the integrity of the judicial process" and highlights possible coordination between plaintiffs’ lawyers and the Environmental Law Institute, accused of quietly shaping climate litigation narratives behind the scenes.
The episode shows how climate lawfare manufactures its own "science."
When the same lawyers and advocacy networks that fund lawsuits also influence the research and judicial materials used to justify them, advocacy masquerades as objectivity As American Energy Institute CEO Jason Isaac told Congress, "If the same lawyers suing energy companies are shaping the studies and educating the judges, that is not justice, it is manipulation."
Such studies are indoctrination, not education.
Foreign money helps to fund those efforts.
A study by conservative group State Armor concludes, "To secure U.S. dependence, the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] has been co-opting the progressive American climate change lobby to push a transition from fossil fuels and other critical inputs on which the United States (or the broader West) is self-reliant onto 'green' technologies controlled by China."
That report focuses on a non-profit called Energy Foundation China, which itself receives over $84 million annually from other non-profits.
Testimony at Cruz' hearing also documented that private groups which bankroll "climate lawfare" can tap into annual revenue of $497 million (2023 numbers filed with the IRS) and an even-larger amount of total wealth.
Add to that our taxpayer money that American liberals have poured into" emissions-free" energy, money gifted by government to activist groups.
The largest chunk was President Biden’s $100-billion in green energy grants and $90-billion in sweetheart loans during the weeks after 2024’s Election Day and before Inauguration Day. Recipients re-routed many of these dollars into financing the explosion of climate lawsuits.
These multiple pots of money (Chinese as well as American) are funding many of the 1,100 climate lawsuits currently monitored by Columbia Law School.
These cases are ongoing in 55 countries but most are within the United States. These climate lawsuits have increased four-fold since 2013.
Advocates who want to bend our laws don't care if they lose most of the cases; they can afford it.
It's jackpot justice because if they only win one case, they can get judges to impose burdens on the entire country.
Just defending these lawsuits is astronomically expensive for defendants, and plaintiffs usually escape having to pay the other side’s legal expenses.
Once the public understands who is filing the lawsuits, who is training the judges, and who is funding it all, then voters should pressure lawmakers to fix the legal system that climate advocates are abusing.
That means the climate most needing change is our political climate.
Ernest Istook is a former U.S. Congressman representing the state of Oklahoma.
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