Senate GOP scrutinizes China's role in climate lawsuits, which Dems call a 'conspiracy theory'

A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing examining the role of Chinese funding in climate litigation became a debate between Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who argued Chinese influence is undermining American energy, and Senate Democrats who want oil companies to pay billions of dollars for what they claim is a "catastrophe." 

“We're witnessing right now a systematic campaign against American energy. There is a coordinated assault by the radical left, backed and paid for by the Chinese Communist Party, to seize control of our courts, to weaponize litigation against us energy producers — all in order to undermine American energy dominance,” Cruz said in his opening statement. 

Cruz explained that foreign money tied to the Chinese Communist Party bankrolls climate advocacy groups, who file lawsuits against fossil fuel projects. Activist lawyers then flood courts with lawsuits designed to bankrupt energy producers, Cruz said, and activist groups providing training to judges involved in climate litigation “indoctrinate” those judges in favor of the plaintiffs in these cases. 

Climate Judiciary Project

Cruz was referring to the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP), which is a project of the Environmental Law Institute. The CJP has long been criticized for receiving funding from foundations that advocate for a transition away from fossil fuels and for providing biased information to judges who oversee climate litigation cases. Cruz said the same foundations funding the CJP are also funding the law firms that represent plaintiffs in these lawsuits. 

“This is like paying the players to play and paying the umpire to call the shots the way you want,” Cruz said. 

An oversight investigation, Cruz said, revealed that the CJP teaches judges that the consequences of policies that don’t restrict emissions would be catastrophic, and the project encourages judges to view climate litigation as a “unique opportunity for accountability.” 

Nick Collins, associate vice president of communications for the Environmental Law Institute, disputed Cruz’s characterization of the group. The CJP, Collins told Just the News, does not advise judges on how they should rule in any case, nor does it participate in litigation. It also does not provide support or coordinate with any parties in litigation. The project provides evidence-based continuing education to judges about climate science and how it overlaps with the law. 

“The Environmental Law Institute is an independent, nonpartisan organization that receives funding from a variety of sources, including energy companies and private philanthropies. Any money we accept is contingent on protecting this independence. No funder dictates our work,” Collins said. 

Strategic alliance

The whole climate litigation campaign, Cruz argued, is part of a “strategic alliance” between leftist billionaires, radical environmental groups, and the Chinese Communist Party. One of the primary vehicles for this alliance, he said, is the Energy Foundation China. Based on IRS filings, Cruz said the group has funneled upwards of $12 million to U.S. climate advocacy groups since 2020. 

“This money isn't going to tree-planting campaigns or to science fairs. It's flowing directly to aggressive litigation outfits like the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Rocky Mountain Institute and the World Resources Institute, organizations that routinely file lawsuits,” Cruz said. 

Cruz’s statements reflect the findings of a report by State Armor, a national-security watchdog group. The report argues that the CCP is co-opting the American progressive climate change lobby to advance a transition away from fossil fuels. The alternative technologies being pushed by this lobby, according to the report, create significant economic and geopolitical advantages by undermining U.S. energy dominance and leaving it dependent on Chinese supply chains for its energy production. 

“Policymakers must act. That’s why we issued this report and why the Senate Judiciary Committee will convene a hearing to examine these findings and begin oversight. Americans deserve answers. Our national security is at stake,” Michael Lucci, CEO of State Armor, told Just the News ahead of the hearing. 

Republican fever dreams

Democrats at the hearing claimed that Cruz was peddling a baseless “conspiracy theory” and that lawsuits against oil companies, which provide over 86% of the world’s energy, would hold them accountable for extensive destruction, death and spreading misinformation about climate change. While accusing the fossil fuel industry of lying about the impacts of carbon dioxide emissions, many of the statements Democrats made are not supported by scientific data. 

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., called the claims that climate litigation was connected to the Chinese Communist Party a “fossil fuel-funded fertile swamp of Republican fever dreams.” He argued that the real conspiracy was the fossil fuel industry, which “benefited from secret funding to wage war on the American consumer by making energy more expensive and dirtier, higher utility bills [and] worse pollution.” 

Whitehouse didn’t explain why oil companies sometimes abandoned this alleged scheme to make energy more expensive, as they apparently did in 2020 when prices collapsed. Oil prices also dropped precipitously in 2009 and 2016. 

Whitehouse also claimed that renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy because the fuel for wind and solar panels is “all free.” That is not quite correct: While it’s true there are no fuel costs for wind and solar, experts argue that due to the costs associated with the intermittency of energy from the wind and sun, the whole system costs make the energy sources the most expensive. This is why increased amounts of wind and solar on a nation’s grid correlate with higher energy costs. 

Climate change, Whitehouse claimed, is raising grocery prices, coffee, chocolate, sugar and orange juice as a result of floods, hurricanes, droughts and heat waves. He never addressed the fact that crop yields across multiple crops in multiple regions across the globe are seeing record high yields. While crop yields for oranges have seen a drop in the U.S. over the last decade, globally they are at record highs. The same is true for cocoa, coffee and sugar cane. 

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., claimed that the fossil fuel industry hates solar panels “like the Devil hates holy water.” Durbin didn’t explain why oil companies, many of which invest extensively in many different renewable energy projects, would hate their own investments so much.  

Ignoring the data in the name of science

The minority witness, David Arkush, director of the Climate Program for Public Citizen, also made a number of statements that aren’t supported by the data. Arkush said that fossil fuel use is “extremely harmful.” He claimed fossil fuels kill millions of people every year and cost trillions of dollars. 

If fossil fuels are so costly and deadly, it would stand to reason that people would grow poorer and see shorter lifespans the more they use them. Instead, the data show the exact opposite. Over the past century, the world has exponentially increased fossil fuel consumption. In that time, average human lifespans have doubled. Since 1960, global GDP has increased more than eight-fold.

Arkush authored a paper last year that argued for a legal structure by which oil company executives could be charged with homicide and incarcerated. Cruz questioned Arkush about the paper, and Arkush said that the theory doesn’t support incarcerating oil executives for murder in the first degree, which is murder with intent. But he stood by the theory that oil company executives should be prosecuted under laws against murder. 

“I'm going to go on the record as saying that it is a moonbeam wacky theory that you want to prosecute people creating jobs and producing energy for murder,” Cruz said. 

Comparing tobacco with fossil fuels

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., compared climate litigation against oil companies to the successful legal efforts to get settlements from tobacco companies after they were accused of misleading the public about the health consequences of smoking. 

It wasn’t clear how an addictive drug linked to cancer is comparable to a product that is needed to provide the bulk of the globe’s energy, whose use strongly correlates with increased life expectancy and wealth, and is the basis for thousands of products people consume every day. 

Criticizing the comparison in a Forbes article last year, Robert Rapier, a chemical engineer and editor-in-chief of Shale Magazine, pointed out that "if Big Tobacco disappeared from the planet, there would be no meaningful or lasting negative impact on society....The entire world derives enormous economic benefits from consuming oil every day. If that consumption suddenly ceased, the global economy would immediately grind to a halt. Supply chains would stop working, and food would stop arriving in the grocery stores. Society would collapse."

Attorney General of the State of Kansas, Kris Kobach, said climate lawsuits attempting to extract settlements from oil companies under legal arguments like those used in the tobacco cases would be hard to prove because the liability chain between climate change and oil companies isn’t as simple as that of tobacco users and tobacco companies. 

“There's less deception. There's also third parties. It's not just the fossil fuel extraction company. You have the factory that uses, burns the fuels. You have the individuals themselves who drive to work in a car. Probably most of us flew here,” Kobach said. 

Kobach also noted that so far, none of the climate lawsuits filed against oil companies have succeeded on merits. A Maryland state judge last year dismissed a case filed by the City of Baltimore, and the city is appealing to the Maryland Supreme Court. Kobach said that case will likely be decided early next year. 

“That’s the nearest chance the plaintiffs have to achieve victory, but they have got no victories so far,” Kobach said.