Senate Hearing Exposes China’s Role In Backing Climate Lawsuits Against U.S. Energy

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is financially backing left-wing climate lawfare in the United States, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, and dark money expert Scott Walter revealed the shady details while testifying before a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday. [emphasis, links added]

The hearing, titled “Enter the Dragon—China and the Left’s Lawfare Against American Energy Dominance,” was held by the Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action and Federal Rights, dug deep into how China has funded the push for progressive courts and to weaken American energy production, following a bombshell State Armor report exposing Energy Foundation China’s (EFC) ties to the CCP.

Cruz, the chairman of the subcommittee, introduced the background of what he deemed “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 U.S. energy producers, all in order to undermine American energy dominance.

At stake is a lot more than an industry. Our energy sector is the engine of American prosperity, the lifeblood of our industrial power, our national security and our geopolitical leverage.

If American energy is under attack, so is American security and American independence.

According to Cruz, this campaign is a “three-pronged” approach.

“First, foreign money from entities tied to the Chinese Communist Party flows into the United States to bankroll climate advocacy groups who litigate against American energy,” the senator said in his opening remarks.

“Second, activist lawyers flood our courts with lawsuits designed not to win policy debates, but to bankrupt energy producers and to dismantle energy infrastructure through sheer attrition.”

“And third, 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 welfare machine,” he explained.

State Armor, an organization focused on the threat posed by the CCP, detailed how the EFC, while posing as a U.S. nonprofit operating in China, is “functionally a Chinese entity.”

EFC, controlled by CCP members who were involved with the Paris Accords while operating under the supervision of the regime’s security services, has funneled upwards of $12 million to “aggressive litigation outfits” that routinely file lawsuits trying to block pipelines, ban gas-powered vehicles, and bankrupt oil and gas companies on paper, Cruz said.

Such organizations include the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Rocky Mountain Institute, and the World Resources Institute.

Cruz continued, “Energy Foundation China’s goals may sound [like] benign support for Clean Coal, electric vehicles, and global decarbonization, but that raises the obvious question: If this is truly about reducing emissions, why isn’t China investing that money and reducing its own pollution?”

“China is the number one polluter on planet Earth.”

The report also revealed that EFC has given grants to premier American universities, including Harvard; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); and the University of Maryland.

In addition, EFC “provided support” in 2023 for an event featuring California Governor Gavin Newsom (D)’s visit to China, and later hosted a forum called the  “China-US Subnational Cooperation” in Nanjing with Chinese and American officials to trade insights on climate action.

In Kobach’s opening remarks, he concurred with President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders that highlighted the “growing challenge” that “environmental lawfare” poses for American industry as it “drives up energy costs.”

“It also weakens our national security and places us at a strategic disadvantage with respect to our adversaries in China,” the attorney general said.

While he noted that he has greater experience in litigation on climate issues over connections to the CCP itself, he argued that it is “evident that China’s asymmetric warfare against the United States extends to our nation’s courtrooms and state legislatures.”

“The CCP plainly has a strategy of driving the United States away from domestic energy sources and increasing U.S. dependence on sources that rely on a Chinese supply of solar panels, electric vehicle batteries, and other technologies.”

The lawsuits are frequently unsuccessful, but still result in significant consequences for Americans, Kobach said.

“This litigation, while sometimes based on valid legal claims, in most instances failed in the courtroom but nonetheless increased costs for consumers and taxpayers.”

Walter, who serves as president of investigative think tank Capital Research Center, argued that “America’s enemies, especially Russia and China, are pleased when we hobble our energy sector.”

They want to be in a stronger economic position, whether selling Russia’s natural gas in Europe or selling China’s “green” technology in America. This fact shouldn’t be controversial. Hillary Clinton, presumably based on intelligence reports she saw as Secretary of State, famously said that “a lot of the money” supporting messages against fracking came from Russia. The New York Times has reported on the beliefs of leaders in countries like Romania and Lithuania that Russia and its state-owned Gazprom oil company have fueled anti-fracking activists in Europe.

The dark money expert and former special assistant to President George W. Bush for domestic policy went on to share just how deeply the CCP is invested in the green energy sector:

Even the Brookings Institution, in an article that applauds “Accelerating the clean energy revolution by working with China,” confesses, “There is no question that the world has become too dependent on China, especially in the raw ingredients of the clean energy economy.”

Just Facts Daily observes that “China dominates the global supply chains for green energy components not merely because of cheap labor but because they have lax environmental standards that tolerate the pollution these products create. Thus, China supplies 78 percent of the world’s solar cells, 80 percent of the world’s lithium-ion battery chemicals, and 73 percent of the world’s finished battery cells.”

Heavy subsidies by our federal government and others have helped produce these Chinese economic windfalls by distorting markets and artificially boosting consumption.

Walter, the author of Arabella: The Dark Money Network of Leftist Billionaires Transforming America, gave the subcommittee several examples of such billionaires, some foreign and some domestic.

“…And many of these billionaires have the same last name: Foundation. Especially notable are the Hewlett Foundation and various Rockefeller philanthropies, but there are many more, including the Ford Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation,” he told the senators.

“This helps to explain why a tally of only a few of the leading climate lawfare groups totals revenues of a half-billion dollars a year.”

Walter cited State Armor’s report, saying the EFC “regularly sends grants directly to CCP-controlled agencies in China, including the National Center for Climate Change Strategy, the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning, and Chinese Academy of Sciences,” and it partners with Chinese governmental entities like the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Ecology and Environment, Tsinghua University, and the Tongzhou District People’s Government of Beijing.”

“On the other hand, it also sends money to flagship American universities like the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, and Harvard, and it supports studies praising mandatory electrification policies in Berkeley and Brookline, Massachusetts.”

The Climate Judiciary Project (CJP), a left-wing influence operation that disguises itself as a neutral educational venue for judges, runs programs for judges about climate change and lawsuits, and it is funded by the same groups that bankroll climate lawfare suits, Walter said.

These activist academics, tied to climate plaintiffs as advisers, amicus filers, or public supporters, shape CJP’s “educational materials” for judges.

Throughout the hearing, Ranking Member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) continually dismissed the witnesses’ and Cruz’s points, calling it a “perfect display of projection.”

Read rest at Breitbart