This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Donald Trump has promised to deregulate the energy sector, boost fossil fuels, dismantle environmental rules, and otherwise attack climate progress. However, experts and advocates say that lawsuits that aim to hold the fossil fuel sector responsible for deceiving the public about the climate crisis still “have a clear path forward.”

“The overwhelming evidence of the industry’s lies and ongoing deception does not change with administrations,” said Richard Wiles, president of the nonprofit Center for Climate Integrity, which tracks and supports the litigation. There are more than 30 accountability lawsuits active around the US brought by states and municipalities accusing fossil fuel interests of covering up the climate risks of their products or seeking damages for impacts. “Climate deception lawsuits against Big Oil have a clear path forward no matter who is in the White House.”

On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to “stop the wave of frivolous litigation from environmental extremists.”

“The most important impact that Trump will have on the climate accountability litigation is the justices he has appointed to the supreme court.”

But the administration’s ability to block the suits will be limited, Wiles said.

Since the federal government is neither plaintiff nor defendant in any of the suits, Trump’s election will not directly affect their outcome. And since each case was filed in state court, the president cannot appoint judges who will oversee them.

However, if any of the cases are sent to the federal courts—something oil companies have long pushed for but have not achieved—Trump’s right-wing appointees could rule in favor of fossil fuel companies.

“The most important impact that Trump will have on the climate accountability litigation is the justices he has appointed to the supreme court,” said Michael Gerrard, the faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.

In his first term, Trump appointed three justices to the high court, including two with ties to the fossil fuel industry. In early December, Joe Biden’s solicitor general urged the Supreme Court to reject requests from fossil fuel interests to quash two climate accountability lawsuits, after a July call from the court for the administration to weigh in.

Experts say Trump’s White House could attempt to politically tip the scales in favor of the oil companies. “The views of the federal government tend to carry weight with the Supreme Court, so if Trump did that it would give a bit of a boost to the oil companies,” said Daniel Farber, who directs the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment.

But that doesn’t guarantee that the court would agree with the administration, he said. “The court doesn’t always listen to the government’s view, and it would really depend on how persuasively they were able to argue the point,” Farber said.

Trump’s justice department could also file influential “friend of the court” briefs in the cases, said Gerrard.. The Biden administration filed such a brief in support of the plaintiff last year, whereas Trump’s previous administration reliably supported the defendants and is expected to do so again.

These can have a significant impact on the outcome of a case, but similarly do not guarantee an outcome.

Another possibility advocates are preparing for: Trump could work with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress to attempt to offer legal immunity to the fossil fuel industry from the lawsuits.

But such a measure is unlikely to succeed, even with a Republican trifecta, said Farber. “You’d need 60 votes to break the filibuster in the Senate, and that means they would need to pick up seven Democrats,” he said. “I just don’t see that happening.”

The firearms industry successfully won a liability waiver in 2005 which has successfully blocked most attempts to hold them accountable for violence. Fossil fuel companies have pushed to be granted the same treatment, but have failed so far.

The Trump administration’s pledges to roll back environmental regulation and boost fossil fuels could inspire additional climate accountability litigation. “If they feel like other channels for change have gotten cut off, maybe that would make the legal channel more appealing,” said Farber.

Climate accountability suits filed by cities and states have gained steam in recent months. In December, a North Carolina town launched the nation’s first-ever climate accountability lawsuit against an electric utility. In November, Maine also filed a suit against big oil, while a Kansas county sued major fossil fuel producers, alleging they had waged “a decades-long campaign of fraud and deception about the recyclability of plastics.”

Even amid Trump’s expected environmental rollbacks, the suits are a way to “secure some measure of justice and accountability for big oil’s climate lies and the damages that they’ve caused,” said Wiles.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A small North Carolina town has launched the nation’s first-ever climate accountability lawsuit against an electric utility.

The litigation, filed by officials from Carrboro, North Carolina, on Wednesday morning, accuses Duke Energy of waging a “deception campaign” to obscure the climate dangers of fossil fuels. Those efforts resulted in delayed action to curb planet-heating pollution, which has pushed up the costs of climate action today, the lawsuit says.

“When you’re dealing with something like the existential threat of climate change, that requires us to make bold moves,” said Carrboro’s mayor, Barbara Foushee, who helped bring the suit.

The litigation follows a November report from the non-profit research group Energy and Policy Institute, which found some of the utility companies that comprise today’s Duke Energy Corporation—including Duke Power, Carolina Power & Light, and Public Service Indiana—were cautioned about the climate crisis decades ago.

“Although Duke has understood the dangers of climate change for decades, the company actively participated in a far-reaching, decades-long campaign to deceive the public and decision-makers about these dangers,” the suit says.

In 1969, the lawsuit says, officials from utilities now owned by Duke attended a meeting of the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group, where they were informed that scientists believed increasing carbon emissions would be a “long-term problem of major consequence.”

The same trade group in 1984 commissioned a study that included two hypothetical news stories from the future—one in which fossil fuel emissions continued unabated and caused devastating impacts, and another in which emissions were reined in and a safer future was secured, the lawsuit says.

“When it comes to this kind of injustice, it doesn’t matter who calls it out as long as somebody does.”

Despite these warnings, Duke continued to build out fossil fuel infrastructure, oppose legal limits to planet-heating pollution and back efforts to promote doubt about climate science, according to the suit.

In 1991, the lawsuit says, the Edison Electric Institute placed newspaper advertisements with the message: “How much are you willing to pay to solve a problem that may not exist?” Duke maintained its membership in the institute.

“They tried to sow confusion about climate change and the fact that there’s a threat that we face in the future,” said Howard Crystal, legal director of the Energy Justice Program at the non-profit Center for Biological Diversity, who is advising the plaintiffs on the case.

The deception continues to be a problem today, now in the form of “greenwashing,” said Crystal.

On social media, Duke has portrayed itself as a leader in bringing on “cleaner energy solutions” despite having one of the largest planned gas buildouts of any company in the US.

“They’re still expanding fossil fuels and suppressing renewables—in flat defiance of scientists demanding that we do the exact opposite,” said Jim Warren, executive director of local non-profit NC Warn, in a statement.

According to one study, Duke Energy in 2021 had the third-largest emissions footprint of any business in the United States.

Duke Energy’s deception about its emissions has led to delayed climate action that has in turn placed a burden on Carrboro, the lawsuit says. It alleges the company broke five state laws, including those protecting citizens from public and private nuisances.

“Carrboro is a true victim here, and they’ve incurred a lot of damages,” said Matthew Quinn, an attorney at the North Carolina firm Lewis and Roberts who is representing the plaintiffs.

The town, which sits about 20 miles southwest of Durham, is seeking damages for the climate-fueled costs of adapting roads and infrastructure to increased flooding, and for increased energy costs. “Those costs could add up to millions, many millions,” said Crystal.

The exact amount the case could yield in damages is unclear. “We’re content to let a jury of our peers determine what we get,” said Foushee.

It may not be easy for a municipality with a population of 22,000 to go up against a major corporation, Foushee added, but the town is no stranger to taking up climate issues. It has long worked to slash its emissions and support environmental justice, she said.

“It may seem like a David-and-Goliath situation and in reality it is one,” she said. “But when it comes to this kind of injustice, it doesn’t matter who calls it out as long as somebody does.”

The new filing comes as part of a wave of lawsuits from dozens of states and municipalities accusing fossil fuel interests of sowing doubt about the environmental risks associated with their products. On November 26, Maine’s attorney general filed a case against Exxon, Shell, Chevron, BP, Sunoco and the industry group the American Petroleum Institute. The following day, Ford county, Kansas, sued major fossil fuel interests, alleging they had waged “a decades-long campaign of fraud and deception about the recyclability of plastics.”

In October, Oregon’s Multnomah county, which includes Portland, became the first municipality to sue a utility over climate deception when it added the regional gas provider NW Natural to its 2023 lawsuit against fossil fuel corporations for fueling a fatal 2021 heat dome.

Randee Haven-O’Donnell, a councilmember in Carrboro, said more utilities could soon be named in similar lawsuits. “We’re the little engine that could, and we hope other towns can be, too, and hold their polluting utilities accountable,” she said in a statement.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A small North Carolina town has launched the nation’s first-ever climate accountability lawsuit against an electric utility.

The litigation, filed by officials from Carrboro, North Carolina, on Wednesday morning, accuses Duke Energy of waging a “deception campaign” to obscure the climate dangers of fossil fuels. Those efforts resulted in delayed action to curb planet-heating pollution, which has pushed up the costs of climate action today, the lawsuit says.

“When you’re dealing with something like the existential threat of climate change, that requires us to make bold moves,” said Carrboro’s mayor, Barbara Foushee, who helped bring the suit.

The litigation follows a November report from the non-profit research group Energy and Policy Institute, which found some of the utility companies that comprise today’s Duke Energy Corporation—including Duke Power, Carolina Power & Light, and Public Service Indiana—were cautioned about the climate crisis decades ago.

“Although Duke has understood the dangers of climate change for decades, the company actively participated in a far-reaching, decades-long campaign to deceive the public and decision-makers about these dangers,” the suit says.

In 1969, the lawsuit says, officials from utilities now owned by Duke attended a meeting of the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group, where they were informed that scientists believed increasing carbon emissions would be a “long-term problem of major consequence.”

The same trade group in 1984 commissioned a study that included two hypothetical news stories from the future—one in which fossil fuel emissions continued unabated and caused devastating impacts, and another in which emissions were reined in and a safer future was secured, the lawsuit says.

“When it comes to this kind of injustice, it doesn’t matter who calls it out as long as somebody does.”

Despite these warnings, Duke continued to build out fossil fuel infrastructure, oppose legal limits to planet-heating pollution and back efforts to promote doubt about climate science, according to the suit.

In 1991, the lawsuit says, the Edison Electric Institute placed newspaper advertisements with the message: “How much are you willing to pay to solve a problem that may not exist?” Duke maintained its membership in the institute.

“They tried to sow confusion about climate change and the fact that there’s a threat that we face in the future,” said Howard Crystal, legal director of the Energy Justice Program at the non-profit Center for Biological Diversity, who is advising the plaintiffs on the case.

The deception continues to be a problem today, now in the form of “greenwashing,” said Crystal.

On social media, Duke has portrayed itself as a leader in bringing on “cleaner energy solutions” despite having one of the largest planned gas buildouts of any company in the US.

“They’re still expanding fossil fuels and suppressing renewables—in flat defiance of scientists demanding that we do the exact opposite,” said Jim Warren, executive director of local non-profit NC Warn, in a statement.

According to one study, Duke Energy in 2021 had the third-largest emissions footprint of any business in the United States.

Duke Energy’s deception about its emissions has led to delayed climate action that has in turn placed a burden on Carrboro, the lawsuit says. It alleges the company broke five state laws, including those protecting citizens from public and private nuisances.

“Carrboro is a true victim here, and they’ve incurred a lot of damages,” said Matthew Quinn, an attorney at the North Carolina firm Lewis and Roberts who is representing the plaintiffs.

The town, which sits about 20 miles southwest of Durham, is seeking damages for the climate-fueled costs of adapting roads and infrastructure to increased flooding, and for increased energy costs. “Those costs could add up to millions, many millions,” said Crystal.

The exact amount the case could yield in damages is unclear. “We’re content to let a jury of our peers determine what we get,” said Foushee.

It may not be easy for a municipality with a population of 22,000 to go up against a major corporation, Foushee added, but the town is no stranger to taking up climate issues. It has long worked to slash its emissions and support environmental justice, she said.

“It may seem like a David-and-Goliath situation and in reality it is one,” she said. “But when it comes to this kind of injustice, it doesn’t matter who calls it out as long as somebody does.”

The new filing comes as part of a wave of lawsuits from dozens of states and municipalities accusing fossil fuel interests of sowing doubt about the environmental risks associated with their products. On November 26, Maine’s attorney general filed a case against Exxon, Shell, Chevron, BP, Sunoco and the industry group the American Petroleum Institute. The following day, Ford county, Kansas, sued major fossil fuel interests, alleging they had waged “a decades-long campaign of fraud and deception about the recyclability of plastics.”

In October, Oregon’s Multnomah county, which includes Portland, became the first municipality to sue a utility over climate deception when it added the regional gas provider NW Natural to its 2023 lawsuit against fossil fuel corporations for fueling a fatal 2021 heat dome.

Randee Haven-O’Donnell, a councilmember in Carrboro, said more utilities could soon be named in similar lawsuits. “We’re the little engine that could, and we hope other towns can be, too, and hold their polluting utilities accountable,” she said in a statement.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A right-wing organization is attacking efforts to educate judges about the climate crisis. The group appears to be connected to Leonard Leo, the architect of the right-wing takeover of the American judiciary who helped select Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, the Guardian has learned.

The Washington, DC-based nonprofit Environmental Law Institute (ELI)’s Climate Judiciary Project holds seminars for lawyers and judges about the climate crisis. It aims to “provide neutral, objective information to the judiciary about the science of climate change as it is understood by the expert scientific community and relevant to current and future litigation,” according to ELI’s website.

The American Energy Institute, a right-wing, pro-fossil fuel think tank, has been attacking ELI and its climate trainings in recent months. In August, the organization published a report saying ELI was “corruptly influencing the courts and destroying the rule of law to promote questionable climate science.”

ELI’s Climate Judiciary Project is “falsely portraying itself as a neutral entity teaching judges about questionable climate science,” the report says. In reality, the American Energy Institute claims, the project is a partner to the more than two dozen US cities and states who are suing big oil for allegedly sowing doubt about the climate crisis despite longstanding knowledge of the climate dangers of coal, oil, and gas usage.

In a PowerPoint presentation about the report found on its website, the group says the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) is “wholly aligned with the climate change plaintiffs and helps them corruptly influence judges behind closed doors.”

“Their true purpose is to preview the plaintiffs’ arguments in the climate cases in an ex parte setting,” the presentation says.

“The idea that [the Environmental Law Institute] is corruptly influencing the court from the left…is complete disinformation.”

Both the report and the PowerPoint presentation link the American Energy Institute to CRC Advisors, a public relations firm chaired by right-wing dark money impresario Leo. Given his outsize role in shaping the US judiciary—Leo helped select multiple judicial nominees for former president Donald Trump, including personally lobbying for Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment—his firm’s role in opposing climate litigation is notable.

“He was greatly responsible for moving our federal court systems to the right,” said David Armiak, the research director for Center for Media and Democracy, a watchdog group tracking money in politics, of Leo. CRC Advisors’ work with the American Energy Institute, Armiak said, seemed “to delegitimize a group that’s seeking to inform judges or the judicial system of climate science, something that [Leo] also opposed with some of his other efforts.”

The American Energy Institute report’s document properties show that its author was Maggie Howell, director of branding and design at CRC Advisors. And the PowerPoint’s document properties lists CRC Advisors’s vice president, Kevin Daley, as the author.

Neither CRC Advisors nor Leo responded to requests for comment.

In an email, the institute’s CEO, Jason Isaac, said: “American Energy Institute employed CRC Advisors to edit and promote our groundbreaking report on the corrupt relationship between our federal court system and leftwing dark money groups.”

But Kert Davies, the director of special investigations at the nonprofit Center for Climate Integrity, who shared the report and PowerPoint with the Guardian, said ELI is “far from leftwing.”

The institute’s staff include a wide variety of legal and climate experts. Its board includes executives from Shell Group and BP—oil companies that have been named as defendants in climate litigation—and a partner at a law firm that represents Chevron. Two partners with the firm Baker Botts LLP, which represents Sunoco LP and its subsidiary, Aloha Petroleum Ltd, in a climate lawsuit filed by Honolulu, also sit on ELI’s leadership council, E&E News previously reported.

“ELI’s seminars are giving judges the ABCs of climate change, which is a complicated subject that they ought to know about,” said Davies. “The idea that they’re corruptly influencing the court from the left…is complete disinformation.”

Asked for comment about ELI’s connection to oil companies, the American Energy Institute CEO, Isaac, said that “all of those companies have embraced and/or are pushing political agendas” that are “contrary to the best interest of Americans, American energy producers, and human flourishing,” including environmental, social, and governance investing and diversity, equity and inclusion.

Isaac described oil and gas as keys to prosperity. “I live a high-carbon lifestyle,” he said. “I wish the rest of the world could, too.”

“They are the appeasers, the ones feeding the crocodiles,” he said. He did not respond to questions about the extent of the relationship between the American Energy Institute and CRC Advisors.

In a statement, Nick Collins, a spokesperson for ELI, called the American Energy Institute report “full of misinformation and created by an organization whose leadership regularly spreads false claims about climate science,” and described the CJP curriculum as “fact-based and science-first, developed with a robust peer review process that meets the highest scholarly standards.”

The American Energy Institute’s attack on the judicial climate education program comes as the supreme court considers litigation that could put big oil on the hook for billions of dollars.

Honolulu is one of dozens of cities and states to sue oil majors for allegedly hiding the dangers of their products from the public. Hawaii’s supreme court ruled that the suit can go to trial, but the defendants petitioned the US Supreme Court to review that decision, arguing the cases should be thrown out because emissions are a federal issue that cannot be tried in state courts.

This past spring, far-right fossil fuel allies launched an unprecedented campaign pressuring the Supreme Court to side with the defendants and shield fossil fuel companies from the litigation. Several of the groups behind the campaign have ties to Leo.

In June, the Supreme Court asked the Biden administration to weigh in on the defendants’ request. Biden officials could respond as soon as this week. “It’s doubtful that AEI’s timing of their report release was a coincidence,” said Davies.

The Supreme Court may soon weigh in on another case, too: In April, 20 Republican state attorneys general filed “friend of the court” briefs asking the court to prevent states from being able to sue oil companies for climate damages. All of the signatories are members of the Republican Attorneys General Association, to which Leo’s Concord Fund is a major contributor.

In the weeks since its publication, the American Energy Institute report attacking ELI has received a surge of interest from right-wing media. Fox News featured the report, as did an array of conservative websites. On Thursday, The Hill published an op-ed by Ted Cruz attacking the ELI project. Other right-wing groups have previously questioned the motives of ELI.

CRC Advisors has counted Chevron, one of the plaintiffs in Honolulu’s lawsuit, as a client. In 2018, the Leo-led PR firm also worked on a campaign aimed at exonerating the Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh from accusations of sexual assault.

Davies said it “would not be surprising” if CRC Advisors had a “large role” in the creation or promotion of the report attacking ELI’s judiciary trainings. “They’re known for running campaigns for corporate interests and rightwing interests,” he said.

In addition to his work with the American Energy Institute, Isaac also serves as a fellow at Texas Public Policy Foundation—a think tank backed by oil and gas companies that has recently garnered scrutiny for its role in drafting the ultraconservative policy playbook Project 2025.

A former Republican Texas state representative, Isaac has dedicated much of his career to disputing climate research and promoting misinformation to justify deregulation of the fossil fuel industry. Isaac recently responded to a Twitter post about Climate Week by the EPA, calling the conference on climate change “nothing more than a celebration of people suffering from mental illness, #EcoDysphoria, with those attending insisting the rest of us catch it.”

On a September 25 episode of the right-wing Wisconsin talk radio program “The Vicki McKenna Show,” Isaac offered a defense of the fossil fuel industry, describing oil and gas as keys to prosperity. “I live a high-carbon lifestyle,” he said. “I wish the rest of the world could, too.”

Formerly known as Texas Natural Gas Foundation, the American Energy Institute on its face appears to contribute little more than public relations work in defense of the fossil fuels industry. The group publishes blog posts defending carbon emissions and denouncing the push for climate action. It has also produced a handful of longer reports promoting laws that restrict environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing and opposing the widespread adoption of electric vehicles.

Among its board members are Steve Milloy, who served on Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team, once ran a tobacco industry front group, and is a well-known climate denier. Milloy did not respond to a request for comment.

According to the group’s most recent tax filings, the American Energy Institute, which lists four staffers and a CEO on its website, is not a lavish operation. The group brought in about $312,000 in revenue in 2022 and appears to fund its operations at least partly by selling merchandise—among other products, branded T-shirts, tote bags, and beer koozies emblazoned with the words, “I Embrace The High Carbon Lifestyle.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A right-wing organization is attacking efforts to educate judges about the climate crisis. The group appears to be connected to Leonard Leo, the architect of the right-wing takeover of the American judiciary who helped select Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, the Guardian has learned.

The Washington, DC-based nonprofit Environmental Law Institute (ELI)’s Climate Judiciary Project holds seminars for lawyers and judges about the climate crisis. It aims to “provide neutral, objective information to the judiciary about the science of climate change as it is understood by the expert scientific community and relevant to current and future litigation,” according to ELI’s website.

The American Energy Institute, a right-wing, pro-fossil fuel think tank, has been attacking ELI and its climate trainings in recent months. In August, the organization published a report saying ELI was “corruptly influencing the courts and destroying the rule of law to promote questionable climate science.”

ELI’s Climate Judiciary Project is “falsely portraying itself as a neutral entity teaching judges about questionable climate science,” the report says. In reality, the American Energy Institute claims, the project is a partner to the more than two dozen US cities and states who are suing big oil for allegedly sowing doubt about the climate crisis despite longstanding knowledge of the climate dangers of coal, oil, and gas usage.

In a PowerPoint presentation about the report found on its website, the group says the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) is “wholly aligned with the climate change plaintiffs and helps them corruptly influence judges behind closed doors.”

“Their true purpose is to preview the plaintiffs’ arguments in the climate cases in an ex parte setting,” the presentation says.

“The idea that [the Environmental Law Institute] is corruptly influencing the court from the left…is complete disinformation.”

Both the report and the PowerPoint presentation link the American Energy Institute to CRC Advisors, a public relations firm chaired by right-wing dark money impresario Leo. Given his outsize role in shaping the US judiciary—Leo helped select multiple judicial nominees for former president Donald Trump, including personally lobbying for Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment—his firm’s role in opposing climate litigation is notable.

“He was greatly responsible for moving our federal court systems to the right,” said David Armiak, the research director for Center for Media and Democracy, a watchdog group tracking money in politics, of Leo. CRC Advisors’ work with the American Energy Institute, Armiak said, seemed “to delegitimize a group that’s seeking to inform judges or the judicial system of climate science, something that [Leo] also opposed with some of his other efforts.”

The American Energy Institute report’s document properties show that its author was Maggie Howell, director of branding and design at CRC Advisors. And the PowerPoint’s document properties lists CRC Advisors’s vice president, Kevin Daley, as the author.

Neither CRC Advisors nor Leo responded to requests for comment.

In an email, the institute’s CEO, Jason Isaac, said: “American Energy Institute employed CRC Advisors to edit and promote our groundbreaking report on the corrupt relationship between our federal court system and leftwing dark money groups.”

But Kert Davies, the director of special investigations at the nonprofit Center for Climate Integrity, who shared the report and PowerPoint with the Guardian, said ELI is “far from leftwing.”

The institute’s staff include a wide variety of legal and climate experts. Its board includes executives from Shell Group and BP—oil companies that have been named as defendants in climate litigation—and a partner at a law firm that represents Chevron. Two partners with the firm Baker Botts LLP, which represents Sunoco LP and its subsidiary, Aloha Petroleum Ltd, in a climate lawsuit filed by Honolulu, also sit on ELI’s leadership council, E&E News previously reported.

“ELI’s seminars are giving judges the ABCs of climate change, which is a complicated subject that they ought to know about,” said Davies. “The idea that they’re corruptly influencing the court from the left…is complete disinformation.”

Asked for comment about ELI’s connection to oil companies, the American Energy Institute CEO, Isaac, said that “all of those companies have embraced and/or are pushing political agendas” that are “contrary to the best interest of Americans, American energy producers, and human flourishing,” including environmental, social, and governance investing and diversity, equity and inclusion.

Isaac described oil and gas as keys to prosperity. “I live a high-carbon lifestyle,” he said. “I wish the rest of the world could, too.”

“They are the appeasers, the ones feeding the crocodiles,” he said. He did not respond to questions about the extent of the relationship between the American Energy Institute and CRC Advisors.

In a statement, Nick Collins, a spokesperson for ELI, called the American Energy Institute report “full of misinformation and created by an organization whose leadership regularly spreads false claims about climate science,” and described the CJP curriculum as “fact-based and science-first, developed with a robust peer review process that meets the highest scholarly standards.”

The American Energy Institute’s attack on the judicial climate education program comes as the supreme court considers litigation that could put big oil on the hook for billions of dollars.

Honolulu is one of dozens of cities and states to sue oil majors for allegedly hiding the dangers of their products from the public. Hawaii’s supreme court ruled that the suit can go to trial, but the defendants petitioned the US Supreme Court to review that decision, arguing the cases should be thrown out because emissions are a federal issue that cannot be tried in state courts.

This past spring, far-right fossil fuel allies launched an unprecedented campaign pressuring the Supreme Court to side with the defendants and shield fossil fuel companies from the litigation. Several of the groups behind the campaign have ties to Leo.

In June, the Supreme Court asked the Biden administration to weigh in on the defendants’ request. Biden officials could respond as soon as this week. “It’s doubtful that AEI’s timing of their report release was a coincidence,” said Davies.

The Supreme Court may soon weigh in on another case, too: In April, 20 Republican state attorneys general filed “friend of the court” briefs asking the court to prevent states from being able to sue oil companies for climate damages. All of the signatories are members of the Republican Attorneys General Association, to which Leo’s Concord Fund is a major contributor.

In the weeks since its publication, the American Energy Institute report attacking ELI has received a surge of interest from right-wing media. Fox News featured the report, as did an array of conservative websites. On Thursday, The Hill published an op-ed by Ted Cruz attacking the ELI project. Other right-wing groups have previously questioned the motives of ELI.

CRC Advisors has counted Chevron, one of the plaintiffs in Honolulu’s lawsuit, as a client. In 2018, the Leo-led PR firm also worked on a campaign aimed at exonerating the Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh from accusations of sexual assault.

Davies said it “would not be surprising” if CRC Advisors had a “large role” in the creation or promotion of the report attacking ELI’s judiciary trainings. “They’re known for running campaigns for corporate interests and rightwing interests,” he said.

In addition to his work with the American Energy Institute, Isaac also serves as a fellow at Texas Public Policy Foundation—a think tank backed by oil and gas companies that has recently garnered scrutiny for its role in drafting the ultraconservative policy playbook Project 2025.

A former Republican Texas state representative, Isaac has dedicated much of his career to disputing climate research and promoting misinformation to justify deregulation of the fossil fuel industry. Isaac recently responded to a Twitter post about Climate Week by the EPA, calling the conference on climate change “nothing more than a celebration of people suffering from mental illness, #EcoDysphoria, with those attending insisting the rest of us catch it.”

On a September 25 episode of the right-wing Wisconsin talk radio program “The Vicki McKenna Show,” Isaac offered a defense of the fossil fuel industry, describing oil and gas as keys to prosperity. “I live a high-carbon lifestyle,” he said. “I wish the rest of the world could, too.”

Formerly known as Texas Natural Gas Foundation, the American Energy Institute on its face appears to contribute little more than public relations work in defense of the fossil fuels industry. The group publishes blog posts defending carbon emissions and denouncing the push for climate action. It has also produced a handful of longer reports promoting laws that restrict environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing and opposing the widespread adoption of electric vehicles.

Among its board members are Steve Milloy, who served on Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team, once ran a tobacco industry front group, and is a well-known climate denier. Milloy did not respond to a request for comment.

According to the group’s most recent tax filings, the American Energy Institute, which lists four staffers and a CEO on its website, is not a lavish operation. The group brought in about $312,000 in revenue in 2022 and appears to fund its operations at least partly by selling merchandise—among other products, branded T-shirts, tote bags, and beer koozies emblazoned with the words, “I Embrace The High Carbon Lifestyle.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The seven swing states that will decide the upcoming election have received nearly half of the torrent of clean energy manufacturing dollars unleashed by a landmark 2022 climate bill, a new analysis shows, amid stuttering Democratic efforts to translate new factory jobs into political support.

Since the passage of clean energy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a bill called the “most significant climate law in the history of mankind” by Joe Biden, nearly $150 billion has been announced for a flurry of new American facilities producing electric cars, batteries, and components for renewable energy.

Of this, $63 billion, or nearly half, will flow to just seven states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—that form the battleground fought over by Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for November’s presidential election, bringing more than 50,000 new manufacturing jobs, according to an analysis carried out for the Guardian by Atlas Public Policy.

“We thought it would be a big step forward on clean energy, but honestly we never understood how quickly it would turn into a game changer.”

“The steady drumbeat of announcements over the past two years has been remarkable, and time and time again they are going to swing states,” said Tom Taylor, senior policy analyst at Atlas.

“The election will decide the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act and the election will be decided by the states that have benefitted the most from the manufacturing incentives in the law.”

Two years on, the IRA has delivered “the biggest US economic revolution in generations—and it’s all because America finally, finally decided to do something about climate change,” said Bob Keefe, executive director of E2, a nonpartisan business group.

Nearly half a trillion dollars in total public and private investment, when deployment of wind and solar farms is included, has occurred nationally, creating more than 300,000 new jobs. Clean energy now accounts for more than half of total US private investment growth, while jobs in the industry are multiplying at double the rate of the overall American economy.

“We thought it would be a big step forward on clean energy, but honestly we never understood how quickly it would turn into a game changer,” said Gina McCarthy, who was Biden’s top climate advisor when the IRA was passed. “It’s flipped the climate conversation on its head. It’s been a remarkable success.”

Yet despite this green boom being centered upon some of the most politically contested parts of the US, there is little evidence the IRA is set to deliver electorally for Democrats. The swing states remain on a knife-edge between Harris, who cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the bill but barely mentions it while campaigning, and Trump, who has called it a “green scam” and vowed to abolish its spending.

Only four in 10 American voters have even heard anything much about the IRA, polling has shown, with a minority of voters expressing any confidence it will aid the economy, their families, or them personally. “Most people don’t even know about it, so clearly there’s a communication problem, they’ve just not done a good job on that,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, an expert in public climate opinion at Yale University.

Leiserowitz said it’s “remarkable” only 49 percent of liberal Democrats, those most concerned about the climate crisis, have heard of the IRA, highlighting the struggles in selling a wonky tome of tax credits amid a fevered news cycle that lurches from one eye-popping crisis to the next.

Criticism has seeped into this vacuum—among major cable news channels in the past two years, half of all mentions of the IRA have been on Fox News, where it has been portrayed as wasteful and likened to far-left totalitarianism.

“Imagine if Trump had passed this,” said Leiserowitz. “He is a salesman, he made damn sure his signature was on those stimulus checks. Republicans are just much better at crowing about their successes than Democrats. There’s been a lack of focused messaging and the media is not inspired to do the job for them.”

Nadine Luci, a 60-year-old resident of Pennsylvania’s Rochester township who usually votes Democrat, worries about pollution and the climate but said she hasn’t “heard much at all” about the “Inflation Act.” In fact, she wasn’t even sure it had passed.

“I thought it was shut down a couple years ago by Republicans,” she said. “But if it goes through I think it would be a positive thing for Pennsylvania.”

“It’s not tree-huggers and environmentalists in San Francisco or New York that are going to get hurt if the IRA is repealed.”

When told the bill earmarked historic levels of funding for green technology, Luci said it sounded “really good.”

“We all could use it, everybody could use it,” said Luci. “But no, I haven’t heard much.”

Frustratingly for Democrats, this appears to be a trend. Leiserowitz’s polling has found that when voters are actually provided a description of the IRA an overwhelming three-quarters of them support it. “It’s just an enormous wasted opportunity,” he said.

Proclaiming the Inflation Reduction Act has been a challenge from its birth, which required assent from Joe Manchin, the coal baron senator and most conservative Democrat in Congress. It was bestowed a clumsy name that belies what it is—an enormous climate and energy bill with some healthcare add-ons—and has befuddled basic public recognition. “I wish I hadn’t called it that,” Biden lamented last year.

“It has been challenging because it’s technical in nature,” McCarthy said of the bill. “It’s been a little slow to energize people and for it to become a personal thing for people to grab onto. It’s a big bill but I do think we are beginning to see momentum gathering around it.”

The dense, 274-page bill outlines some Manchin-friendly measures controversial with environmental groups—mandated oil and gas drilling leases, dollops of cash for unproven carbon capture projects—but at its core was a shot of adrenaline to the heart of the climate movement and to an economy ravaged by Covid.

Uncapped tax credits for clean energy for the next decade that could top $1 trillion, grants for industrial emissions reduction, rebates for Americans to buy electric cars, incentives for people to get heat pumps or electric stoves at home—the IRA almost has it all in terms of support for clean energy, if not penalties for the fossil fuel pollution causing the climate crisis.

The benefits are set be profound. Goldman Sachs, which has said “so far at least, the reality is living up to or even exceeding expectations,” forecasts $3 trillion in clean energy spending as a result of the bill, with the US treasury coming up with an even more eye-watering figure—$5 trillion—in global economic benefits by 2050 from reduced carbon and air pollution.

Battery factories are sprouting in faded corners of St Louis, Missouri; Weirton, West Virginia; and in rural Georgia. At-risk auto manufacturing plants are being retooled for electric cars across eight states; a former paper mill in Lincoln, Maine, is being reimagined as a massive energy storage facility; solar farms are blanketing parts of Arizona and Texas and Indiana; clean aluminum production is starting in Kentucky and green steel in JD Vance’s Ohio hometown.

Many of the dozens of new projects are in “places where opportunity has left,” as Ali Zaidi, the White House climate adviser, has put it, with a vision of reinvigorated blue-collar towns helping the US close the gap on the clean energy powerhouse of China.

“We are already looking at it as a real pivotal moment,” said Dawn Lippert, chief executive of Elemental Impact, a nonprofit investor in climate tech, who added that “our portfolio companies see extraordinary opportunity in rural areas of the US” because of their manufacturing history.

Politically, Republican rural and exurban areas have received the lion’s share of the spending, a fact that’s causing growing nervousness among some GOP members of Congress over the prospect of Trump reversing new job creation in their districts, even after they voted against it.

“It’s not tree-huggers and environmentalists in San Francisco or New York that are going to get hurt if the IRA is repealed,” said Keefe. “It’s working-class people in Georgia, Michigan, and North Carolina that are going to get hurt because that’s where these these projects are going.”

If it survives intact over the next decade, the IRA could help create 9m new jobs, one analysis shows, while pushing down emissions 40 percent by 2030, putting the US within reach of its target to cut planet-heating polling in half by this point.

Young people, people of color, and suburban women do care about climate change and Harris needs to motivate them to get to the polls.”

This progress is incremental and often invisible, though, with only a fraction of IRA funding already committed. In the former steel town of Weirton, West Virginia, for instance, many residents said they have not yet seen a resulting surge in the economy.

“We’ve been made a lot of promises here [that] haven’t been met,” said Dave, a retiree of the former Weirton steel mill in an interview at Dee Jay’s barbecue restaurant, adding he is “no fan” of Bidenomics or the Inflation Reduction Act.

Carol Hrabovsky, who owns Irish Pub, one of the only remaining bars on Weirton’s Main Street, said locals are still struggling with a lack of jobs and the high “price of everything.” Once a Democrat and now a Trump supporter, she said the IRA won’t convince her to vote for the Democratic nominee, and she believes most of her neighbors feel the same.

“They shouldn’t have even called it the Inflation Reduction Act,” she said, adding that she is worried about Biden and Harris fostering “communism.”

Other lives are starting to be touched more positively—more than 3 million American families have already used tax credits to upgrade their homes with solar panels, heat pumps, water heaters or insulation, for example. The IRA may in time become a piece of the national furniture despite Republican hostility, much like Obamacare.

But can it help win Harris the election? Climate isn’t ranked as a leading priority by many voters, but Leiserowitz said there are opportunities within three climate-conscious groups that Harris badly needs in November—young people, people of color, and suburban women. They could tip the balance in a close election.

“Those demographics do care about climate change and Harris needs to motivate them to get to the polls,” he said. “I don’t understand why they aren’t doing this. She has said that Trump thinks climate change is a hoax, which is a step in the right direction, but you need to connect the dots for people.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The seven swing states that will decide the upcoming election have received nearly half of the torrent of clean energy manufacturing dollars unleashed by a landmark 2022 climate bill, a new analysis shows, amid stuttering Democratic efforts to translate new factory jobs into political support.

Since the passage of clean energy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a bill called the “most significant climate law in the history of mankind” by Joe Biden, nearly $150 billion has been announced for a flurry of new American facilities producing electric cars, batteries, and components for renewable energy.

Of this, $63 billion, or nearly half, will flow to just seven states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—that form the battleground fought over by Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for November’s presidential election, bringing more than 50,000 new manufacturing jobs, according to an analysis carried out for the Guardian by Atlas Public Policy.

“We thought it would be a big step forward on clean energy, but honestly we never understood how quickly it would turn into a game changer.”

“The steady drumbeat of announcements over the past two years has been remarkable, and time and time again they are going to swing states,” said Tom Taylor, senior policy analyst at Atlas.

“The election will decide the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act and the election will be decided by the states that have benefitted the most from the manufacturing incentives in the law.”

Two years on, the IRA has delivered “the biggest US economic revolution in generations—and it’s all because America finally, finally decided to do something about climate change,” said Bob Keefe, executive director of E2, a nonpartisan business group.

Nearly half a trillion dollars in total public and private investment, when deployment of wind and solar farms is included, has occurred nationally, creating more than 300,000 new jobs. Clean energy now accounts for more than half of total US private investment growth, while jobs in the industry are multiplying at double the rate of the overall American economy.

“We thought it would be a big step forward on clean energy, but honestly we never understood how quickly it would turn into a game changer,” said Gina McCarthy, who was Biden’s top climate advisor when the IRA was passed. “It’s flipped the climate conversation on its head. It’s been a remarkable success.”

Yet despite this green boom being centered upon some of the most politically contested parts of the US, there is little evidence the IRA is set to deliver electorally for Democrats. The swing states remain on a knife-edge between Harris, who cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the bill but barely mentions it while campaigning, and Trump, who has called it a “green scam” and vowed to abolish its spending.

Only four in 10 American voters have even heard anything much about the IRA, polling has shown, with a minority of voters expressing any confidence it will aid the economy, their families, or them personally. “Most people don’t even know about it, so clearly there’s a communication problem, they’ve just not done a good job on that,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, an expert in public climate opinion at Yale University.

Leiserowitz said it’s “remarkable” only 49 percent of liberal Democrats, those most concerned about the climate crisis, have heard of the IRA, highlighting the struggles in selling a wonky tome of tax credits amid a fevered news cycle that lurches from one eye-popping crisis to the next.

Criticism has seeped into this vacuum—among major cable news channels in the past two years, half of all mentions of the IRA have been on Fox News, where it has been portrayed as wasteful and likened to far-left totalitarianism.

“Imagine if Trump had passed this,” said Leiserowitz. “He is a salesman, he made damn sure his signature was on those stimulus checks. Republicans are just much better at crowing about their successes than Democrats. There’s been a lack of focused messaging and the media is not inspired to do the job for them.”

Nadine Luci, a 60-year-old resident of Pennsylvania’s Rochester township who usually votes Democrat, worries about pollution and the climate but said she hasn’t “heard much at all” about the “Inflation Act.” In fact, she wasn’t even sure it had passed.

“I thought it was shut down a couple years ago by Republicans,” she said. “But if it goes through I think it would be a positive thing for Pennsylvania.”

“It’s not tree-huggers and environmentalists in San Francisco or New York that are going to get hurt if the IRA is repealed.”

When told the bill earmarked historic levels of funding for green technology, Luci said it sounded “really good.”

“We all could use it, everybody could use it,” said Luci. “But no, I haven’t heard much.”

Frustratingly for Democrats, this appears to be a trend. Leiserowitz’s polling has found that when voters are actually provided a description of the IRA an overwhelming three-quarters of them support it. “It’s just an enormous wasted opportunity,” he said.

Proclaiming the Inflation Reduction Act has been a challenge from its birth, which required assent from Joe Manchin, the coal baron senator and most conservative Democrat in Congress. It was bestowed a clumsy name that belies what it is—an enormous climate and energy bill with some healthcare add-ons—and has befuddled basic public recognition. “I wish I hadn’t called it that,” Biden lamented last year.

“It has been challenging because it’s technical in nature,” McCarthy said of the bill. “It’s been a little slow to energize people and for it to become a personal thing for people to grab onto. It’s a big bill but I do think we are beginning to see momentum gathering around it.”

The dense, 274-page bill outlines some Manchin-friendly measures controversial with environmental groups—mandated oil and gas drilling leases, dollops of cash for unproven carbon capture projects—but at its core was a shot of adrenaline to the heart of the climate movement and to an economy ravaged by Covid.

Uncapped tax credits for clean energy for the next decade that could top $1 trillion, grants for industrial emissions reduction, rebates for Americans to buy electric cars, incentives for people to get heat pumps or electric stoves at home—the IRA almost has it all in terms of support for clean energy, if not penalties for the fossil fuel pollution causing the climate crisis.

The benefits are set be profound. Goldman Sachs, which has said “so far at least, the reality is living up to or even exceeding expectations,” forecasts $3 trillion in clean energy spending as a result of the bill, with the US treasury coming up with an even more eye-watering figure—$5 trillion—in global economic benefits by 2050 from reduced carbon and air pollution.

Battery factories are sprouting in faded corners of St Louis, Missouri; Weirton, West Virginia; and in rural Georgia. At-risk auto manufacturing plants are being retooled for electric cars across eight states; a former paper mill in Lincoln, Maine, is being reimagined as a massive energy storage facility; solar farms are blanketing parts of Arizona and Texas and Indiana; clean aluminum production is starting in Kentucky and green steel in JD Vance’s Ohio hometown.

Many of the dozens of new projects are in “places where opportunity has left,” as Ali Zaidi, the White House climate adviser, has put it, with a vision of reinvigorated blue-collar towns helping the US close the gap on the clean energy powerhouse of China.

“We are already looking at it as a real pivotal moment,” said Dawn Lippert, chief executive of Elemental Impact, a nonprofit investor in climate tech, who added that “our portfolio companies see extraordinary opportunity in rural areas of the US” because of their manufacturing history.

Politically, Republican rural and exurban areas have received the lion’s share of the spending, a fact that’s causing growing nervousness among some GOP members of Congress over the prospect of Trump reversing new job creation in their districts, even after they voted against it.

“It’s not tree-huggers and environmentalists in San Francisco or New York that are going to get hurt if the IRA is repealed,” said Keefe. “It’s working-class people in Georgia, Michigan, and North Carolina that are going to get hurt because that’s where these these projects are going.”

If it survives intact over the next decade, the IRA could help create 9m new jobs, one analysis shows, while pushing down emissions 40 percent by 2030, putting the US within reach of its target to cut planet-heating polling in half by this point.

Young people, people of color, and suburban women do care about climate change and Harris needs to motivate them to get to the polls.”

This progress is incremental and often invisible, though, with only a fraction of IRA funding already committed. In the former steel town of Weirton, West Virginia, for instance, many residents said they have not yet seen a resulting surge in the economy.

“We’ve been made a lot of promises here [that] haven’t been met,” said Dave, a retiree of the former Weirton steel mill in an interview at Dee Jay’s barbecue restaurant, adding he is “no fan” of Bidenomics or the Inflation Reduction Act.

Carol Hrabovsky, who owns Irish Pub, one of the only remaining bars on Weirton’s Main Street, said locals are still struggling with a lack of jobs and the high “price of everything.” Once a Democrat and now a Trump supporter, she said the IRA won’t convince her to vote for the Democratic nominee, and she believes most of her neighbors feel the same.

“They shouldn’t have even called it the Inflation Reduction Act,” she said, adding that she is worried about Biden and Harris fostering “communism.”

Other lives are starting to be touched more positively—more than 3 million American families have already used tax credits to upgrade their homes with solar panels, heat pumps, water heaters or insulation, for example. The IRA may in time become a piece of the national furniture despite Republican hostility, much like Obamacare.

But can it help win Harris the election? Climate isn’t ranked as a leading priority by many voters, but Leiserowitz said there are opportunities within three climate-conscious groups that Harris badly needs in November—young people, people of color, and suburban women. They could tip the balance in a close election.

“Those demographics do care about climate change and Harris needs to motivate them to get to the polls,” he said. “I don’t understand why they aren’t doing this. She has said that Trump thinks climate change is a hoax, which is a step in the right direction, but you need to connect the dots for people.”