Climate Litigation Hands China a Strategic Victory While Harming America

For years, climate activists have insisted that America must undergo a rapid, top-down “green transition,” pursuing sweeping mandates that Congress has repeatedly rejected. Unable to legislate their agenda, they have turned to the courts, a strategy that has broad national security implications.

This week’s Washington Post blockbuster report reveals one particularly stark consequence of our rapid transition: China’s military can cause rolling blackouts across the United States by remotely manipulating green technologies they sell here.

The U.S. Supreme Court is considering this week whether to take up Suncor Energy v. Boulder, a case that exemplifies how the legal system is being manipulated to drive national climate policy.

In 2018, Boulder, Colorado, now joined by nearly three-dozen other Democrat-led state and municipal governments, sued America’s energy producers, claiming the sale of their products contributed to global climate change. The lawsuits argue the energy companies’ alleged role in climate change has caused a “public nuisance” in their localities and are seeking billions of dollars in damages to purportedly mitigate future local climate change costs.

When activist plaintiffs weaponize public-nuisance lawsuits to undercut U.S. energy production, China is the geopolitical beneficiary.

This flood of lawsuits has undermined American energy security. Orchestrated by progressive activists and their mass tort trial lawyers, scores of climate lawsuits effectively identical to Boulder’s have been filed in concert by left-wing states, cities, and counties around the country. This is a “flood-the-zone” effort designed to overwhelm energy producers through litigation rather than policymaking.

In May, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Boulder’s suit could proceed in state court, prompting a request from the energy defendants for the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. This Friday, the Court will consider whether to grant the energy companies’ petition for review.

If courts side with activists, energy policy will no longer be set by federal agencies or elected lawmakers accountable to voters. Instead, it becomes the province of judges and trial lawyers. Boulder makes that vision explicit, seeking massive damages to finance “green-fit” infrastructure and public-health spending. But the deeper security problem is that this litigation wave aligns perfectly with the strategic aims of the Chinese Communist Party.

China has spent years running sophisticated influence operations inside the United States aimed at promoting policies that weaken American energy independence. Groups operating as CCP fronts, like Energy Foundation China, quietly fund research, convene activist networks, and shape state and local debates to push the U.S. toward green-technology dependence, knowing that China dominates the global supply chain for solar panels, EV batteries, and rare-earth minerals.

By encouraging America to abandon reliable domestic energy sources, China strengthens its own geopolitical leverage while eroding one of America’s greatest economic advantages in our access to abundant, affordable energy.

China’s motives are not hidden. It produces the vast majority of the world’s solar-panel components, more than 60% of global rare-earth minerals, and nearly all manufacturing equipment for solar PV technologies. These are the building blocks of the very technologies climate litigants want courts to mandate.

Most alarmingly, as Washington Post revealed, companies tied to China’s military have been caught selling energy-grid components with undisclosed back doors that allow Beijing to remotely disrupt U.S. power systems. Beijing also imposed export controls on critical minerals, weaponizing supply-chain dominance for geopolitical leverage.

Meanwhile, China continues to increase its own emissions and built a startling 95 gigawatts of new coal-fired power plants in 2024, all while promoting green-energy adoption abroad.

Every step America takes toward dependency on Chinese-controlled technologies is a step toward vulnerability.

Climate litigation accelerates that dependency. If courts impose billions in liability on American energy producers, production will shrink, prices will rise, and investment will shift away from domestic resources toward dangerous green technologies exported by Communist China.

The Boulder lawsuit and its counterparts represent more than just a major national security risk. They hand China a strategic victory by undermining U.S. competitiveness, weakening domestic energy producers, and driving the U.S. toward reliance on foreign supply chains dominated by an authoritarian adversary. This is why China applauds aggressive climate activism in the U.S. even as it ignores its own environmental obligations.

America’s energy policy should be made by elected officials, not outsourced to state-court judges acting on activist petitions. If courts refuse to take a stand it will become much harder to reverse the reckless momentum of America’s green-transition policies. CCP influence operations will succeed.

The Supreme Court should take up Suncor and make clear that climate policy belongs in the hands of elected officials. If we fail to draw that line, we risk allowing America’s adversaries to exploit our legal system to shape a dangerous future of American energy dependence upon Communist China.

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