‘Highly Coordinated Activist Network’ Is Undermining Trump’s Plan For Energy Dominance, Report Warns

A new report sent to lawmakers across the United States this week warns of radical environmental groups attempting to “weaken critical power sources at a time when we need them most.”

American Energy Institute CEO Jason Isaac sent a letter and report, obtained by The Daily Wire, to Republican lawmakers and leaders in Washington, D.C., and across the United States outlining the threat from “a small but highly coordinated activist network committed to restricting American energy production.” The report from the institute outlines the scope of the threat to American energy and names some of the key players.

“[T]his coalition has gained outsized influence through a billion-dollar activist ecosystem, coordinated national operations, and targeted litigation designed to obstruct or delay U.S. energy development. These efforts strengthen America’s rivals by restricting domestic production and limiting our ability to compete on the global stage,” says the letter.

The 18-page report notes that the coalition of green groups and leftist organizations is influencing U.S. energy policy through “its outsized influence on Democratic politics and policymaking and through its fervent opposition to the Trump administration’s efforts to unleash American energy.”

Green groups and trained activists are undermining American energy dominance through close relationships with influential Democrats, costly legal challenges, protests, and sometimes sabotage of major energy projects. The report lists as some of the major players in the effort to restrict fossil fuel use the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club, and Greenpeace.

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Green groups have long opposed oil, gas, and coal, and often oppose zero-carbon energy projects if they are nuclear or hydropower. The green coalition has suffered a major setback recently in a court case that has the potential to bankrupt Greenpeace in the United States.

Earlier this year, a jury in North Dakota found three Greenpeace groups liable for $670 million in damages over the role they played in a protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline. A judge later reduced the damages by about half to $345 million.

The protest took place nearly a decade ago as green groups obstructed progress on the pipeline for roughly a decade. The protest resulted in charges and jail time for some activists, such as Jessica Reznicek, who was found guilty of conspiracy to damage an energy facility and sentenced to eight years in federal prison.

The report suggests that the green coalition is prepared to renew its attack on major, reliable energy sources, however, as the coalition pushes forward radical changes to the United States’ energy infrastructure such as those envisioned in the Green New Deal. The goal of the Green New Deal is to “decarbonize the U.S. economy within ten years,” according to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who helped write a resolution for the radical commitment in 2019.

Proponents of the Green New Deal, such as the Sierra Club, often state as added aims “racial and economic equity” by favoring minorities for jobs and opportunities created by the radical transition to intermittent wind and solar energy.

The American Energy Institute report says that, despite the media coverage generated by claims of catastrophic climate predictions, the effort to undermine fossil fuel production in the United States is being pushed by “well-coordinated campaigns funded by donor networks with billions of dollars in resources,” not grassroots activists.

“Major funders of these green groups include the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Arabella Advisors network, the Rockefeller network, the Tides network, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Ford Foundation,” says the report.

The campaign represents a significant threat to Trump’s agenda in essentially every respect because energy impacts every major issue in some way.

“These organizations form a united front with one goal: crippling the American energy industry,” the report states. “Despite the broad unpopularity of their agenda, the environmental groups in this report intend to leverage their aggressive activism, deep political ties, and opaque funding to drive political change in the U.S. – with potentially disastrous consequences. If they are allowed to succeed, the environmental alarmists’ agenda will bring about the end of U.S. energy independence.”