Senate Hearing Explores China’s Role In Funding U.S. Climate Groups

Alleging that foreign money from entities tied to the Chinese Communist party help to bankroll climate advocacy groups to pursue litigation against U.S. energy companies, Texas Senator Ted Cruz chaired a committee hearing looking into the question on Wednesday, June 25. The session, titled “Climate Lawfare and the Courts: How Foreign Actors Are Undermining American Energy Independence,” focused on claims that organizations with ties to the CCP, particularly the Energy Foundation China (EFC), are funding and directing U.S. environmental groups to push climate litigation and policies that weaken American energy producers while advancing China’s economic and geopolitical interests.

The Elephant in the Room: Does China Fund Green Groups?

The hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, which Cruz chairs, featured witnesses from both sides of the question, and often heated exchanges involving senators from both parties. Witnesses included Republican Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach; Scott Walter, President of the Capital Research Center, a Republican-leaning think tank; and David Arkush, Director of the climate program at the left-leaning Public Citizen activist group. Cruz, the only GOP senator to show up for the hearing, was flanked by four Democrats: Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut, and Vermont Sen. Peter Welch.

Cruz alleged in his opening statement and throughout the hearing that EFC has in recent years injected millions of dollars to U.S. advocacy groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) in support of their litigation and messaging targeting the oil, gas, and coal industries. Those efforts align with China’s strategic interests given that the country controls critical supply chains for critical minerals, batteries, solar panels, and other energy technologies.

On that latter point, Walter cited a report by Just Facts Daily which found that “China supplies 78% of the world’s solar cells, 80% of the world’s lithium-ion battery chemicals, and 73% of the world’s finished battery cells.” Walter’s written testimony also presented a table detailing that 14 leading environmental groups who help fund climate lawfare enjoyed total funding of more than $497 million during 2023, according to IRS records. Cruz presented tax records detailing EFC contributions totaling $195,000 to NRDC in 2021 and $820,000 to RMI in the same year.

Whitehouse, the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, dismissed Republican concerns as a “conspiracy theory” designed to distract attention away from influence campaigns run by the oil and gas industry itself. In an exchange, Whitehouse and Arkush accused the industry of deploying “dark money” funding to obstruct action to prevent climate change, and of spending millions on lobbying efforts to delay the transition to clean energy.

Does China Push Green Lawfare Efforts?

In his own questioning, Sen. Cruz explored Arkush’s advocacy for what Public Citizen refers to as “climate homicide,” a philosophy which contends that executives at oil and gas companies whose emissions are somehow killing people should be prosecuted for murder. That line of questioning led to a remarkable and explosive exchange.

“You wrote an article in 2023 entitled, “Climate Homicide: Prosecuting big oil for climate deaths,” Cruz began. “In that article, you argue that oil and gas executives could be prosecuted – not just sued but criminally prosecuted – for homicide, for murder based on climate change. Is that right?”

“That’s right,” Arkush replied, adding, “I mean, I would be careful with the wording because murder, again, is a technical term and definitely we’re not arguing that they could be prosecuted for first degree murder.”

“But you want to put them in prison for homicide, lock them up, treat them as criminals,” Cruz asked, seemingly incredulous.

“Yes, you can, you’d prosecute them for murder,” Arkush agreed. Cruz ended it by calling Arkush’s position a “moonbeam, wacky theory.”

Throughout the hearing, Kobach advocated against the merits of climate public nuisance suits, using previous dismissals as evidence of the lack of feasibility of such claims, a topic which Sen. Cruz also discussed during his questioning. Sen. Cruz and Kobach specifically pointed out that to this point, no climate case has succeeded. In response, Whitehouse and Arkush drew parallels between climate litigation legal theories and those used in lawsuits against tobacco and pharmaceutical companies.

“If an industry is lying to the public about the dangers of the product that it sells,” Whitehouse asked, “is that established to be a legally actionable situation and is the tobacco lawsuit an example of that?”

Arkush: “That’s exactly right, there are not novel legal theories…if you’re responsible for harms, you pay for them. You can’t commit fraud to consumers, you can’t engage in a fraud racket. And a fraud racket is exactly what big tobacco engaged in and was successfully sued by the U.S. Department of Justice.”

It is fair to note here that Public Citizen and other similar groups have attempted to draw this liability analogy between Big Tobacco and Big Oil for at least 30 years. It’s a comparison which policymakers and courts have thus far rejected.

Sen. Cruz and Kobach highlighted the Environmental Law Institute Climate Judiciary Project’s “training and indoctrination” of judges, arguing that it is not appropriate for sitting judges to receive climate science education from plaintiffs directly tied to climate litigation.

“Is it appropriate for sitting judges to receive climate science education from advocacy groups like the Environmental Law Institute Groups that are directly tied to the plaintiffs in active litigation?” Cruz asked.

“No, Mr. Chairman, I do not believe it is any more than it would be appropriate for a group of justices to go on an extensive training conference and be trained in how to dispute or defend the fossil fuel industry,” Kobach replied, adding that the role of judges in any case is to be a neutral arbiter of the law.

In response, Arkush pointed out that fossil fuel company executives sit on ELI’s board, specifically naming British oil giants BP and Shell.

Bottom Line

While the hearing was more about raising public awareness than to inform any policy action, it did illustrate how the battleground over climate policy has now shifted. Over most of the last 16 years, advocates for aggressive federal climate change policies have focused their efforts on the struggle to enact sweeping climate legislation and regulations, with some success.

Now, as many of those past successes are being rolled back by the second Trump presidency, climate advocates have shifted their focus to the nation’s courts. While few question the right of these groups to pursue their theories and claims, it does seem fair to question whether foreign interests, from China or anywhere else outside the United States, should be footing the bill.