On Chicago’s Morning Answer, host Dan Proft spoke with Benjamin Zycher, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, about growing concerns over environmental groups’ use of the courts to advance climate policy. The discussion followed a letter from the pro–energy independence group Power the Future, which accused the Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project of improperly influencing federal judges through private seminars and training sessions.
Zycher acknowledged the concern but said the broader impact of such efforts has been limited. “Climate lawfare” lawsuits, he noted, have almost uniformly failed in federal and state courts, with the exception of an ongoing case in Honolulu. He argued that judges inclined to attend such seminars are already sympathetic to the underlying positions, limiting the broader effect. However, Zycher agreed that the lack of transparency—such as environmental groups boasting of judicial contacts and later scrubbing judges’ names—creates the appearance of impropriety.
The conversation also touched on reported ties between some climate lawfare groups and entities linked to the Chinese Communist Party. Zycher pointed to a Senate subcommittee hearing led by Senator Ted Cruz that detailed CCP-affiliated funding streams. He said the foreign influence is troubling but emphasized that the larger issue is the constitutional one. “The real problem,” he argued, “is that climate lawfare represents an assault on the U.S. Constitution by trying to impose policy through the judiciary rather than Congress.”
Zycher criticized past administrations, particularly Obama and Biden, for providing federal grants to organizations that later turned around and sued the government. He welcomed what he described as a shift under Trump toward prioritizing market forces and reducing subsidies and mandates for favored energy sectors. While cautioning against slogans such as “energy independence” or “energy dominance,” Zycher said the goal should be a system where market prices, not political mandates, guide investment and production decisions.
According to Zycher, that approach would strengthen the U.S. energy sector and provide more stability over the long term. “Among Donald Trump’s many instincts, his instincts on energy policy are really quite sound,” he said.