On Earth Day, Jason Isaac, CEO and founder of the American Energy Institute and former Texas state representative, joined Dan Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer to offer a decidedly upbeat assessment of where the environmental movement stands as a political force, where the energy sector is heading in the wake of the Iran conflict, and why small modular nuclear reactors may be the most consequential energy development of the coming decade.
Isaac said the environmental movement has lost significant organizing capacity because federal funding that was flowing to climate activist organizations through nonprofit grant contracts has been identified and cut off by the Trump administration. The movement has largely retreated from high-profile public disruption tactics and shifted its energy into litigation, attempting through the courts what it cannot achieve through popular support or legislative majorities. But that legal strategy is also encountering resistance. Three climate nuisance lawsuits against energy companies were thrown out in Maryland recently, and California has paused all of its climate nuisance suits against energy producers in light of unfavorable recent rulings, apparently concluding that continuing to spend taxpayer money on cases that keep losing is no longer defensible even in Sacramento. The Supreme Court’s recent eight-to-one ruling in a Chevron case involving the federal officer removal statute also has significant implications for the climate lobby’s litigation strategy, with Justice Thomas writing for the court in a decision that tightens the procedural pathways available for state-level climate suits against energy companies.
On the actual state of environmental conditions, Isaac said the metrics the environmental movement itself identified as its key indicators tell a story of improvement rather than catastrophe. Polar bear populations have grown from under ten thousand in the 1970s to approximately forty thousand today. Miami has not become Atlantis as predicted. The United States is the world leader in clean air quality and ranks first in access to clean and safe drinking water, achievements Isaac said were driven by market innovation and sensible regulation rather than by the policy agenda of climate advocacy groups. He said the organizations claiming credit for environmental progress are largely responsible for driving up the cost of energy without producing the outcomes they advertise.
He specifically addressed Illinois’s effort to implement a low-carbon fuel standard modeled on California’s program, which he said would add fifteen to twenty-five cents per gallon to gasoline prices in a state that already double-taxes fuel by applying a sales tax to the gas tax. The American Energy Institute has petitioned the EPA to block the low-carbon fuel standard in states other than California, which uniquely has statutory authority under the Clean Air Act to impose such regulations. He said no other state has the authority to implement the standard and that the EPA should reject it as outside the scope of state regulatory power.
The Iran conflict’s impact on global energy markets was a significant part of the conversation. Isaac said approximately eighty to ninety percent of Iranian oil exports were going to China at discounted prices, likely in informal exchange arrangements that also involved weapons and other goods. That supply has now been disrupted, and the global market is responding by redirecting tankers toward the United States, which Isaac said has increased its daily crude oil exports from four million to five million barrels just in the past few weeks. He said this represents a meaningful and potentially durable realignment, because once buyers establish relationships with stable and predictable American suppliers, the appeal of returning to Iranian supply even after hostilities end is reduced. He cited Venezuela’s neighbor Guyana as another growing source of heavy crude that is attracting interest from buyers seeking stability over price discounts, and said the broader trend is clearly toward diversification away from suppliers operating under sanctions or in active conflict zones.
On the question of alternative energy sources, Isaac said the policy framework has shifted from what he called an all-of-the-above approach to a focus on affordability and reliability, and that wind, solar, and batteries fail both tests. Wind and solar are intermittent by nature, heavily dependent on Chinese supply chains for their components, extremely land-intensive, and what the Energy Secretary has called parasitic to the grid because they require conventional generation backup for every megawatt of nameplate capacity installed. He noted that even Michael Moore documented the environmental costs of industrial-scale wind and solar in his film Planet of the Humans, observing that the left has shifted from protesting mountaintop removal for coal to opposing mountaintop removal for wind turbines without apparent awareness of the irony. The reliable and affordable energy sources, Isaac said, are natural gas, coal, and nuclear, and he said he has no objection to people choosing to drive electric vehicles or install solar panels on their own roofs as long as those choices are not mandated or subsidized by people who cannot afford them.
On nuclear, he said small modular reactors are advancing rapidly and that three new reactors will reach criticality before July 4th this year, an important milestone in the commercial validation of the technology. He said scale production is probably seven to ten years away, but that the near-term application for small modular reactors is powering the data centers being built across the country to support artificial intelligence infrastructure, initially supplemented by natural gas and eventually replaced by on-site nuclear generation providing steady baseline power. He added that small modular reactors are also important producers of medical isotopes used in cancer treatment, which the United States currently imports with a short shelf life, and said a Texas facility reaching criticality within months will help address that supply chain vulnerability while contributing to cancer treatment capacity.