BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has publicly shifted toward what he calls energy pragmatism, admitting that society now demands a balanced approach to meeting power needs rather than adherence to rigid climate agendas. This could be a pivotal moment for global energy policy, as one of the planet’s most powerful financial players steps back from decades of ill-advised “green” mandates.
BlackRock is the world’s top financial manager, overseeing more than $10 trillion in assets that sway markets, companies and even governments. It delivers risk analysis tools that guide how firms allocate capital, set strategies and tackle issues from energy supply to corporate governance. BlackRock’s hand is in everything from pension funds to sovereign wealth, where its votes and investments steer decisions affecting wide swaths of society.
Fink points to China, which leads in new nuclear plants and vast solar installations while importing record volumes of natural gas and oil to meet surging demand. “Society has moved into a better position of having more pragmatism,” Finkstates, “and what you’re hearing from me is I’m echoing what we’re hearing from our clients.” Better to have clients than ideologues steering the ship.
Fink’s tone matches his earlier report of $4 billion lost in ESG-linked assets in 2023, a hit from states like Florida and others pulling funds over concerns about politicized investing. BlackRockdropped the “weaponized” ESG label by mid-2023 and exited the Net Zero Asset Managers group in January 2025 amid antitrust probes and backlash from state governments.
Clients forced Fink’s hand after years of BlackRock deploying their money to advance ESG and related priorities, often with the encouragement of left-leaning managers of public pension funds like New York’s. Fiduciary duty – maximizing investor returns – had taken a backseat as the firm lobbied corporations on “woke” interests ranging from board diversity to cuts in industrial emissions. Now, with lawsuits mounting and states divesting billions, Fink invokes thatsame duty to justify pragmatism.
Fink’s reversal exposes the scam. BlackRock wielded trillions to warp board politics and policies, betraying investors for a clique’s dreams. Now, scrutiny and an outflow of funds force truth. Fink’s admission also validates what skeptics argued: Climate narratives overstated risks to advance costly fantasies. Data show no increase in extreme weather, for which emissions of CO2 have been absurdly blamed. Hurricanes, floods and droughts have followed historical norms.
Climate alarmists’ infatuation with wind and solar energy has run into the reality of physics. So-called “renewables” falter where reliability counts. Their intermittency strands grids during times of peak demands, hiking costs for families and factories. In contrast, fossil fuels and nuclear power human prosperity. They provide the dense, affordable and reliable energy required by modern civilization.
The campaign to abruptly replace them with low-density, weather-dependent alternatives was a mathematical impossibility from the start. A foundation of coal, natural gas and nuclear energy is needed to maintain a modern standard of living. This is why Asian industrial economies continually added fossil fuel capacity behind a veneer of “green” pretense.
Look at global patterns. Growth in wind and solar capacity covers only a small part of rising electricity needs. China builds nuclear faster than anyone and guzzles oil and gas imports to fuel factories and homes. Despite net-zero pledges, India accelerated domestic coal production while exploring small modular reactors to power its 1.4 billion people and hit 8% growth targets.
Even European countries that once championed rapid shifts to “renewables” began to reconsider after the 2022 energy crisis exposed vulnerabilities. In Germany, factories shut down and household budgets strained when Russian gas supplies tightened and wind and solar stalled during calm or cloudy periods.
After years of climate-driven experimentation – forced by deluded or dishonest politicians and business titans – the failures became too many and too consequential to be ignored. Little wonder that Larry Fink has turned his ear away from the rhetoric of alarm and toward client demands for strategic guidance.
Vijay Jayaraj is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Va. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research associate with the Changing Oceans Research Unit at University of British Columbia, Canada.
The professional climate alarmists aren’t fading away. They’re practically mutating. Louder, angrier, and more desperate than ever, they’ve learned that if outright activism draws too much scrutiny, the next best move is infiltration and subversion. Now they’re embedding themselves deeper inside trusted institutions and laundering their message through official channels.
Some in the media want Americans to believe Democrats are quietly retreating from aggressive climate messaging. The opposite is true. The most zealous voices in academia and government are amplifying the panic, using their credentials not as evidence of expertise but as weapons of intimidation. Their “science” isn’t about discovery. It’s about control.
Michael Mann is the perfect example. He turned a routine Olympic broadcast into a climate sermon, claiming snow conditions were proof of global collapse. That wasn’t scientific analysis—it was fearmongering presented as commentary.
Texas A&M professor Andrew Dessler follows the same script. In one moment, Dessler argued that economic models used by plaintiffs to calculate damages for the so-called social cost of carbon are “made up.” Then, in the next, he is engaged in emotional outbursts. In academia today, volume and anger aren’t liabilities; they’re virtues. The showmanship draws attention. In any other field, emotion like that would be disqualifying. That’s not science; it’s performance.
This culture of performative panic has moved into a new and more dangerous phase: subverting institutions through the bureaucratic backdoor. Look at the Federal Judicial Center (FJC), which recently and quietly pulled the climate chapter from the online version of its official Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. They did so because the chapter, written by activist scientists pushing extreme climate narratives, triggered a backlash that threatened the FJC’s credibility and funding.
But here’s the trick: the chapter didn’t disappear. It’s still live on the National Academies of Sciences (NASEM) website, where the organization has explicitly stood by itin the pages of The New York Times. The Academies, which hold the copyright, may even continue printing versions that include it. While the FJC shields itself from scrutiny, it quietly directs readers to NASEM, outsourcing climate indoctrination to a proxy. This is by no means a retreat. It is reinvention — a deliberate laundering of the same activism through new institutions to preserve the illusion of legitimacy.
The same academics who once claimed to be neutral arbiters of truth are now weaponizing institutions to hide their activism behind bureaucratic credibility. They’re embedding their ideology deeper into the machinery of government, courts, and policy schools—places the public rarely looks. This is the next phase of their radical climate crusade. When their narrative collapses under scrutiny, they simply shift it to another institution and continue the mission.
Meanwhile, ordinary Americans pay the price. Soaring energy costs, unreliable grids, and overregulation are the fruit of policies born in ivory towers and rubber-stamped by agencies too afraid to challenge the climate orthodoxy. Families choosing between groceries and heating bills don’t need another federal manual telling judges that skepticism is heresy—they need affordable, dependable energy. Climate extremism punishes the people who keep this country running.
Those who believe the climate radicals are retreating are fooling themselves. They’re not backing down—they’re burrowing in. Every time they’re exposed, they shift venues or change labels, but the mission stays the same: centralize control in the name of “saving the planet.” When power over how we heat our homes, drive to work, or grow food moves from citizens to bureaucrats, liberty vanishes with it.
The veneer of science gives this movement authority it doesn’t deserve. Scratch that surface, and it’s politics all the way down. Real science welcomes debate. Climate extremism silences it. The FJC’s quiet erasure and NASEM’s defiance show just how far this has gone—the climate cult doesn’t compromise; it adapts.
Americans need to see this clearly: the radicals aren’t losing ground. They’re evolving into something even more strategic. It’s time for those who believe in freedom, affordability, and reason to speak up before bureaucracy and ideology complete the takeover.
Mr. Isaac, a former member of the Texas House of Representatives, is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and CEO of the American Energy Institute.
On a crisp, sun-drenched afternoon in the spring of 2023, I found myself walking down Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C., in front of the William Jefferson Clinton Building, headquarters of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Standing in its shadow, I wondered when, or if, sanity would ever return to the building. My mind drifted to the regulatory malfeasance that gave this agency power to treat carbon dioxide (CO2) as a pollutant, the 2009 Endangerment Finding.
For years, this bureaucratic decree masqueraded as settled science. Climate zealots claimed CO2 and other greenhouse gases threatened public health as agents of planetary overheating, ignoring both a paucity of supporting data and contradictory evidence that inexorably accumulated.
Now, three years after my visit, EPA has rescinded the regulation as it applies to motor vehicles. The basis of its action is twofold: First, the agency has concluded that by attempting to regulate greenhouse gases, EPA exceeded its authority under the 1970 Clean Air Act. Second, the environmental effect of regulating tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases is negligible.
There is more to be done. Reason and good sense would have the EPA remove the Endangerment Finding’s hold over industrial emissions of greenhouse gases, like those coming from power plants, and would undertake to dismantle the rule’s flimsy scientific justifications.
Nevertheless, EPA’s action undermines an ideological foundation for the broad attacks on fossil fuels that have constrained American prosperity and choked the developing world’s aspirations for modern lifestyles.
The 2009 regulation was used to justify the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan – part of the so-called War on Coal – and tailpipe emissions standards that forced unwanted electric vehicles onto dealership lots. The rule has contributed to the closing of power plants, energy shortages, high electricity prices, and multiple billion-dollar losses for car manufacturers whose customers mostly prefer internal combustion engines. It has also fueled endless litigation against producers of hydrocarbon fuels.
Because CO2 is necessary for all life, beginning with its role in plant photosynthesis, regulation of the gas gave EPA jurisdiction over the entire U.S. economy. Climate crusaders abroad followed EPA’s lead.
Worldwide, the economic waste resulting from the rule is staggering. The Climate Policy Initiative estimates that between 2011 and 2020 that climate spending totaled $4.8 trillion. Estimates for “energy transition investment” – money dumped into the wind, solar and EV rat hole – was $2.3 trillion in 2025 alone.
That is trillions diverted from healthcare, infrastructure, education and genuine alleviation of suffering and advancement of human flourishing. Imagine those resources being directed to improving carbon-intensive energy sectors that have produced the wealthiest and healthiest civilizations in all of history.
Since the dawn of the industrial age, we have witnessed an unprecedented increase in global life expectancy. We have seen a drastic reduction in deaths from natural disasters – not because the weather is milder, but because people are better protected by modern infrastructure and technology made possible by fossil fuels. We have achieved historic highs in agricultural production, feeding a population of 8 billion.
CO2 has played a pivotal role in the greening of the Earth, acting as an atmospheric fertilizer that boosts crop yields and expands forests. Even methane, demonized alongside CO2, is merely a byproduct of a livestock industry essential for providing protein to a ballooning global population. Emissions of neither gas contribute significantly to global temperatures.
Once the EPA designated CO2 a legal hazard, U.S. diplomats, aid agencies and technical experts carried that framing into global climate negotiations, development programs and financing arrangements.
Over time, the EPA’s stance became a de facto reference point for regulators elsewhere. If the U.S. “gold standard” for environmental protection treated CO2 as an endangerment, ministries from Europe to Asia would use similar language in national climate laws.
With the EPA backing away from its regulation of greenhouse gases, developing countries should waste no time in severing whatever restrictions Western climate overseers have placed on their use of fossil fuels. For too long, climate policies have impeded economic growth and denied access to reliable supplies of electricity, to safer indoor fuels for cooking and heating, to refrigeration and to clean water. The result has been higher rates of morbidity and mortality among the world’s poor.
CO2 is not the enemy of humankind. Misguided attempts to criminalize its emissions are!
Vijay Jayaraj is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundationand Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Va.He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research associate with the Changing Oceans Research Unit at University of British Columbia, Canada.
On March 10, Pima County residents will decide whether to fund another 20-year, $2+ billion transportation plan after the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) failed to deliver on the last one. Two propositions will appear on their ballot this month related to this plan.
Proposition 418 would approve the new “RTA Next” transportation plan. Proposition 419 would extend the existing ½-cent sales tax to fund it. Both propositions must be passed for the plan to move forward. If approved, the new tax would begin April 1, 2026, just a few months before the original RTA plan officially expires in June.
The RTA is an independent taxing district specifically for Pima County. Its board is comprised of elected officials from local, tribal, and state governments that approve and oversee transportation projects. Back in 2006, voters were promised countywide improvements to roads, transit, and other infrastructure, funded by a 20-year timeline and a dedicated ½-cent sales tax increase. Fast forward to 2026, and several projects are unfinished, or never even started at all. Now, voters are being asked to extend the tax for another 20 years to finish what should have already been completed. That’s not a plan; it’s a bailout.
The project list for the RTA Next consists of multiple road improvements, bicycle infrastructure upgrades, transit improvements, and more. Many of these are the projects left unfinished during the first 20 years. They continue to blame their failures on Covid, the great recession of 2008, population growth not matching projections. The reality is that the actual problem is staring themselves in the mirror…
Climate activists, frustrated by unsuccessful climate lawsuits, have increasingly turned to “climate superfund” legislation as a new tool to make oil and gas companies pay for climate damages.
Notably, these state-level bills seek to impose hefty fees or fines on energy producers for the costs of climate change, a punitive measure for energy producers for decades-old, lawful activities. But this punishing dynamic backfired when confronted with reality. In multiple states, climate superfund proposals have run ashore amid bipartisan concern that they would do more harm than good, particularly by driving up energy costs for consumers.
As of early 2026, only Vermont and New York have actually enacted climate superfund laws, both in 2024, with a dozen other states introducing similar bills, including California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Virginia, to name a few. However, about half of these attempts have stalled or died in state legislatures.
New Jersey’s experience is a prime example. Lawmakers there introduced an ambitious Climate Superfund Act in 2025, but even some initial supporters grew uneasy once they considered the practical impacts.
In a Senate Budget Committee hearing on the bill in January 2026, legislators from both parties openly questioned the premise of punishing companies for past legal emissions and warned the costs would simply be passed on to New Jersey residents . “Each and every one of us… [is] relying on [fossil fuels] in one way or another in your everyday life,” noted Democratic Sen. Paul Sarlo, highlighting the irony that the state itself remains dependent on the very fuels it was seeking to penalize.
Sarlo, the committee chair, reluctantly advanced the bill out of committee but bluntly warned he would vote “no” on final passage unless major changes were made. Republican Sen. Declan O’Scanlon was even more direct, blasting the retroactive fines as “unfair” and cautioning that “New Jerseyans themselves would end up paying the price at the pump or for their utility bills” if the state tries to punish energy producers.
In the end, New Jersey’s proposal never made it to a floor vote before the legislative session ended in January 2026, effectively killing the bill (for now).
New Jersey is hardly alone. In California, two “Polluters Pay Climate Superfund” bills (SB 684 and AB 1243) garnered significant attention in early 2025 but were quietly shelved after initial committee hearings, as lawmakers grew wary of the potential economic fallout. Connecticut’s climate superfund bill got a public hearing in March 2025 but then died in committee without a vote. In Hawaii, a proposed superfund never advanced at all before the 2025 session ended. Virginia’s attempt was “immediately rejected” after a bipartisan subcommittee vote to table the bill, effectively killing it. And in Maryland, lawmakers introduced an ambitious Climate Superfund-style bill (the RENEW Act) only to strip it down to a mere study of climate costs, with all polluter-pays provisions removed.
Taken together, these failures underscore how even in climate-conscious states, many policymakers got cold feet when confronted with the legal risks, economic trade-offs, and voter backlash potentially involved.
If this is the case, are climate superfund schemes really aligned with what the public wants policymakers to focus on?
Activists insist that making Big Oil pay billions is a matter of justice and necessary to fund climate resilience. But for most Americans, the more immediate priority is relief from high energy prices, not new climate-linked taxes that could raise those costs further.
A national poll of likely voters in late 2025 showed 83% reported that their energy bills had gone up in recent years, with a majority saying costs had increased “a lot.” Affordability is clearly top of mind. This doesn’t mean Americans don’t care about climate change at all; it means they aren’t willing to bear exorbitant direct costs for symbolic climate policies, especially when those policies won’t tangibly improve their day-to-day lives or might simply shuffle money to government coffers with little accountability.
Ultimately, the failure of these climate superfund proposals underscores a reality that many in the energy industry have long argued: energy policy must be grounded in economic and energy reality, as well as the needs of everyday Americans.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
