The "Endangerment Finding" Was A Case of Mankind Serving Environmental Policy and It Must Be the Other Way Around!
Guest Post from Jason Isaac at American Energy Works.
President Trump famously said he was elected “to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris” when he pulled America out of the Paris Climate Accords. In 2019, while advising the administration, I suggested a Pittsburgh Accord, calling on our trading partners to meet air quality standards that improve human health, something that America achieved decades ago, rather than chasing symbolic carbon targets.
Environmental policy should serve mankind—not the other way around.
According to Axios, Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick announced nearly $70B in investments in the Keystone State alongside President Trump.
Now that the President is returning to Pittsburgh, it’s time to finish what he started:
Call on American businesses and our trading partners to abandon Paris.
Require trading partners to end discriminatory greenhouse gas disclosure requirements or face steep tariffs.
Fully embrace the promise of American energy dominance.
America deserves energy leaders committed to affordable, reliable power—not performative virtue signaling and collusion against our own prosperity. The American people didn’t vote for ESG, decarbonization mandates, or carbon capture fantasies. They voted for energy security and economic freedom.
While President Trump visits Pennsylvania this week to champion his American Energy Dominance agenda alongside Secretary Wright and Administrator Zeldin, it’s worth reflecting on how far we’ve come in just six months.
Wright’s Department of Energy has rightly canceled $3.7 billion in so-called “climate grants,” most of them earmarked for carbon capture boondoggles that served more as corporate subsidies than real solutions. (See the Wall Street Journal’s coverage here.) Meanwhile, Zeldin’s EPA is proposing to remove all greenhouse gas regulations on new and existing power plants—an overdue correction to the decarbonization scam that was locked in by the Obama EPA’s Endangerment Finding.
For too long, Washington’s regulatory class pretended that CO2—a trace gas that makes life possible—was a pollutant requiring the government to dictate how Americans heat their homes and power their lives. Rescinding the Endangerment Finding is essential if we are ever going to restore sanity to American energy policy.
And yet, while the Trump administration moves boldly to unshackle our economy, the usual suspects are still clinging to their Paris-aligned talking points. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods, and EQT CEO Toby Rice were all in attendance at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit. If you needed proof that the “energy transition” is a political movement, not a market movement, look no further.
Let’s review the facts:
BlackRock spent 2024 punishing companies that wouldn’t cave to climate extremism. Their voting record shows they opposed 127 corporate directors over climate issues and supported shareholder proposals to pressure companies to slash fossil fuel use and adopt emissions targets that go far beyond any legal requirement (BlackRock Stewardship Report, p.77). BlackRock announced in 2020 it would divest from thermal coal producers deriving over 25% of revenue from coal production (Larry Fink’s 2020 CEO Letter) and confirmed in 2022 that this policy remained in place (2022 Stewardship Report).
ExxonMobil’s Darren Woods has spent the past three years parroting decarbonization talking points, pledging allegiance to “net zero” Paris aligned goals, and creating entire business units dedicated to chasing subsidies for carbon capture and hydrogen. “We support society’s ambition to achieve a net-zero future and are taking actions to help meet that goal.”
Toby Rice recently posted a video celebrating a carbon capture facility saying “Chill, baby, chill”—a gimmick that literally ends with a giant plume of emissions. Clueless marketing from someone feeding the crocodiles hoping to be the last one eaten. “Zero carbon.”
Meanwhile, the FTC and DOJ have now formally joined the State of Texas in supporting the lawsuit against BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street for colluding to choke off capital to coal companies, an extraordinary admission that the biggest asset managers on the planet were not simply responding to investor demand, but using their power to advance a coordinated political agenda.
Let’s hope President Trump persuades the climate alarmists and market manipulators in the room to abandon their destructive ESG agenda and stand with American energy, prosperity, and freedom.
The Honorable Jason Isaac is the President of American Energy Works. He previously served four terms in the Texas House of Representatives.
#Pennsylvania #EnergySummit #Trump #AmericanEnergyWorks #Energy #Electricity #Investment
It is obvious that Trump should end this Obama insanity. The people it hurts the most are the poor.
The Endangerment Finding has to be repealed to help stop this climate con.I read this piece of BS when we first heard about it. This Could not be more wrong and we in this group are More Right!! Keep up the fight.