Maryland Governor Wes Moore's 'Climate Study' Is Bankrolled by Left-Wing Rockefeller Fund Amid Push To Force Oil Companies To Pay Billions in Damages

The left-wing environmental nonprofit Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF) is bankrolling a study commissioned by Maryland governor Wes Moore (D.) to "assess the undue burden Marylanders are paying for extreme weather events," records show. The group says the study is the first step in passing a law that would require oil companies to pay the state billions of dollars in climate damages.

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Colorado Democrats Want To Ban Restaurants From Putting Napkins In Your Delivery Order

'Socialist rule at its finest'

Paul Ehrlich died. His contempt for human life didn’t.



I was in the delivery room for my eighth child when I found out Paul Ehrlich died.

Ehrlich’s 1968 book “The Population Bomb” did not come from concern for the environment. It grew out of a basic contempt for his fellow man. He viewed people not as the foundation of society but as a destructive force consuming resources. His warnings about overpopulation and climate issues were not about protecting nature. They were about controlling and reducing the number of people.

Ehrlich prided himself on the hundreds of millions of babies who were never born because of his ideas. That is his legacy.

This line of thinking was not original. Ehrlich drew directly from Thomas Malthus, the 18th-century writer who argued that population increases faster than food production, leading inevitably to catastrophe. Malthus provided the intellectual justification for elites of his era to look down on the poor and the growing families among them.

Ehrlich updated the same argument with modern statistics, computer models, and environmental language. He took it farther. Ehrlich functioned as a modern version of the Albigensians, the medieval sect condemned by the Catholic Church for teaching that physical matter and the body were inherently corrupt. Those believers discouraged marriage and childbirth, seeing procreation as trapping more souls in an evil material world. The ultimate good preached by the Albigensians was for followers to starve themselves to death to show their commitment to not consuming resources.

Ehrlich repackaged these ideas in pseudoscientific terms: Stop having children, or you will destroy the planet. The message stayed the same — human life and babies are the problem.

His specific forecasts failed, one after another. He predicted that hundreds of millions of people would die of starvation in the 1970s and ’80s. That did not happen.

He wrote that India faced unavoidable mass famine and societal breakdown. Instead, new agricultural techniques dramatically increased food production there and across Asia.

In a famous 1980 wager with economist Julian Simon, Ehrlich claimed prices of key raw materials would surge due to scarcity over the next 10 years. The prices fell, and he lost the bet.

Ehrlich had an easy time settling his $10,000 bet with Simon. He mailed the check shortly after receiving both the MacArthur “Genius” Grant and the “ecologist’s version of the Nobel” for his ingeniously wrong ecology — twin prizes that netted him $485,000 (about $1.15 million today).

Despite this best-selling record of error, Ehrlich’s outlook and recommended policies gained influence among those who consider themselves the educated, evidence-based class. University departments, international organizations, and media outlets adopted his assumptions.

RELATED: NYT is getting crushed online for downplaying infamous ‘population bomb’ false alarm

Gene Arias/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank

When he wasn’t barnstorming lecture halls demanding that parents be taxed at higher rates than selfish adults, he was making multiple appearances on "The Tonight Show,"where he warned that “there’s a finite pie. The more mice you have nibbling at it, the smaller every mouse’s share.” Johnny Carson nodded along, no doubt contemplating the alimony he had paid out over the course of four marriages.

Our elites were not simply mistaken about the facts. They embraced Ehrlich’s ideas because they already held contempt for the people they aimed to direct. Large families in middle America, working parents, and growing populations in developing nations represent something they want to limit — too many independent voices, too many demands on resources, too much resistance to top-down planning.

This shared attitude explains why policies inspired by Ehrlich persisted, from China’s one-child policy to aggressive carbon pricing that burdens ordinary households and education that frames having children as environmentally irresponsible.

The goal was never just saving the planet. It was managing populations that elites view as excessive and unruly.

It may no longer be in vogue in communist China, which is now scrambling to recover from the disaster of crushing birth rates through forced abortion and sterilization, but progressives throughout the Democratic Party and Europe are still wildly enthusiastic about suppressing new life in the name of “freedom.”

Maybe the closest Ehrlich ever came to being correct is when he predicted that Britain would no longer exist as a viable nation by the year 2000. That will not happen for another year or two under Keir Starmer’s leadership. The U.K., it turns out, won’t be undone by climate catastrophe or mass starvation, but by its embrace of Paul Ehrlich’s worldview. In 2023, England and Wales aborted nearly 300,000 babies. Live births dipped below 600,000.

Ehrlich is gone, but the impulse he represented continues in policy circles and institutions that treat the human population itself as the central threat. Families across the country continue to reject that message. They are choosing to raise children and invest in the future without apology.

Ehrlich prided himself on the hundreds of millions of babies who were never born because of his ideas. That is his legacy. It had to be, because, as he boasted throughout his lifetime, he got a vasectomy in 1963 after the birth of his first child.

Paul Ehrlich lived 93 years. His family tree spanning four generations is less crowded than the recovery room I’m in right now.

NYC Congestion Pricing Scheme Prioritizes 'Environmental Justice Communities,' Pumps Money Into Minority Neighborhoods in What Could Be Illegal Discrimination

New York City's controversial congestion pricing program, which charges drivers a toll to enter midtown and lower Manhattan, contains several "mitigation efforts" and carveouts designed to limit the punitive impact of the new tax on ethnic minorities—without offering the city's non-minorities comparable treatment, a Washington Free Beacon review found.

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Inside the Left-Wing Operation to ‘Train’ Judges About Climate Change: Free Trips to Napa Valley, Palm Beach, and Hawaii Fuel a Secret Judge Recruitment Operation

A dark money group of left-wing environmental activists has been quietly "training" judges overseeing climate-related lawsuits, hosting them at multi-day, all-expenses-paid seminars in locales like Napa Valley and Palm Beach. Judges who attend these luxury retreats—where they are subject to indoctrination—are not required to report them in ethics disclosures.

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Harvard Launching New Green Major Led by Divestment Activist

Harvard University, under pressure from the Trump administration to reduce the power held by faculty "more committed to activism than scholarship," is poised to approve a new major in "Energy, Climate, and Environment." The major is spearheaded by a professor who co-chaired an activist group that pushed Harvard to divest from fossil fuels and demanded that the university "Provide funds and staff for faculty engaging in advocacy on climate change in Massachusetts and at the national/international level."

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America tried to save the planet and forgot to save itself



Let’s face it: $20 trillion is a lot of money.

One would expect a big bang to follow the spending of 20,000 billion dollars. It’s a lot of money! In fact, it’s pretty much the total present value of America’s GDP.

The American economy sent trillions to our south and east — putting America second, hollowing out the American middle class, and neutralizing the American dream.

This is the total amount spent globally — largely by Europe and the United States — in a coordinated effort by the developed world to decarbonize the global economy. China, in contrast, sold windmills and solar panels worldwide while opening a new coal-fired power plant every month.

What was the net effect of this “Green" Marshall Plan? Hydrocarbon consumption continued to increase anyway. All that was achieved was a tiny reduction, just 2%, in the share of overall energy supplied by hydrocarbons. Put simply, as the energy pie got bigger and all forms of energy supply increased, hydrocarbons ended up with a slightly smaller share of a larger pie.

We also saw the deindustrialization of the European and American economies — not just with higher prices at the gas pump and on electric bills, but a stealth green tax that was passed on to consumers on everything. This is the culprit of our American and global affordability crisis. So much treasure and pain for a 2% reduction in the share of hydrocarbons.

Ironically, a byproduct of this Green Hunger Games was political populism.

What a waste. The worst bang for the public and private buck ever. Yet the Chicken Little believers of the Church of Settled Science and the grifters who profited from it will still sing in unison that it failed because they did not go far enough. If only the global community spent and regulated more!

In contrast, the Marshall Plan (1948-1951) rebuilt a decimated Europe into an industrial, interconnected, and peaceful powerhouse. It was a great success by any measure. At the time, its price tag was huge: $13.3 billion in nominal 1948-1951 dollars, equivalent to approximately $150 billion in today’s dollars.

Since a trillion is such a large number, let’s divide $20 trillion by an inflation-adjusted Marshall Plan of $150 billion, and we have 133 Marshall opportunities. Money was not the problem. To give a sense of the comparative bang for buck, by the Marshall program’s end, the aggregated gross national product of the participating nations rose by more than 32% and industrial output increased by a remarkable 40%.

President Trump has been on the global funding rounds and has secured more than $18 trillion in foreign investment. That’s roughly the equivalent of 120 Marshall Plans — just 13 shy of $20 trillion — to be invested here and nowhere else.

Unlike NAFTA, through which the rich got richer under the banner of free markets in exchange for cheaper consumer goods, Trump’s policy is a recipe for prosperity for all Americans.

RELATED: Trump administration saves billions in simple move globalists and climate activists alike will hate

Photo by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Making these investments a reality in America will require a growing army of blue- and white-collar workers. With the wealth that it creates, our debt could be paid down and, finally, retired. Social Security and Medicare would be placed on a solid footing for time immemorial. All our public obligations to one another would be met by ever-growing prosperity, not by borrowed money and suffocating debt service.

Nothing approaching this level of intentional investment in a single country has ever been done. Yes, a similar tranche of greenbacks was burned with no discernible environmental benefit and great economic hardship for all. And yes, the American economy, under the guise of comparative advantage, sent trillions to our south and east — putting America second, hollowing out the American middle class, and neutralizing the American dream.

Trump’s plan is the opposite of both failed experiments. Like the original Marshall Plan, Trump’s is a recipe for the reindustrialization of the American economy and military, and it is not going to be fueled by windmills and solar farms but with hydrocarbons and uranium. That’s the Trump plan. It has merit.

Yet if we look at the polls, Trump is under water, and his base is showing signs of stress fractures. You bring peace to the Middle East, stop six other wars, and bring in some $20 trillion in America First investments within your first year, and you come home to find yourself under water and called a “lame duck.” Democracies are known to be fickle and hard to please, but this is still rich — and it will result in poverty if it continues.

Without the use of Trump’s tariffs and dealmaking, there would not be $20 trillion looking to onshore in the United States. You can blame Trump for higher costs on bananas and coffee, but it is the cost of electricity and health care — not the cost of coffee and bananas — that is roiling kitchen-table economics.

Vice President JD Vance recently made the right call for popular and populist patience. Those who are impatient should look at the offsets already passed, such as no taxes on Social Security, tips, and overtime. That helps pay for bananas and coffee and then some.

The sovereign wealth funds that are presently lining up on our shores are coming here based on promises made by a can-do president speaking for a can-do nation. While Trump is a can-do guy, are “We the People” still a can-do people? Or do we at least want to return to becoming a can-do people again?

The “can’t-do” forces are legion, and they are the ones now championing the affordability crisis they caused. When America was a can-do nation, we built the Empire State Building in a year. Today, it would take years to get a permit.

RELATED: From Monroe to ‘Donroe’: America enforces its back yard again

Photo by Jim WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

Those willing to invest such money will require some certitude that the power they will need will be there to “build, baby, build.” If not, the money and the opportunity will pass before they have the possibility to take needed root.

And what about us, the American family, worker, and business continuing to struggle under the legacy of throttling energy privation? In short, we all have a common good — a shared interest — in righting the wrongs that control our grid and our nation’s future.

The good news is that a bill was introduced in the House during the government shutdown. It’s called the “Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Security Act.” Unlike Obamacare, which clocked in at 903 pages, this bill is a lean 763 words. If it becomes law — and it should — it would change everything for the better, unlike Obamacare, which is a recipe for unaffordability.

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act was missing this one thing. His short- and long-term America First ambitions would be significantly strengthened by making this energy bill law before the midterms. Executive orders don’t provide the energy security these investors require or the American people deserve.

$20 trillion is a lot of money. Coming to our shores is a new lease on the American experiment as we enter our 250th birthday, hopelessly divided and broke. Let us come together to solve not just the affordability crisis but also set the conditions for greatness for the next 250 years.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

How Trump’s Foreign Policy Is Delivering 120 ‘Marshall Plans’ To The U.S.

An estimated $20 trillion has been spent in a coordinated effort by the developed world to decarbonize the global economy.

A red-state lawfare shakedown heads to the Supreme Court



The Republican Party claims to stand against lawfare — especially the obscene, rent-seeking variety that disguises itself as environmental justice. Yet that principle is about to be tested in a highly public and deeply embarrassing way.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on January 12 in Chevron v. Plaquemines Parish. Louisiana officials will face off against the Trump Justice Department and American energy producers in a landmark case over an attempted shakedown of oil companies for alleged responsibility for coastal erosion dating back to World War II.

Lawfare does not become acceptable because Republicans use it. And environmental shakedowns do not become conservative simply because they originate in a red state.

The basic claim is simple enough. Louisiana and several local governments have filed dozens of lawsuits alleging that oil and gas production over the last 80 years caused the erosion of the state’s coastline. But the structure and substance of these cases reveal something far more troubling.

Although the lawsuits were filed in the name of the state and its municipalities, control has effectively been handed over to politically connected plaintiffs’ lawyers — major donors who stand to reap enormous contingency fees. Through a so-called common interest agreement, the Louisiana attorney general’s office surrendered its obligation to independently assess the merits of the claims. In practice, the state abdicated its role to the trial-lawyer donor class.

That alone should raise alarms. The rest only makes it worse.

The lawsuits seek to impose liability for conduct that was lawful at the time and occurred as far back as eight decades ago. Ex post facto liability is fundamentally un-American, which is why almost no one attempts to defend it on the merits.

Even more awkward for Louisiana’s theory, virtually everyone outside the plaintiffs’ bar agrees on the primary cause of coastal erosion: decades of federal intervention by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which radically altered water flow in the Mississippi Delta. Louisiana once sued the federal government on exactly this basis. Now the same damage is somehow blamed on oil companies instead.

Because these claims reach back to the 1940s, they sweep in oil production carried out at the direction of the U.S. government to support the war effort — specifically the refining of aviation fuel for the military. It is a strange irony that after years of Democrat-led lawfare under the Biden administration, a red state has now delivered environmental litigation over World War II to the Supreme Court.

The hypocrisy is hard to miss.

The venue fight exposes the real game. Plaintiffs’ lawyers insist these cases remain in Louisiana state courts. The reason is obvious. Those courts are heavily influenced by the trial bar and have a record of staggering verdicts. Chevron was recently hit with a $745 million judgment in one such case.

Energy producers want the cases moved to federal court — not because victory is guaranteed but because federal courts are more likely to function as neutral arbiters. There is also a compelling jurisdictional reason: Much of the challenged activity involved federally directed wartime production. If any court belongs here, it is a federal one.

RELATED: America First energy policy is paying off at the pump

Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images

This kind of forum shopping should look familiar. It mirrors the Democrats’ strategy during the Biden years — carefully selecting friendly state courts to pursue political outcomes they could not secure through legislation. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) and Attorney General Liz Murrill (R) appear to have absorbed all the wrong lessons from all the wrong actors.

This is the same playbook used by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) when she charged President Trump in state court for conduct governed by federal law. It is the same model California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) embraced when he partnered with trial lawyers to sue energy companies for billions over alleged climate harms.

Step back from the legal details and a larger problem comes into focus.

President Trump’s agenda prioritizes American energy dominance. His actions abroad reinforce that priority. Yet Republicans in Louisiana are not merely opposing that objective — they are using the very lawfare tactics they claim to despise to undermine it.

For voters trying to apply a consistent ideological framework, the whiplash is real. When red states start behaving like California, it is fair to ask whether America First has drifted from a governing philosophy into a monetization strategy.

Lawfare does not become acceptable because Republicans use it. And environmental shakedowns do not become conservative simply because they originate in a red state. If the right intends to oppose lawfare, it needs to oppose it everywhere — especially when its own allies are the ones doing the shaking down.

Global warming powered an empire that dwarfed the Vikings



Popular culture loves its image of Norsemen shivering in fur pelts, raiding British monasteries, and braving the icy North Atlantic. Yet while Vikings struggled to survive on the thawing margins of Greenland, a far richer and more formidable maritime power flourished thousands of miles away in the tropical warmth of southern India.

That power was the Chola Empire.

A modern golden age remains within reach — provided we do not cripple ourselves with fear of the very conditions that have so often underwritten human prosperity.

At its height between 985 and 1044 A.D., the Cholas projected force on a scale that made Viking longships look like backyard skirmishers. Their ships were technological marvels — floating fortresses capable of transporting cavalry, infantry, and weeks of provisions across vast distances.

The Cholas mounted a major naval expedition against the Srivijaya Empire, a dominant maritime power based in what is now Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula. This was an amphibious assault conducted thousands of miles from home ports, a logistical achievement comparable to modern naval operations. The Cholas toppled rulers, secured the vital Malacca Strait, and guaranteed safe passage for merchant guilds trading from the Middle East to China.

On land, they maintained a standing army that included thousands of war elephants.

Their wealth also found expression in stone. The Great Living Chola Temples — now recognized as UNESCO World Heritage sites — stretch across southern India and neighboring islands. Built without modern machinery, these monumental structures relied on elephants to haul massive stones from distances of up to 60 miles.

Chola society possessed abundant labor, food, and wealth. The question is why.

What enabled a civilization to generate the immense caloric and economic surplus required to build stone monuments and launch armadas across the Indian Ocean? A large part of the answer lies in climate — specifically, global warming.

The rise of the Chola Empire coincided with the Medieval Warm Period, which lasted roughly from 900 to 1300 A.D. This relationship between warmth and human flourishing is inconvenient for the modern climate-industrial narrative, which treats rising temperatures as an unqualified catastrophe.

Warmth strengthens tropical monsoons, the lifeblood of agrarian economies like the Cholas’. Recent scientific research confirms that fluctuations in the Indian summer monsoon shaped agricultural output and the rise and fall of major dynasties. Indian civilization flourished during the Roman Warm Period, fractured during the Dark Ages Cold Period, and reached new heights under the Cholas during the Medieval Warm Period.

The Chola Empire was sustained by the very kind of warming modern activists describe as an “existential threat.”

RELATED: ‘Green Antoinettes’ live large, preach small

ajijchan via iStock/Getty Images

In the Cauvery Delta — the empire’s heartland — this favorable climate transformed the region into the “Rice Bowl of the South.” Three harvests a year became common. Granaries overflowed. Revenues surged.

That surplus freed labor from subsistence farming and redirected it toward imperial ambition. Chola trade guilds thrived, exporting textiles, spices, and grain to the Chinese Song Dynasty — another civilization that prospered during this warm epoch.

Today, we find ourselves in another warming phase, emerging from the depths of the Little Ice Age that ended in the mid-19th century. Global crop yields have repeatedly reached record highs. India has re-emerged as a major grain exporter. The planet is experiencing a measurable “greening” effect as higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels fertilize plants and warmer temperatures expand cultivable land.

Yet, we are told to feel guilty.

Coal, oil, and natural gas — fuels that protect humanity from the elements and power modern economies — are vilified. Environmental extremists implicitly argue for a colder world, despite the historical record showing that colder periods brought famine, disease, and social collapse.

The Chola Empire stands as a reminder of what human ingenuity can achieve when the climate cooperates. Its ships sailed on prosperity sustained by warmth. Its temples rose from a society rich in calories and confidence. Its civilization commanded respect across continents.

We face a similar opportunity today. A modern golden age remains within reach — provided we do not cripple ourselves with fear of the very conditions that have so often underwritten human prosperity.