When it comes to California’s climate future, the most important figure in the state’s chaotic governor’s race may not be any of the candidates on the debate stage. It may not even be outgoing governor Gavin Newsom or President Donald Trump.

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Instead, it might just be Chevron, the multinational oil company that was founded in the Golden State more than 100 years ago. It is among the largest producers, refiners, and sellers of petroleum products in a state rapidly shifting toward electric vehicles. Depending on which candidate is talking, the company is an example of how Big Oil is strangling consumers or an example of how climate regulations are strangling the state economy.

The behemoth — it reported $12.3 billion in profit last year — took the spotlight last month when an interviewer asked leading Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra about Chevron’s contributions to his campaign. The former state attorney general and Biden-era health secretary gave what seemed to be a candid response:

“Chevron, that’s the problem with politics. They’re not the bad guy. Does everybody here drive an electric vehicle? You need Chevron. I need Chevron. My people of the state of California need Chevron … Chevron wants to give me a check, that’s — that’s their prerogative.”

The phrase “I need Chevron” soon appeared in anti-Becerra videos by the likes of climate hawk Jane Fonda, implying that the candidate was saying he needs Chevron to get elected. Progressive billionaire Tom Steyer, Becerra’s lead Democratic opponent, urged him to return the contribution and said he is “doing [the] bidding” of Big Oil. Representative Katie Porter, another leading Democrat, said in a statement that she “hasn’t made millions off Big Oil or taken their checks.”

Becerra is not entirely wrong. California consumes around 13 billion gallons of gasoline annually, all of it specifically formulated to meet the state’s stringent clean air standards. Most of it comes from just six refineries, and Chevron owns two that account for one-third of the state’s production. That gives the company and its peers tremendous leverage. But California’s gas consumption has declined by about 15 percent from a peak in 2004 due to improved fuel economy in conventional vehicles and growing adoption of electric vehicles. It could fall by half over the next two decades.

The primary is June 2. The challenge for the next governor will be to continue the energy transition while retaining the infrastructure needed to move and refine oil. This has never been accomplished in a place as large as California, which was the world’s fifth-largest economy in 2025. The risks are tremendous: If the state moves too quickly, it could create shortages and price spikes for drivers already paying the highest prices in the country. If it moves too slowly, it could lock in decades of air pollution and hinder global climate progress.

“It’s messy,” said Emily Grubert. She is a civil engineer and sociologist at Notre Dame who has studied fossil fuel transitions and advised the state government on oil infrastructure. “As soon as you realize that actually transitioning away from fossil fuels means you have to close things, people get really freaked out.”

Newsom spent much of his governorship going after Big Oil, an effort that included a series of executive actions to restrict fracking in Kern County oil fields. When the war in Ukraine sent gas prices surging, Newsom and Democrats in the Legislature passed a series of bills to stop what he called “price gouging.” These laws empowered a new oil-focused watchdog agency, created a tool that could impose refinery price caps, and required refineries to maintain certain storage reserves, all of which cut profit margins for Chevron and others. The new refinery rules added to multiple carbon taxes that make selling gasoline in California more expensive.

However, there is some evidence refiners have overcharged Californians. Even after accounting for state taxes, environmental fees, and production costs, a gap remains between gas prices in the Golden State and everywhere else. This gap appeared in 2015 after a refinery fire in Torrance and has come to be known as the “mystery gasoline surcharge.” It now averages about $1. Last fall, a state regulator concluded that refiners’ monopoly power may be the reason for the price spikes.

Oil companies accused Newsom of trying to regulate them out of existence, and many threatened to leave. Two major refiners, Wilmington and Benicia, announced last year that they would close their operations, forcing a state that already imports about 60 percent of its oil to rely on imports of gasoline refined in Asia. Chevron relocated its corporate headquarters from the San Francisco suburb of San Ramon to Houston in 2024, and it has delivered a series of ominous warnings this year as climate regulators have revised the state’s almost 15-year-old carbon tax.

“The proposed regulation will cripple the survivability of the state’s remaining refineries, which will result in California losing the entire industry,” Andy Walls, the president of Chevron’s refinery business, wrote in an open letter to Newsom in March. The implication was clear: unless you relax your regulations, we will leave the state and strand you without gasoline. That would mean paying Asian refiners to produce more of the state’s specific blend, at significant cost.

The Newsom administration spent much of 2025 trying to work out a grand bargain with the industry. The Legislature eased rules governing drilling in Kern County oil fields, helping maintain a stable supply of crude to refineries. It also delayed implementing a refinery profit cap and allowed the temporary sale of gasoline with higher concentrations of ethanol. The state’s climate regulator has also suggested giving refineries free allowances under the state’s cap-and-trade system, even if it means less money for big projects like high-speed rail and sustainable housing. The idea is to give investors enough certainty that they’re willing to remain in California even as the state uses less gasoline.

Experts believe it will take a lot more than that to manage inevitable changes.

“You actually can’t have a smooth and safe and effective transition without some form of coordinating function for that decline,” said Grubert. She believes a degree of state ownership of refineries will be necessary to keep facilities open if they stop being profitable. The wrong approach, she says, would be to respond to each potential refinery closure with ad hoc subsidies and state support, since that would allow refiners to extort the state one by one.

That point was reinforced this month by a report from the California Energy Commission that has not received much notice. The analysis of the state’s shaky fuel system found that “California cannot sustainably manage this transition through repeated crisis interventions at an asset-by-asset level.” It suggested options that included “legal obligations to operate,” “centralized planning of closures,” and “direct state management or ownership of assets.”

The Iran war will accelerate a decline in both the supply of, and demand for, oil. Gas retailers like Chevron are already struggling to find additional imports of refined fuel, and some experts predict shortages if the Strait of Hormuz does not open within weeks. Meanwhile, electric vehicles continue gaining market share, and Newsom plans to roll out subsidies for them this year. Wider adoption of these vehicles, and hybrids, will further crimp demand, making any remaining refineries more likely to shutter.

All of this helps explain the showdown between the leading Democrats in the governor’s race, who are each trying to find a lane in a field that at one time included more than 50 candidates.

Becerra has given lip service to clean energy, but many public statements suggest a friendliness toward oil producers. As attorney general, he initiated a few lawsuits against petroleum companies, and supported other state climate lawsuits, but punted on major investigations. He has focused his gubernatorial campaign on vows to fight Donald Trump and protect healthcare, and has made controversial promises to freeze utility and insurance rates. On decarbonization, he has noted that “climate action only succeeds if it is affordable, reliable, and fair.”

After the chaos of the early primary, many oil producers have decided that Becerra is their candidate. Chevron last month contributed the maximum allowable amount of $39,200 to his campaign, the first time in a decade it has backed a gubernatorial candidate. Last week, the company contributed another $500,000 to an independent political committee supporting Becerra. California Resources Corporation, the state’s largest driller, also gave $500,000 to a Becerra committee. And gas companies like Sempra are among the donors to an anti-Steyer political committee that has raised more than $24 million.

Steyer, meanwhile, has made attacking Big Oil the focus of his campaign, as it was during his 2020 presidential run. He says he would lower gas prices by activating the refining profit cap that Newsom has declined to use, investigating what is causing high gas prices (something the state has already done), and taxing private jet fuel. When refineries “inevitably” close, he says he will stockpile an oil reserve and import more refined fuel for as long as California needs it.

Steyer has also had to address his own fossil fuel ties. The hedge fund he founded, Farallon Capital, remains a major player in coal power finance abroad, including in Indonesia and Australia. Steyer still holds a stake in the firm, which he left in 2012, but his campaign says he no longer receives dividends from its fossil fuel investments.

California uses a “jungle primary” in which the top two candidates advance to the general election, regardless of party. The latest poll shows Becerra essentially tied with former Fox News host Steve Hilton, a Republican, with Steyer trailing at around 15 percent. The most likely outcome is that Becerra or Steyer will make it to the general election. (The other Democrats, including Porter and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, trail behind in the double digits.)

Railing against Big Oil has long proven to be good politics in California. But in the wake of Trump’s second election victory, Democrats have sought to downplay climate issues and focus instead on affordability. The question in the governor’s race is how best to achieve that in the long run. Is it better to use a bully pulpit against companies like Chevron in an effort to break their market power, or conciliate them in the hope that they don’t flee?

Mike Madrid, a veteran California political operative, believes Becerra’s approach will resonate more with the young and Latinos, both of whom often decide statewide elections.

“This attack on Chevron, it works for the base Steyer already has,” he said. “Young Latino working-class men are the demographic most affected by gas prices. Do you think they’re saying we need to get rid of Chevron? Of course not.”

Steyer’s campaign may not get him over the line in the primary, but he has at least been consistent. In a 2013 blog post for this very publication, he celebrated the result of the Virginia governor’s race, where a climate-focused Democrat beat a fossil-fuel-friendly Republican with help from Steyer’s own war chest.

“A new political dynamic is emerging,” he wrote at the time. “Climate change is a winner, not a loser,” and is “no longer electoral Kryptonite.”

If Chevron has its way, next week’s primary results will prove otherwise.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/politics/chevron-oil-california-governor-becerra-steyer/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

When U.S. President Donald Trump spoke at the 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland in January, he angrily berated the United States' European allies for using green energy and claimed, without any evidence, that climate change is a "hoax." European countries get their energy from a variety of sources, including green energy (wind and solar), nuclear power and fossil fuels. But Trump was angry that they are using green energy at all.

European scientists and environmentalists were quick to push back against Trump's claims about climate change, arguing that Europe should be using more green energy — not less — and offering plenty of scientific data to back up their arguments. Trump and his allies, however, only doubled down on their claims about climate change, green energy and fossil fuels.

That type of doubling down is the focus of an article by The New Republic's Kate Aronoff, headlined "The Denialism Presidency" and published on April 16.

When confronted with facts about climate change, the war in Iran or the U.S. economy, Aronoff stresses, the second Trump Administration doubles down on "denial."

"It isn't unusual for members of the Trump Administration to deny and downplay climate change," Aronoff explains. "But climate denial — a mainstay of the GOP for most of this century — has also become something of an operating manual for the right as it reacts to other crises it would like to pretend are not happening. (Treasury Secretary Scott) Bessent, this week, likewise, dismissed the sprawling economic turmoil caused by the administration's decision to go to war with Iran, which now involves a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz."

Bessent argued that the Iran war is worth a "small bit of economic pain," but Aronoff notes that according to economists, the effects of the war will be much deeper than the treasury secretary is claiming. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), for example, is warning that an escalation of the Iran war could set off a global recession.

"At another event in Washington," Aronoff observes, "(Bessent) asserted that price spikes resulting from the war in Iran — which helped inflation rise three times faster in March than in February — were a passing fad, despite the fact that the Strait of Hormuz is not poised to return to business as usual anytime soon. Whenever it reopens, experts warn that the effects of its now-more-than-month-long closure will be felt for years."

Aronoff continues, "Whether it's climate change or a looming global recession, the script is the same: downplay, deny, and project confidence. This playbook works for Bessent and other members of the Trump Administration because they are wealthy enough to insulate themselves from the effects of both rising temperature and economic catastrophe."

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is refusing to recuse himself from a major climate case despite owning stock in several energy companies, although none in the two that are parties in the lawsuit the court will hear next term.

Citing his energy stock ownership, liberal groups have been calling for the conservative justice to recuse, and they have asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate Alito’s involvement, NBC News reports. But the Supreme Court says Alito is not obligated to do so.

“Justice Alito does not have a financial interest in any party” involved in the case, a court spokesperson told NBC News in a statement. The court’s legal counsel advised that “his recusal is not required.”

ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy are fighting to have dismissed a lawsuit involving damages for climate harms, NBC News reports.

Justices are not required to recuse unless they have a direct conflict, such as specific stock ownership, a personal relationship, or a history with the case prior to their appointment to the Supreme Court.

In their letter, the liberal groups say that justices should recuse if their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned” by an “unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant circumstances.”

The liberal groups also say they have “deep concerns” about Alito’s “inconsistent history of recusals from cases from which he should be compelled to recuse under long-standing federal law.” They cite “his substantial holdings in individual oil and gas companies and other personal ties.”

They point to what they call Alito’s “irregular recusal practice in oil and gas industry-related cases,” saying that it is “undermining public confidence in the impartiality of the Court.”

NBC notes that “in 2023, Alito did recuse himself when the court turned away an appeal from the companies in the Colorado case.” That same day, “the court rejected appeals in similar cases involving other companies, including ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66. Alito also did not participate in those cases.”

But the court’s spokesperson said that Alito was “inadvertently recused” from the Colorado case.

When President Donald Trump talks about climate change, he often recycles one well-known, shaky argument: that doing anything about it will be a financial disaster. After pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, he said it was costing the U.S. “trillions of dollars that other countries were not paying.” He’s also said that President Joe Biden’s plan to boost electric vehicles threatened the auto industry with “economic destruction” (before Trump “saved” the industry by reversing it, of course). Trump has tried to scare other countries into following suit, telling world leaders last year, “If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.”

If you look at the Trump administration’s justification for scrapping environmental protections, it always comes back to money. Officials justify these moves with estimates that almost always avoid or downplay the stunning costs of letting climate change continue unchecked, even as extreme weather brings the risk into focus. A record-breaking spring heat wave scorched the Western U.S. at the end of March, worsening wildfire forecasts and threatening the snowpack that’s crucial for the region’s water supplies. The costs are already hitting home: An analysis from the Brookings Institution in September found that the effects of climate change, from rising insurance rates to the health threats from wildfire smoke, are costing the average American household between $219 and $571 a year, depending on how much bad weather you attribute directly to climate change. For some households, the costs exceeded $1,000 a year.

It’s clear that taking action to prevent such disasters doesn’t hurt the economy as a whole, said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School, but it does hurt some industries — namely, oil companies. For decades, the fossil fuel industry has been promoting the story that taking action on climate change is too costly. “There is this prevailing narrative out there, and I guess what I would say is that this is not by accident,” Wagner said. In the early 1990s, the American Petroleum Institute began commissioning economists to produce research that made any effort to rein in greenhouse gases appear prohibitively expensive. One industry-funded study in 1991 calculated that imposing a carbon tax of $200 a ton would shrink the U.S. economy by 1.7 percent by 2020. It ignored the cost of failing to act on climate change.

The tradition continues today through the Trump administration’s cost-benefit calculations for repealing environmental regulations. For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency accounted for the health benefits of cutting air pollution — such as avoided asthma attacks and premature deaths — when it created cost-benefit analysis for approving clean air rules. That changed in recent months, when the Trump administration’s EPA revamped the practice so that it now effectively treats the value of saving human lives at $0. It has also thrown out the “social cost of carbon,” a metric that estimates the economic damage from floods, droughts, and other effects of global warming, which the Biden administration had set at $190 a ton. Last June, an investigation by The Associated Press found that Trump’s EPA consistently emphasized the costs of pollution rules while omitting their benefits — even though for 17 of the 20 rules AP examined, the benefits outweighed the costs, sometimes by a lot.

When the agency rescinded its fuel efficiency standards for vehicles in February, along with its own ability to regulate climate change, it promised that the new fuel standards would save Americans $1.3 trillion in car payments by 2055. But a chart buried in the EPA’s regulatory impact analysis found that fuel purchases, vehicle repair, insurance, and other costs would add up to $1.5 trillion over that same time period, outpacing any savings from the repeal. Another problem became clear after the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran caused average gas prices in the U.S. to surge above $4 a gallon: The administration’s savings estimate had assumed that gasoline prices would stay around $3 per gallon over the next 30 years.

Though you wouldn’t know it from the Trump administration’s projections, protecting the environment can provide a boost for the economy. The Clean Air Act, passed in 1970, not only succeeded in reducing pollution, it also helped economic growth and productivity. Research has shown that the United States’ gross domestic product was 1.5 percent higher in 2010 than it would have been without the legislation, because exposing kids to less air pollution made for more productive workers later.

And if buying clean technology costs you money — well, that’s a boost for the economy, too. “If the government forced you to cut your gas line and install an induction stove and a heat pump, OK, you might hate it because you are forced to pay money for it, but somebody is going to benefit,” Wagner said. “The economy benefits.” He spent $100,000 to renovate his 200-year-old, 750-square-foot loft in Manhattan, installing energy-saving appliances — including a heat pump, an induction stove, and a more efficient fridge — switching to LED light bulbs, and improving insulation, among other measures. “So we spent a lot of money,” Wagner said. “That added $100,000 to the economy.” Eventually, it should save his family money too: The changes cut their utility bill down to about $100 a month, from a high point of $450, though it could take decades for them to recoup the upfront costs.

Of course, it’s one thing for countries with a lot of resources, like the U.S., to invest in technologies to cut emissions and prepare for the impacts of climate change. It’s another thing for cash-strapped countries around the world, who are facing historically high debt levels, to do so. But a recent study looked at decades of data from 172 countries and found that there’s “no inherent trade-off” between adapting to climate change and keeping government finances stable. “There are ways to invest in better preparation for climate change that not only do not endanger fiscal stability, but over the long term can actually contribute towards it,” said Jorge M. Uribe, an author of the study and a professor of economics and business at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Spain. The study, published in the European Journal of Political Economy, found that measures to improve people’s shelter, protection, and comfort can improve public finances.

Uribe hopes that his research can counter the entrenched idea that there’s no common ground between protecting people from climate change and protecting the economy. The frame is so persistent, it often goes unnoticed. For decades, Pew Research has been asking people to pick which of these two statements they agree with: “Stricter environmental laws and regulations cost too many jobs and hurt the economy,” or “Stricter environmental laws and regulations are worth the cost.”

Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, says he’s always hated that question. “It’s a forced trade-off, when we know that environmental protection often has positive economic benefits, yet the framing of that question forces people to choose one or the other,” Leiserowitz said. The Yale program’s surveys have found that most U.S. voters say that protecting the environment is actually good for the economy, with 59 percent agreeing it improves economic growth and provides new jobs. Only a small minority, 18 percent, say that it hurts growth and jobs.

“Look, there are some hard choices that we need to make, right? There are,” Wagner said. “At the same time, I think it’s pretty darn clear that when most people say that there are trade-offs — when most people say it’s the climate versus the economy — they’re wrong.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/economics/trump-administration-climate-economy-government-budget/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

For millions of years, the Mississippi River flowed unchecked, carrying roughly 400 million metric tons of sediment down to Louisiana, where it spilled into the Gulf of Mexico to create new land. But in the early 20th century, a series of dams and river-training structures were built to prevent flooding — leaving the river tamed and unable to produce new terrain at anywhere near its previous pace. Oil and gas development, which ripped broad canals through vulnerable marshland, made matters worse.

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As sea levels rose, existing land subsided, and more brutal storms battered the coast. Louisiana lost more than 2,000 square miles of wetlands over the last century, a slow dismantling exacerbated by climate change. About a football field or more land disappears every 100 minutes, and the state’s southern parishes are expected to lose another 3,000 square miles by 2050 unless drastic action is taken. After years of devastating hurricanes, many of Louisiana’s southernmost towns have been emptying out.

Complex restoration efforts remain the state’s best hope, but the Supreme Court hampered these initiatives earlier this month when it unanimously ruled that a lawsuit filed by Plaquemines Parish against Chevron — accusing the company of damaging coastal wetlands and accelerating land loss — should be moved to federal court, rather than the state court in which it was filed. The ruling effectively cancels a $745 million judgment against Chevron, decided before its appeal landed in front of the Supreme Court, and sets up a rematch of a decade-long legal fight.

“Frankly, it’s a ridiculous situation,” said Patrick Parenteau, emeritus professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School. “All this time and effort has gone into litigating these issues before a jury in Louisiana. Now you have to do it all over again, but you’re doing it sort of up the street in the federal courthouse.”

Federal courts are generally seen as more industry friendly, and the Supreme Court’s ruling was applauded by the Trump administration. Critics are calling it a win for oil majors, but legal experts say it’s only a brief reprieve for oil companies, which will still have to face a Louisiana jury in federal court.

Plaquemines Parish’s lawsuit is one of dozens filed by Louisiana’s parishes against oil majors. Chevron appealed the state court’s ruling in favor of Plaquemines Parish last year, because the case focused on the company’s work drilling off the Louisiana coast back in World War II. Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the lawsuit should be moved to federal court, as the company was working as a military contractor during that time.

“I was surprised that the case was not removed to federal court originally,” said Edward P. Richards, a professor of law at Louisiana State University. He said that the lawsuit involves a number of aspects — dredging permits in navigable waterways, for example — that fall under federal purview.

“I think that might be the reason the more liberal justices also went along with the ruling,” Richards said. “There were a lot of reasons that this should be in federal court.”

What’s more, Richards explained, so few people are left in some of the southern parishes that it’s difficult to find an impartial jury — although it’s also unlikely companies will find a much friendlier audience in federal court. Louisiana might be one of the most conservative states in the country, but residents in these low-lying parishes don’t need to believe in or care about climate change to see that sea levels are rising and flooding has become more frequent. Governor Jeff Landry, for example, has been a longtime supporter of oil and gas, going so far as to call climate change a “hoax” and packing state environmental offices with fossil fuel executives. Still, the Republican has explicitly backed these parish lawsuits demanding damages from oil companies.

The transfer of the Plaquemines lawsuit to federal court is sure to be frustrating for parishes looking for funds to restore their coastlines. Last year, Louisiana lost its most ambitious plan to combat sea level rise when Landry canceled the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Project. The initiative was formed as part of the state’s “coastal master plan” and aimed to harness Mississippi’s former land-making power through an intricate series of locks and dams, funneling sediment into Barataria Bay off Plaquemines Parish, where it would support the growth of new wetlands.

The project would have been one of the largest ecosystem restoration undertakings in the country’s history, according to The Audubon Society, and was supposed to be funded in part by remediation money from the Deepwater Horizon Spill. But Landry scuttled it, citing concerns about construction costs — even though the project had received $3 billion in funding from the Deepwater Horizon settlement —and the possibility that the project would damage the state’s seafood industry. Many shrimpers and oyster farmers opposed it over worries that the influx of freshwater from the Mississippi River would drive their catch out of the bay.

Both Richards and Parenteau said that the Supreme Court’s decision is unlikely to have any impact on the climate lawsuits filed by other states, such as Hawaii and Rhode Island. Those lawsuits are not concerned with the damage the oil industry has done to any specific area, but rather what companies said and when: Oil majors, those lawsuits contend, knew that climate change was real and ran disinformation campaigns to avoid the consequences.

“We’re a long way from finding out what these individual cases are going to result in, in terms of damage awards,” Parenteau said. “But it could be a very, very significant amount of money, that’s for sure.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/accountability/supreme-court-oil-chevron-plaquemines-louisiana-coast/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

A flesh-eating bacteria known as Vibrio was discovered all over Long Island — and authorities are issuing warnings about it.

Causing the disease vibriosis, people infected with Vibrio can suffer symptoms including nausea, diarrhea, cramps, nausea, chills and sometimes even death, according to Grist. On average there are 80,000 cases of vibriosis each year, with roughly 100 fatalities.

“Vulnificus is so potent it can squeeze through a pinhole-sized cut in the skin and lead to death in just 24 hours,” Grist explained. “In the last five years, the CDC registered 429 such vulnificus cases, plus 136 foodborne cases. But even though foodborne cases are less numerous, the patients that contract vulnificus by eating contaminated shellfish are more likely to die than those infected via open wounds. Thirteen percent of those nonfoodborne cases died, compared to 32 percent of people who got the infection from eating seafood. Most cases occur in the Gulf and Atlantic coastal regions.”

Grist added, “As far as infectious diseases go, vulnificus is exceedingly rare: The CDC reports between 150 and 200 cases a year. The sexually-transmitted disease chlamydia, by comparison, one of the most common bacterial infections in the U.S., infects northward of 1.5 million Americans annually. But vulnificus’ astonishing speed and high fatality rate — 15 to 50 percent, depending on the health of the person exposed and the route of infection — makes it a unique public health threat, particularly as climate change grows its pathways of exposure.”

The pathogen, which was discovered on Sagaponack Pond, Mecox Bay and Georgica Pond on the South Fork, is thriving because of algae blooms, nitrogen runoff and climate change.

“We see Vibrio as the indicator for climate change,” Kyle Brumfield, a microbiologist at the University of Maryland who has been studying the bacteria for a decade, told Grist. “We can use the presence of Vibrio and Vibrio cases as a proxy for water health in general.”

Stony Brook University professor Dr. Christopher Gobler, an ecologist in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, said during a public briefing on the matter that this is a “very, very serious infection” and Long Island locals should exercise caution.

“Bacteria known as vibrio vulnificus, also known by the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] as a flesh-eating bacteria, is present and a risk in our waters,” Gobler said at the time. “It’s a very, very serious infection, it gets into open wounds — people who are infected with this bacteria have a 20% chance of dying within just 48 hours.”

Because there are many locations that could be impacted, Gobler urged the public to avoid potentially contaminated areas.

“If someone’s immunocompromised, or elderly and they have open wounds in summer, you may want to stay out of the water,” Gobler said.

At one point in “Pressure,” meteorologist James Stagg (Andrew Scott) explains to General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) that an impending storm will make it impossible for the Allied troops to successfully invade Normandy as planned. As he attempts to break down the meteorology, his competing scientist Irving P. Krick insists on rudely interrupting with his own ill-informed point-of-view. Eventually Stagg tells Krick what he — and the audience — needs to hear: That Krick is “a confident moron.”

With a single insult, Scott’s Stagg sums up both the chief lesson of “Pressure” and its primary pleasure as a source of entertainment. Much like a similar recent World War II-themed blockbuster, “Oppenheimer,” “Pressure” is at its core a story of hard-working, well-informed scientists fighting against arrogant ignorance. While the primary ignoramuses in “Oppenheimer” were political reactionaries and Krick is merely a blowhard, both emerge as antagonists because their hostility toward experts imperils the security and values of the free world.

Directed by Anthony Maras, who co-authored the script with David Haig based on the latter’s stageplay of the same name, “Pressure” follows Eisenhower, Stagg, Krick, Eisenhower’s secretary Kay Summersby (Kerry Condon) and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (Damian Lewis) in the days before the June 1944 Normandy invasion known today as “D-Day.” The Allies would be unusually dependent on favorable weather to win the battle, so Eisenhower demands to know what the weather will be. Krick, using so-called “analog” maps that rely on past weather conditions to predict future ones, anticipates sunny skies and clear weather. Stagg, by contrast, relies on sophisticated data collection to anticipate a jet stream will push a major storm into the area.

The main drama in “Pressure” therefore involves the clashing egos of Stagg and Krick (who are equally full of themselves) as well as their clashing intellects (in which Stagg is clearly Krick’s superior). Eisenhower is thus placed in the unenviable position of needing to figure out which one is more reliable. From this potentially dry premise, “Pressure” creates a deeply engaging and fast-paced work of art.

I am not alone in this assessment. Ali, a 13-year-old self-described “history buff” who lives near the Pennsylvania theater where I saw “Pressure,” was very enthusiastic, gushing about how much she enjoyed seeing history brought to life and explaining she chose “Pressure” because it was the only film in theaters that looked interesting. Seven other theatergoers echoed her view, and that was only a small sample of the (for a Friday matinee) surprisingly packed auditorium.

To be clear, “Pressure” does not get the history 100 percent correct. Retired meteorologist Glenn “The Hurricane” Schwartz, who worked for the eastern Pennsylvania NBC affiliate from 1995 to 2022, broke down several aspects of the history that the film missed. It does not mention “pioneering meteorologist” Sverre Petterssen, a key part of the team who Schwartz explained “confidently predicted a bad storm for the 5th. Petterssen literally ‘wrote the book(s)’ on weather forecasting that I actually had to use as a [meteorology] undergrad in 1972!" It overlooks Krick’s post-war disgrace, not even mentioning it in the ending credits text. As Schwartz explained, he interviewed Dr. Francis Davis, who served “on Krick's team. Amazingly, Krick bragged about his role in the D-Day forecast EVEN THOUGH HE WAS DEAD WRONG! Even Davis admitted as such in my 2002 interview. ‘....it didn't work out very well.’” He later added that "Krick was so controversial and his ‘analog’ methods were so criticized by the meteorological community that he was about to be the first person ever thrown out of the American Meteorological Society for violating their Code of Ethics. He resigned instead. His methods live on in the private company, Planalytics, which happens to be located in the [Philadelphia] area. And believe it or not, AI appears to use analogs to make their forecasts, which happened to beat the National Hurricane Center and ALL computer models last season."

For Eisenhower buffs, perhaps the most notable omission is the widely substantiated (but technically unconfirmed) affair between the general and Summersby. Shortly before her death, Summersby admitted that she had to "disguise as best I could the intimacy that had grown between General Eisenhower and me. It was better that way.” While that omission was arguably defensible during Eisenhower’s lifetime, it becomes considerably less so in a movie intended to accurately reflect their interactions. One does not need the steamy indulgences of Oppenheimer’s affair in “Oppenheimer” to at least get that part right.

Yet there is also much for history and science buffs to love about “Pressure.” When it comes to the fundamental contours of the plot, science, military strategizing and overall history, “Pressure” is accurate. In the words of Dr. Michael E. Mann, the Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, “weather forecasting back then, before the age of numerical weather forecasting (which began in 1950 courtesy of the ENIAC computer at my university, Penn) was fairly primitive. It mainly consisted of using printed out weather maps and the elementary approaches we teach students in introductory courses on meteorology, which consists of taking the surface features (highs and lows), estimating the upper level steering winds, and predicting where those lows and highs are going to end up days later (it’s called the ‘steady state’ approach to forecasting).”

Perhaps most notably, “Pressure” subtly but firmly establishes the link between ignoring science and supporting reactionary political structures. Speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle’s G. Allen Johnson, Fraser explained that “it is a story that speaks to us 80-some years later. We see soldiers deployed again. We ask ourselves why, and then we ask ourselves why compared to 1944. The reason for even fighting (World War II) at all was to end fascism. To partner with nations and allies, later to become NATO, NASA, civil rights. I could go on.”

Maras elaborated on the scientific point.

“Eisenhower had those magnanimous examples of leadership that I think the world could benefit from now,” Maras told Johnson. “He took seriously the points of view of experts. We live in a specialized world, and it’s less about what any leader in particular knows and it is more about having the wisdom of who to trust and why you trust them.”

Dr. Federico Finchelstein, University in Exile Research Professor and Professor of History at The New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College, told AlterNet that this link is far from coincidental. Indeed, Eisenhower himself famously liberated many concentration camps during the Holocaust so that the Jewish community could prove the atrocities that happened, and explicitly recognized the junk science used by Nazis to rationalize their oppression.

“I can say that historically fascism has had an ambiguous relationship with science,” Finchelstein said. “It instrumentalized rational means to achieve irrational ends. Science per se was not a problem for them insofar as it did not contradict their unreason, their ideological irrational being. Current wannabe fascists, including the Trumpists, tend to do the same but they are even more anti-science and more irrational regarding their means.”

While Krick is not a fascist, his ignorance is part of the same erroneous line of thinking that informs the Allies’ fascist foes. They first come to a conclusion, then retroactively create a logic to support it. Good leadership requires following the facts, even when they are inconvenient and especially when they disprove one's own prejudices. As Eisenhower himself famously told President John F. Kennedy near the end of Eisenhower’s own administration, the Allies won because they had better meteorologists than the Germans.

As President Donald Trump attacks the reality of man-made climate change and slashes federal funding to science programs all over America, this message is both relevant and poignant. Eisenhower was a firm supporter of funding scientific research and education.

“Science education is not only crucial for students with science ambitions,” Schwartz explained. “It's important to understand the basics of how science works to responsibly argue about climate, for example. And scientific research is crucial for the advancement of any branch of science. Cutting observations, research, or efforts to improve forecasting would horrify Eisenhower today.”

Or as Mann told AlterNet, “Not only did Eisenhower understand the importance of embracing science; he understood the pernicious consequences of bigotry and the importance of fighting back against it.” Connecting that point to today, “look no further than the latest effort by Trump and the polluters that he represents (and their hired propagandists) to attack the work of the international climate science community by misrepresenting the latest findings regarding the threat of climate change.”

At one point I quoted Eisenhower to Mann as a way of explaining how the film’s message is relevant to the Trump era.

"High-quality professional personnel in science, engineering, teaching, languages, and other critical fields are necessary to our national security effort,” Eisenhower said in 1958. “Each year, nevertheless, many young people drop out of high school before graduation. Many able high school graduates do not go on to college. This represents a waste of needed talent."

Mann replied, “Right on the money.” If I had to summarize “Pressure” in four words, those are the ones I’d choose: “Right on the money.”

Talk of the Antichrist has surged in President Donald Trump's first year in office, and the discussion has broken out beyond the traditional right-wing circles.

Christian Paz, writing for Vox, reported Tuesday that talk of the Antichrist has become a larger conversation among more mainstream political circles than the typical evangelical prophecies.

The end-times conversation connects a renewed apocalyptic panic to those desperately searching for ways to grapple with a more complicated "crisis-driven" world by ascribing the "Antichrist" thinking to any figure who could match charismatic leaders in technology, war or politics.

The idea that Trump could fit that description has been proposed by far-right influencers like former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and anti-Semitic commentator Nick Fuentes. Even Tucker Carlson asked the question. It came as Trump posted an AI photo of himself depicted as Jesus Christ. He later claimed that he thought it was a "doctor."

“But he’s radiating the spirit of Antichrist, no question," conservative Rod Dreher told the Wall Street Journal.

In March, CNN reported that billionaire Peter Thiel has been hosting secret lectures about the Antichrist in an undisclosed location in Rome.

"But the appearance of Thiel on the Vatican’s doorstep has raised eyebrows, given the tensions between Thiel’s thinking and that of Pope Leo XIV," the report said. "Two Catholic institutions have distanced themselves from the lecture series, which continues through Wednesday."

On Monday, the pope published his first encyclical, warning that artificial intelligence is causing problems for humanity, particularly when it comes to its use in war.

Meanwhile, "Thiel has previously written and lectured on the subject, arguing that the Antichrist is not necessarily a person but could come as a global government system. It would take control, he has argued, by exploiting people’s fears around artificial intelligence, climate change or nuclear war."

Paz, writing for Vox, explained that the colorful imagery and ambiguity in the Bible talking about the Antichrist can attract people trying to solve a kind of prepper puzzle.

“They read the Bible like it’s a secret code book, and that if they can unlock the code, then they can understand what’s going to happen in the end times,” historian Matthew A. Sutton told Vox. Sutton focuses on American apocalypticism at Washington State University. “It’s a very modern way to read the Bible compared to what you would’ve seen through much of church history.”

When he says "modern," he means the last 100 years. But as the world grapples with climate change, another war in the Middle East, the possibility of a pending economic catastrophe and leaders like Trump, talk of the Antichrist and the end times are being used to explain what people see as troubled times.

“Dressing political theory in apocalyptic robes carries risks," Sutton told Vox, though it's hardly a new idea. But it can become dangerous. "When powerful actors reframe ordinary policy debates, such as about guardrails for AI, as a battle against the antichrist, they raise anxieties, delegitimize compromise, and insinuate that democratic deliberation is spiritually suspect.”

But the panic about Trump has turned the world upside down over the course of his second term. So, while the right is spinning conspiracy theories about his being the Antichrist, he also fits the mold, the report said.

"He is surely a charismatic leader; he’s launched civilizational wars in the Middle East; he’s survived assassination attempts, mimicking the fatal, but healed, wound of the beast of Revelations; and he’s blasphemed and used the trappings of religion to advance his personal brand," said Paz for Vox.

Religious Studies Professor Robert Fuller called talk of the end times a "crisis mentality" and perpetuates hate.

"It makes compromise unthinkable since no one compromises with the devil. It justifies hatred and violence, recasting these traits as virtues," he said.

Across the country, Republican-led state legislatures are passing a slate of laws that effectively shield oil and gas companies from legal claims that they are responsible for the destruction and mounting toll caused by climate change. Fifteen laws have either been passed or are currently being debated in 11 states. Together, they threaten to remove long-standing tools for the public to hold corporations accountable.

A ProPublica investigation has found that most of these bills are part of a coordinated effort, orchestrated by a constellation of groups that share staff or have funding ties to the prominent conservative activist Leonard Leo, who is credited with placing conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. These groups have drafted state legislation, planned its dissemination and engaged a well-connected lobbying firm to get them signed into law.

The effort is unfolding as courts are weighing more than 30 significant lawsuits by states, counties and municipalities accusing fossil fuel companies of misrepresenting the risks their products posed to consumers and seeking to recoup the costs of disasters and other climate impacts like wildfire losses or coastal flooding that their products helped cause. A goal of the legislation is to block these cases from going forward and prevent new ones from being filed.

The strategy to establish state laws that will make it all but impossible to sue oil and gas companies was laid out in detail by a group of lobbyists and political operatives in December, during a panel presentation at the annual States and Nation Policy Summit of the American Legislative Exchange Council — the influential organization that brings together state lawmakers, corporate leaders and conservative activists to draft and promote legislation.

During the session, one of the panelists, Will Hild, the executive director of a nonprofit called Consumers’ Research, described the climate cases as a liberal effort to use the judicial system to exact a new tax on energy companies in the form of civil judgments. Another panelist, Oramel H. Skinner, the former solicitor general for Arizona and the executive director of the nonprofit Alliance for Consumers, warned that those judgments will trickle down to make citizens’ lives less affordable and ultimately make many of their choices — whether to own pickup trucks or purchase a side of beef — illegal.

ProPublica reviewed an audio recording of the event obtained by the nonpartisan watchdog group Documented.

Hild and Skinner had come to the session with a ready-made fix: a set of pre-written bills and plenty of funding.

Consumers’ Research and the Alliance for Consumers are both funded by organizations connected to Leo. ProPublica examined lobbying records across 25 states, federal tax disclosures for more than a dozen organizations and notes from other closed-door strategy sessions among ALEC members and found that several Leo-supported groups are part of a national strategy to give legal immunity to companies for their climate emissions.

Since 2021, Leo has been deploying a $1.6 billion gift through a series of nonprofits and other organizations that obscure the source and the recipients of donations — so-called dark money groups. Much of that money has been routed through a nonprofit judicial advocacy group Leo founded — now called The 85 Fund — which both receives and disseminates Leo’s funding. Many of these nonprofits are increasingly focused on issues related to climate change.

The panel session’s moderator, Michael Thompson, is a senior vice president at CRC Advisors, Leo’s for-profit Virginia-based political and corporate consulting firm. He also sits on ALEC’s Private Enterprise Advisory Council. Hild’s organization, Consumers’ Research, received more than 65% of its funding in 2024 through a dark money group called Donors Trust. The 85 Fund contributed more than $67 million to Donors Trust in 2024. Consumers’ Research also works closely with — and contracted more than $670,000 of work in 2024 to — CRC Advisors. Another panelist, Paul N. Watkins, was a legal fellow at Consumers’ Research. According to tax filings, his law firm received more than $2.2 million in 2024 from the group. As recently as 2024, Skinner was also counsel for Leo’s 85 Fund, according to the nonprofit’s tax filings.

“For decades, the left has leveraged immense resources to capture the institutions that shape our society — the legal system, universities, medical and scientific bodies, the entertainment industry, and our biggest corporations,” Leo wrote to ProPublica in a text message. “That takeover resulted in a radically woke culture that does not reflect the will of the American people, or the pillars of limited constitutional government that made our country great. That is why our enterprise supports organizations that are committed to crushing liberal dominance and restoring balance in the institutions that shape society.”

At the ALEC session, Skinner presented a model bill that would effectively bar cities and towns from bringing public nuisance lawsuits against corporations and others when the issue is a broad public harm like climate change. In several cases, plaintiffs have argued that the impacts of climate change — the buckling of a road from extreme swings in temperature, for example — are a “nuisance” caused by fossil fuel companies.

Nuisance claims are common in the American legal system, giving individuals, companies or communities a way to sue when someone else’s actions damage their property, degrade the health or safety of the environment around them or interfere with their rights. Under these laws, parties can ask for financial compensation or seek court orders to remedy problems, such as pollution. Skinner, however, argues that nuisance laws should only be used to address local, easily fixable problems, like excessive noise from a bar. His bill would curtail the use of public nuisance suits in climate cases by limiting liability for manufacturers and other businesses and giving state attorneys general the sole authority to bring them.

“Think really hard about every lever you have in your states to shut off the ability for this woke lawfare machine to churn,” Skinner told the audience. “The left’s goal is to reshape society around you using the courtroom.”

The second draft law, called the Energy Freedom Act, was produced by the policy nonprofit associated with Hild’s organization. It would, among many provisions, shield businesses from liability related to emissions of greenhouse gases if those releases did not violate the federal Clean Air Act.

Critics of the bills say they subvert the rights of local communities. They send the message that “you can pollute with impunity,” said Carly Phillips, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s really a thumb in the eye of places that are affected by climate change.”

The push to block climate suits across the states comes as several of the cases against the oil industry approach, or have already entered, the perilous legal phases of discovery, when plaintiffs will have the opportunity to seek confidential industry documents and depose oil executives. The stakes for oil companies are enormous. By some estimates more than $10 trillion in damages can be attributed to U.S. emissions.

There’s a reason why state and local governments have increasingly brought these suits. The frequency and cost of climate-influenced disasters, including severe storms, drought and flooding, continues to mount — between $350 billion and $450 billion in each of the last three years — stretching government budgets. Significantly, the science that makes it possible to attribute how much any one disaster was influenced by climate change has steadily advanced. To cite one example, the March heat waves across the U.S. would have been virtually impossible without the emissions that have caused climate change, according to the European science group World Weather Attribution, and were about four times as likely to happen as they were a decade ago.

Boulder, Colorado, is among the places facing increasing droughts, more extreme precipitation and larger wildfires — all of which are significantly propelled by climate change linked to the emissions from the use of fossil fuels. The state has estimated the costs of these perils will run into the many hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2018, Boulder County sued Exxon Mobil and the Canadian oil company Suncor Energy, accusing the companies of “intentional, reckless and negligent conduct.”

Among its claims, the county alleged the oil companies engaged in a conspiracy to mislead the public and violated consumer protection rules by mischaracterizing the dangers of their products. They accused the oil companies of creating a public nuisance by altering the environment and leaving the county to pay to abate growing hazards such as the flooding that tests roads and bridges. Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy have never filed a response in Colorado but asked for the case to be dismissed.

Ever since, the lawsuit has been mired in a dispute over whether Colorado courts were the correct venue, with the state Supreme Court ultimately ruling last May that they were. Suncor filed to the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider, and this fall it will weigh the company’s petition asking whether federal environmental law preempts the state law.

The high-profile national court case is just one facet in an increasingly tense fight over liability for the fossil fuel industry. In January, the American Petroleum Institute, the largest fossil fuel industry group in the United States, said fighting the climate liability lawsuits was one of its top priorities in 2026. Lobbying records for the group from last year show that it advocated for legislation to protect oil producers from climate lawsuits at the state level. The Trump administration; other industry groups, including the Chamber of Commerce; and several of the nonprofit advocacy groups associated with Leo have argued that state courts are the wrong venue for claims that ultimately concern emissions that drift widely across borders, and they wish to see other cases moved or dismissed. They say that because the federal government already has the authority to regulate those emissions, the federal courts, not the states, should hear the claims.

In an interview, Hild told ProPublica that he sees the suits as an illegitimate effort to enact policy through the courts and to “regulate the entire U.S. economy from a single state.”

In an email, Skinner wrote: “Our effort is not one focused on climate change. But it is true that left-wing activists and their dark money donors have put vast sums of money and years of groundwork into pushing a coast-to-coast campaign of climate-focused public nuisance lawsuits.”

Neither Watkins nor Thompson responded to requests for comment.

When Skinner and Hild finished their presentation at ALEC they made a QR code available to download the language of the model bills and directed the audience to a woman named Catherine Gunsalus, who was in the back of the room. She would be able to answer any questions, they said.

Gunsalus until recently worked for the Heritage Action Fund, the political and lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation, the Trump-aligned think tank that is most recently known for promoting the Project 2025 agenda. Records show that Gunsalus has also lobbied in collaboration with another Leo-affiliated group, Americans for Public Trust.

In April 2025, she formed a lobbying firm called Varidon Strategies and began registering in states almost immediately afterward, according to records. By mid-summer, Varidon was representing Alliance for Consumers Action Fund; Consumers’ Research; The Honest Election Project, an affiliate of The 85 Fund; as well as other Leo entities in 25 states. In the majority of those filings, Varidon used an email address at the domain of Holtzman Vogel, a Virginia-based law firm that is often retained by Leo’s organizations.

Gunsalus did not reply to a detailed list of questions.

In the four months since the ALEC summit, there has been substantial activity in the states where Varidon has registered. On Jan. 5, representatives in Missouri introduced the loosely related Eliminate Criminal Profiteering Act, which could stop revenues flowing to law firms from settlements in the sort of nuisance suits often used in climate cases. Two days later, legislators took up the Public Nuisance Reform Act, which proposes narrowing the definition of what could be considered a nuisance.

That same month, similar bills were introduced in Indiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee. In February, eight more followed in Oklahoma, Iowa, South Carolina, Utah, Louisiana and Kansas. Skinner, who is registered to lobby in Kansas, was invited to testify in a hearing about that state’s bill and launched a new “End the Lawfare” website targeting the “left-wing” agenda. As of April 2, versions of the model legislation offered at the ALEC meeting have been introduced across 11 states altogether. In Utah, the governor has signed two related bills into law, and in Tennessee and Indiana, bills are awaiting their governors’ signature.

The more states there are with some sort of waiver in place, the narrower the pathway for cities and states to seek redress as environmental conditions worsen, and the costs continue to rise. Hild and Skinner and the Leo network’s bills also serve another purpose: teeing up a conflict that pits states against one another, a conflict that only the Supreme Court or Congress can finally resolve.

As Hild put it at the ALEC gathering, “This is economic civil war.”

During his speech at the 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland in January, U.S. President Donald Trump berated European countries for using green energy — claiming, without evidence, that wind turbines are a health hazard and climate change is a "hoax." European countries use a combination of fossil fuels, green energy and nuclear power, but Trump's message was that they shouldn't be using green energy at all.

Liberal economist Paul Krugman examines Trump's vehement opposition to green energy in a column published on his Substack page on April 14. And he argues that Trump is dropping the ball from both an environmental standpoint and an economic standpoint.

"Donald Trump wants to stop the renewable energy revolution," Krugman observes. "But he can't — it will continue to advance around the world because the economics and the science are compelling. Trump can, however, ensure that the revolution passes us by. And the big geopolitical winner from Trump's hostility to the energy revolution will be China, which dominates the production of renewable-energy infrastructure."

The former New York Times columnist continues, "Furthermore, the China-led energy future will arrive ahead of schedule thanks to the debacle in Iran. Soaring oil and gas prices, combined with the threat of shortages, have driven home the riskiness of relying on fossil fuels."

Citing recent New York Times reporting on the effect that Trump's war with Iran is having on energy prices in Europe, Krugman noted that the more reliant European countries are on fossil fuels, the more they are hurting when their bills arrive.

"France and Spain, which mostly generate electricity from non-fossil sources —

including nuclear power in France — have been partially insulated from the war's side effects," Krugman explains. "Italy, heavily reliant on gas, has suffered badly. Also, Trump's decision to counter Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz by blockading the Strait of Hormuz surely adds to the perception that relying on U.S. oil and LNG (liquefied natural gas), which is what countries will have to do if they don't turn to solar and wind, isn't safe. Who can guarantee that an erratic America won’t try to weaponize other countries' dependence on our energy?"

Krugman adds, "So Trump's adventurism in Iran has sparked a global rush to invest in solar power, wind power, and the batteries that make renewable energy work 24/7. And where will the world procure most of the renewable energy equipment it seeks? From China…. It's sad to watch this country sabotage itself and cede the most important industry of the future to China. In doing so, we make ourselves poorer, technologically backward, and less influential in a world that is speeding towards the energy revolution. In the end, we aren't just burning fossil fuels; we’re also burning our future."