The Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) is still a relatively little-known American climate NGO, but since 2021, they’ve been quietly raking in more than $100 million annually.
They’re also big fans of China.
In 2021, RMI complimented China for “responsible global leadership” toward achieving “carbon neutrality before 2060.” Similarly, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) boasts that they were the “first international nonprofit to launch a clean energy program in China” and that China now “leads the world in renewable energy installation . . .”
China love also extends to climate policy donors. Billionaire venture capitalist John Doerr has been the chair of the Climate Imperative Foundation since 2020. In April of this year, Doerr celebrated China as the “world’s first electrostate” and praised it for “upending the old carbon-based world order.”
The total truth is less lovely, as is President Xi Jinping’s repressive regime. This China emissions story and many other hypocrisies promoted by our so-called “environmental” movement are exposed in my new report, Enemies of Energy: The Myths, the Movement, and the Money, just released by the Capital Research Center.
In 2005, China and America were each responsible for 20% of global CO2 emissions. After 20 years of help and praise from the enemies of American energy, China is now cranking out 32% of global CO2 emissions, while the USA has fallen to just 13%.
A major driver of this has been China’s buildout of coal-fired power generation, which is already 12 times more than that of the U.S., and they’re not done. In January, two months before John Doerr praised Xi’s dictatorship for upending the carbon-based world order, the Financial Times reported that China was on course to open nearly 100 new coal-fired power stations in 2026 alone.
The decline in American CO2 emissions, as reported in Enemies of Energy, is in large measure due to our switch from coal to cleaner-burning natural gas in our electricity generation. Calculated on a per-person basis, American carbon emissions haven’t been this low since before our entry into World War II.
But rather than praise this natural gas-driven accomplishment, the anti-energy nonprofits work to impede our gas production. They also oppose coal and oil production. And most hypocritically, they have been working against nuclear power, which produces no emissions at all and is the most reliable electricity fuel we have.
The report is titled Enemies of Energy because this movement, which collects more than $9.3 million per day in revenue, has been trying to halt nearly 90% of the fuel that runs the American economy. Enemies provides lively profiles of the 15 most influential and richest anti-energy NGOs, and their 15 largest known donors. Other examples, in addition to those previously mentioned, include NGOs such as the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity, and billionaire donors such as Michael Bloomberg and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
Enemies also provides descriptions of the 10 biggest myths and misconceptions the anti-energy movement uses to promote their agenda.
The profile for the “climate emergency” cites a NASA estimate that sea levels have been rising at less than half a centimeter per year since 1993, roughly the thickness of three pennies stacked atop each other. That is not an emergency that justifies radical alteration of the American economy and our energy dominance.
Nearly all of the Enemies promote weather-dependent wind and solar energy in place of reliable sources. The report reveals that these options devour far more real estate than necessary, or what the “environmental” movement used to think of as “the environment.” Among other sources, Enemies uses an April 2021 study from Bloomberg Green that showed “solar energy needs 140 times the land area to produce the same kilowatts as a natural gas plant, 47 times more than an emissions-free nuclear plant, and nearly 18 times more than a coal-fired power station.”
Bloomberg’s comparisons were even worse for wind energy.
A section on “plastic pollution” shows the United States is responsible for just 0.25% of the plastic waste reaching the ocean, despite producing 25% of the planet’s economic output. Meanwhile, China, the supposed carbon-fighting hero for so many of America’s energy enemies, is responsible for 7.2% of ocean plastic.
That’s 29 times more than the USA, even as China has a much smaller economy.
The major point of Enemies of Energy is that the anti-energy movement is implicitly the enemy of our economy. In addition to our world-beating prosperity, reliable energy fuels the wealth we use to protect the features and creatures we love. If the Enemies get what they want, then we will no longer have what we need and love.
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Ken Braun is managing editor and director of content at the Capital Research Center. He also edits Capital Research magazine and conducts investigative research and drafts profiles for InfluenceWatch.org.
