The fossil fuel industry is becoming increasingly frantic. Its leaders know climate science, continued catastrophe, and common sense will eventually break through and make the relentless burning of its poisonous products unfashionable.

Public opinion continues to shift that way, demanding a just transition to renewable/cleaner energy and a more energy-efficient way of living.

The industry, however, is doing all it can to delay this healthier future. It long ago bought D.C. influence to push deregulation and to steal taxpayer money in the form of subsidies worth tens of billions. It’s deeply embedded within the current regime, which has terminated protections against mercury emissions from fossil fuel power plants and opened up even more public land to oil and natural gas (methane) exploration and extraction, among many other industry-friendly decisions and rollbacks.

Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, is the industry’s biggest cheerleader. He’s also a serial liar, like his boss.

Shortly after scientists confirmed that March was the most abnormally hot month in recorded U.S. history, Zeldin attended a conference of the Heartland Institute, a collection of science-denying, climate-change-is-a-hoax grifters who lie for the fossil fuel industry. He was the keynote speaker.

(Three years ago I was told by a Heartland Institute spokesman that the Illinois-based nonprofit doesn’t receive funding from the fossil fuel industry, so they either lie for free or someone else pays for their lying, or he was lying to me. A U.S. foundation associated with Shell has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to religious right and conservative organizations, including the Heartland Institute, that deny climate change is real or human caused. The Heartland Institute has also received funding from an ExxonMobil disinformation campaign. To prove his point that the organization has “long promoted a climate realism position” he said the Institute is “proud to give a platform to many scientists who look at the data and are skeptical of the climate doom narrative.” He provided a link to the organization’s 2023 climate change conference. None of the six people featured in the main photo are scientists. In fact, most of the people mentioned are not scientists.)

“It is a day to celebrate vindication,” Zeldin told the April 10 conference crowd of mostly middle-aged men in suits. Their alleged vindication is entirely self-made. It’s a lie.

The Guardian reported that Zeldin said a “cabal” of elites have promoted climate science to further their agenda. Now, “we aren’t just following blind obedience to whatever the dire, doom-and-gloom prediction of the day is.”

James Taylor, president of the Heartland Institute, said, “I feel wonderful. The truth is winning out.”

“Good news. There is no climate crisis,” read a banner outside the main ballroom, erected by the CO2 Coalition, another climate-denying nonprofit that co-sponsored the reality-defying conference.

They have concocted an unjust world that protects greed and ignorance.

The federal agency Zeldin is destroying recently proposed to delay by two years the Model Year 2027 and Later Light- and Medium-Duty Vehicle Criteria Pollutant Rule — a standard that would slash tailpipe pollution of nitrogen oxides, fine particulate matter, and volatile organic compounds from new cars and trucks.

“EPA’s own modeling shows that the threatened light- and medium-duty criteria pollutant standards, together with the heavy-duty nitrogen oxide standards, would prevent more than 50,000 premature deaths, 85,000 hospital and emergency room visits, 25 million asthma attacks, and 15 million lost school and work days through 2055,” according to Public Citizen. “The threatened delay in implementing the standards would pump more than 5 million tons of nitrogen oxides, 165,000 tons of fine particulate matter, and 2 million tons of volatile organic compounds into the air.”

Last month MAGA lawmakers introduced a proposal that, if enacted into law, would grant legal immunity to the fossil fuel industry from laws or lawsuits that seek to hold it accountable for the public health and environmental damages it causes.

The fossil fuel industry, since it helped to fund the reelection of the Oval Office Monster, has been pushing Congress for legal immunity similar to what sellout politicians granted to the gun industry two decades ago.

The legislation was introduced by a trio of Senate sycophants — Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and Mike Lee — who absurdly titled it the ‘‘Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026.”

Rep. Harriet Hageman, MAGA-Wyo., was more to the point, headlining her press release announcing the bill with “Rep. Hageman Introduces Bill To Shield American Energy Producers From Leftist Climate Litigation.”

Unserious lawmakers are going to make more people sick and get more people killed.

Their fossil fuel-friendly law would shield corporate polluters from accountability, as an increasing number of people are impacted by wildfires, heat waves, droughts, flooding, and other disasters Big Oil predicted decades ago and has lied about ever since.

Fossil fuel corporations, their government lapdogs, their financial enablers, and industry lickspittle have responded to protest and advocacy with increased harassment, intimidation, surveillance, retaliatory litigation, and violence, according to Global Climate Legal Defense. They routinely marginalize environmentalists and climate defenders using racism, sexism, nationalism, and other forms of discrimination.

“Climate defenders are being harassed, sued, arrested, and jailed at unprecedented rates,” according to the organization.

An executive from a global surveillance company told an investigative journalist at the ISS World Europe 2025 expo, a trade fair held annually in Prague for police and intelligence agencies and advanced surveillance technology companies, that his firm, First Wap, could provide sophisticated phone-tracking software capable of pinpointing any person in the world.

He said one potential buyer is a private mining company, owned by an individual under sanction, who intended to use it to surveil environmental protesters.

To keep us under a cloud of pollution and the boot of Big Oil, wealthy individuals and the corporations they control are using their power and resources to buy up legacy media, to gut community journalism, to control social media, and to build up the surveillance-industrial complex — all to distort the truth about the climate crisis, to keep the public uninformed, to label environmentalists and climate advocates “enemies of the state,” “communists,” or other such nonsense, and to spy on everyone.

The fossil fuel industry and its well-compensated allies prey on marginalized communities and rural/remote areas to further expand polluting infrastructure and to keep us addicted to its climate-changing products.

The result of decades of industry lying and government apathy is that nearly half of the children in the United States are now breathing dangerous levels of air pollution, according to a recent report. The American Lung Association report found that 33.5 million children — 46% of those younger than 18 — live in areas that received a failing grade for at least one measure of air pollution. The 163-page report also found that 7 million children, or 10% of all children in the United States, live in communities that failed all three measures.

Note: For those who couldn’t bear clicking on the link to the Heartland Institute’s 2023 climate conference, the main photo features Rep. Lauren Boebert, MAGA-Colo.; Sen. Ron Johnson, MAGA-Wis.; Alex Epstein, a former fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute who advocates for the benefits and use of fossil fuels; Jason Isaac, a former Texas state representative who is a critic of aggressive climate action policies; attorney Paul Watkins, a Federalist Society ally; and Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank that opposes stringent government climate policies, arguing they hinder economic growth and energy affordability.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.