Climate Lawsuits Handing Geopolitical Gifts to Moscow, Beijing

State and local climate litigation against U.S. energy companies risks weakening America's industrial foundation and allied security.

Published on Mar. 8, 2026

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While state and local officials advocate for climate lawsuits against American energy companies in courtrooms across the country, Moscow and Beijing are quietly benefiting from the outcome. Energy has always been a source of geopolitical power, and America's adversaries understand that constraining U.S. production—even indirectly—reshapes global leverage in their favor. The growing wave of climate litigation against domestic energy firms risks accomplishing what rival powers have long sought strategically: weakening the industrial foundation that underpins U.S. economic strength and allied security.

Why it matters

The leverage over allies, ability to fund military buildups, and power to reshape the global order that comes with controlling energy supplies is well understood by America's adversaries. Yet a coalition of subnational Democratic officials and climate NGOs appear to have missed these geopolitical lessons, actively working to constrain the very industrial base that underwrites Western security.

The details

Climate litigation worldwide has quadrupled over the past decade, with roughly 70% of those cases filed in the United States, mostly targeting domestic oil and gas companies. This asymmetry, with no comparable litigation industry operating inside Russia or China, is deeply concerning. Advocates have tried and failed to persuade voters to phase out fossil fuels through legislation, so they have taken the fight to the courthouse instead, using the courts to achieve what they couldn't at the ballot box.

  • Climate litigation worldwide has quadrupled over the past decade.

The players

Moscow

The capital city of Russia, which has long sought to constrain U.S. energy production to increase its own geopolitical leverage.

Beijing

The capital city of China, which has spent years flooding global markets with subsidized renewables and electric vehicles in a calculated bid to dominate the energy supply chains of the future.

American energy companies

The domestic oil and gas firms that are the primary targets of the climate litigation campaign, which risks weakening the industrial foundation that underpins U.S. economic strength and allied security.

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What they’re saying

“Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the stakes explicit at this month's Munich Security Conference. Speaking directly to America's European allies, he described a new transatlantic mission: together, to 'reindustrialize our economies and rebuild our capacity to defend our people,' securing supply chains against extortion from foreign powers.”

— Marco Rubio, Secretary of State

What’s next

The constitutional problems with this approach are serious, as the U.S. Constitution assigns foreign affairs to the national government. A patchwork of states projecting their preferred policies across the country and around the world is exactly what the framers sought to prevent.

The takeaway

This case highlights the geopolitical risks of using climate litigation to constrain American energy producers. While the long-term goal of reducing fossil fuel demand may be coherent, in the near term it risks handing market share and geopolitical leverage to strategic competitors like Russia and China, undermining allied security and the industrial foundation that underpins U.S. economic strength.