An Energy Trojan Horse
By
Guest Contributor
October 3, 2025
Editor’s Note: Environmentalists have long tried to square the circle, claiming their environmental and climate goals are not just in line with conservative values, but at the very heart of conservatism. Across various forums green organizations have pushed “market solutions,” to address environmental problems, yet those solutions have little to do with markets, and a lot to do with government directing the economy and people’s personal choices through taxes, regulations, or frameworks. Bigger government is not conservative. As The Heartland Institute has detailed, Republicans who’ve been lead down the garden path by so-called conservative environmental groups and embraced climate activism in recent election cycles have most often gone down in defeat.
Arguably the most politically connected and visible leader of the faux-conservative coalition engaged in conning real conservatives to embrace climate alarmism is Benji Backer, who founded the American Conservation Coalition. The mainstream media, like CNN and the Washington Post, and the green media, like Mother Jones and E & E News, alike treat Backer as a hero, convincing conservatives to join the fight against catastrophic climate change, or, in the words of Mother Jones, “trying to nudge Trump in the right direction,” on the environment and climate change. As James Taylor, The Heartland Institute’s president, noted in a discussion of Backer and his efforts, Backer gets climate science and conservative politics both badly wrong.
As this guest post shows, Backer and the American Conservation Coalition are not the only groups posing as conservative in order to con true conservatives into supporting liberal or progressive climate policies that restrict or end fossil fuel use, and radically transform agriculture, transportation, and energy production.
Guest essay by Kevin Kilty
https://climaterealism.com/2025/10/an-energy-trojan-horse/
