“You Can’t Reduce Carbon Emissions When You Can Pollute For Free” — Sheldon Whitehouse

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If you haven’t had a chance to learn about Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), I recommend that you slow down your reading when you see his name in the headlines. As he champions policies to uphold US leadership in the world, he works to protect our planet in a changing climate and to hold the powerful accountable for their climate degradation actions.

Senator Whitehouse does see “a pathway to climate safety,” and it’s a direct, in-your-face, fight ’em where they are strategy. “We should call out the climate denial fraud operation as climate denial fraud. It is fraud,” he reiterates. “Say so.”

Let’s start 2026 by saying the obvious: Last year was about as bad for the environment as it could be. The Trump administration proudly dismantled policies meant to protect ecosystems under the auspices of “energy dominance” and a quest to reverse “the Biden energy subtraction agenda.”

Climate safeguards are crucial at this moment in time, and Senator Whitehouse says “there’s an epic villain in the climate story,” a villain that has promoted the climate denial fraud operation. “Its contiguous dark money influence operation are classic villains,” he continues, “and we should say so.” After all, isn’t every story is better with a villain in it? “These are alive-and-well, central-casting-quality, epic villains.”

Whitehouse calls out these villains, these fossil fuel capitalists for what they are: components of “a single, evil operation.” Climate denial fraud thrives on its dark money political influence, he explains, which “backstops people who spread the climate denial fraud – the two are intertwined.”

Why do the Senator’s remarks seem so direct? The evidence is clear that fossil fuels—and the fossil fuel industry and its enablers—are behind the climate crisis that threatens life on Earth. We know that every stage of the fossil fuel life cycle — extraction, processing, transport, and combustion or conversion to petrochemical products — emits planet-heating greenhouse gases and health-harming pollutants, in addition to causing widespread environmental degradation.

Fossil fuel capitalists need to be held accountable for the consequences of their malfeasance, says Whitehouse. “You can’t reduce carbon emissions when you can pollute for free. The fossil fuel industry’s pollute-for-free business model kills any remaining hope of a pathway to climate safety.”

Climate Denialism: An Ugly Mask of Lies

Despite the compelling evidence and availability of clean renewable energy, government action to limit fossil fuels has always been too slow and inadequate — and now right-wing autocratic governments are reaping paybacks from the fossil fuel industry. Climate denialism is a major political and ideological strategy used by fossil fuel companies to reduce momentum towards emission reduction and decarbonization. It’s all about securing profits.

To keep the money flowing, fossil fuel companies have made an art of lobbying: they’re a constant presence in offices of lawmakers, political leaders, media, and think tanks. Whitehouse unveils the insidious campaign of fossil fuel duplicity.

Remember last that we are in this grim predicament thanks to a well-funded, semi-covert campaign of lies, propaganda, dark money, and political corruption, done purposefully by the fossil fuel industry. A massive reckoning is due for that evil. With all of Trump’s chaos, we can’t lose sight of what’s at stake for our planet. We have got to right the ship.

We need to make explicit how fossil fuel propaganda campaigns denigrate climate change and the science behind it, instead, painting an image of fossil fuel companies are custodians of the planet. They fund university programs so alternative climate denial narratives become mainstream. Their public image is professional, organized, logical, and seemingly responsible. Organizations like the Institute for Energy Research straight out lie with impunity, arguing with a straight face that “renewables consume orders of magnitude more materials for the same electricity output.”

Challenging those false narratives, Whitehouse has crafted policies addressing climate change, environmental protection, and a price on carbon. As early as 2015 he warned of danger from the fossil fuel industry. “The fossil fuel industry is using a playbook perfected by the tobacco industry,” he explained, calling the era “a test of American democracy.” He passed into law a dedicated fund to support ocean and coastal research and restoration and bipartisan legislation to confront the crisis of marine plastic and other waste polluting our oceans.

As a ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and co-chair of the US Senate Climate Change Task Force, Senator Whitehouse has worked to enact bipartisan measures to reduce carbon pollution and boost the US clean energy economy. He was a co-sponsor of the Clean Competition Act of 2025, which would boost clean US manufacturing and cut industrial pollution in the US and abroad.

CleanTechnica’s Steve Hanley also sings the praises of Senator Whitehouse. “Sheldon Whitehouse is a voice of reason in a maelstrom of overheated political dogma,” Hanley describes. “He is focused, articulate, and passionate about defending America from oligarchs who think the rules don’t apply to them.”

Whitehouse admonishes the climate deniers to beware the effects of climate change on their own lives and home.

That economic hit is going to create an enormous political shift, because it’s not about polar bears and green jobs anymore. Now, it’s about climate risk coming for your economic safety, your ability to get insurance or a mortgage on your home, your ability for your home to have value when it needs to be sold, and, of course, your harm when all that cascades out into the general economy.

Fossil fuel phaseout must also avoid more false narratives that perpetuate — and all too often subsidize — fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure, such as carbon capture and storage and hydrogen made from fossil fuels. At the US federal level, while Congress should pass legislation limiting fossil fuel production, the partisan and dysfunctional nature of policymaking in Washington, D.C. requires focused attention on existing laws and executive powers.

Momentum from climate and environmental justice voices like that of Senator Whitehouse has been a key driver of the global call for fossil fuel phaseout and just transition. We call on more legislators to speak out and move to address imperative climate protections, starting with dismantling the Trump administration’s corruption that is destroying the planet and moving to new, innovative renewable energy sources — while we can.

After all, as Bill McKibben wrote yesterday, renewable energy is peace.

Resources

• “Time to Wake Up: 100 Speeches, 100 Reasons to Act on Climate.” Sheldon Whitehouse: US Senator for Rhode Island website. May 18, 2015.
  
• “Climate change denialism, money, and power: Capture by fossil fuel corporations and petrostates.” S. Ratuva. In: Ratuva, S. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. 2025.February 27, 2025.
• “Just possibly it’s the oil? A solar panel is the new peace sign.” Bill McKibben. January 3, 2026.
• “Our failure on climate. Sheldon Whitehouse: US Senator for Rhode Island website. February 27, 2025.
• Promises made, promises kept: DOE is delivering on President Trump’s agenda of American energy dominance.” Energy.gov. December 18, 2025.
• “Scientists’ warning on fossil fuels.” Shaye Wolf, et al. Oxford Open Climate Change. 2025.
• “The villain, a cure, and a shift.” Conservation Law Foundation. October 28, 2025.