Follow the money and Louisiana’s so-called “grassroots” energy opposition starts to look a lot less local. Over the past several years, more than $50 million in out-of-state funding has poured into activist groups operating in Louisiana, much of it tied to familiar coastal elite donors and networks aligned with George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, and the Arabella Advisors web of nonprofits. These are not Cajun landowners scraping together bake-sale money. This is national anti-fossil-fuel capital underwriting a coordinated campaign to block energy development in one of the most energy-dependent states in the country.

And a not-small number of people who have principled conservative objections to carbon capture are getting sucked in by the global-warming crowd.

This funding flows through organizations like the Sierra Club, Earthworks, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Healthy Gulf, and Rise St. James, which increasingly coordinate with parish-level groups that brand themselves as local and conservative. Trainings, shared graphics, unified messaging, and overlapping leadership show these groups are not parallel efforts. They are a single ecosystem, operating with shared legal strategies and national backing while presenting a homegrown façade.

The cooperation between parish-level groups and national activists is no longer subtle. The Louisiana CO2 Alliance and Save My Louisiana both claim to represent local concerns, yet both have increasingly worked alongside national environmental organizations on advocacy, messaging, and legal strategy. That reality came into sharper focus earlier this month when the CO2 Alliance named Renee Savant as its president, formalizing the leadership role of a progressive activist whose public views are far removed from the conservative image these groups project.

Savant is not a neutral civic organizer. She is a hard-left activist with a record of attacking President Donald Trump, Governor Jeff Landry, and their supporters. She opposes fracking and promotes progressive grievance politics that have nothing in common with Louisiana’s conservative base. Before her reinvention as a political operator, Savant cultivated a public persona steeped in fringe activism and controversy. A movement claiming to speak for conservative landowners just handed the microphone to a progressive activist who routinely attacks conservatives.

This isn’t just a carbon capture fight. Understand this. There are lots of people – several of whom are my fellow Hayride contributors – who don’t like carbon capture because they see it as an unnecessary sop to the climate mob in the first place. But that isn’t who these people are. These are the radicals who want to shut down carbon capture as a means of shutting down fossil fuel exploration and use altogether.

Rather, this is a broader campaign against LNG, pipelines, and Louisiana’s oil and gas industry as a whole. That becomes obvious when you look at the latest lawsuit targeting the Commonwealth LNG export terminal in Cameron Parish. Environmental groups including Louisiana Bucket Brigade and Sierra Club are suing state regulators yet again, claiming a reissued coastal permit still fails to account for climate change and environmental justice impacts.

This follows a district court ruling last fall that halted construction on the multibillion-dollar LNG project, even as Louisiana produces more than 60% of America’s LNG exports and positions itself as a key supplier to U.S. allies. This is lawfare, plain and simple. Coordinated, serial litigation designed to delay, exhaust, and ultimately kill major energy projects regardless of their economic value or regulatory compliance.

Taken together, the pattern is hard to ignore. National donors fund activist groups. Those groups coordinate with local coalitions. Progressive operatives are installed as leaders. Lawsuits are filed to block LNG terminals, pipelines, CCS projects, and industrial buildouts piece by piece. This isn’t a grassroots uprising. It’s an organized, well-financed campaign against Louisiana’s energy economy, and the Commonwealth LNG lawsuit is simply the latest proof.