Environmental activist groups are undermining America's economic and strategic interests by using federal laws to halt critical infrastructure and resource-development projects, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Newsmax on Sunday.
"I would call the environmental extremist effort a giant industrial complex," Burgum told Newsmax's "Conversations With Nancy Brinker."
"They are specialists at telling people to be afraid — afraid of a pipeline, afraid of a transmission line, afraid of horizontal infrastructure.
"It's a big business, and they've weaponized laws like the Endangered Species Act to stop capital projects."
Think of where America would be without railroads or even highways, Burgum postulated.
"If we had today's laws in the 1800s, we'd never have built the transcontinental railroad," he continued. "If they existed in the 1960s, we wouldn't have the interstate highway system.
"Stopping U.S. energy production doesn't reduce global demand — it simply shifts it to China and other places with no environmental controls."
Burgum said true environmental stewardship requires keeping production and mining inside the United States, where standards are higher and practices cleaner. He argued that pushing development overseas not only harms the planet but strengthens geopolitical rivals while weakening U.S. supply chains.
"If anybody cares about the environment, they should insist that all the mining, minerals, oil and gas, timber, and grazing happen here," he said, adding the U.S. performs this work "better, cleaner, safer, and smarter than anywhere else in the world."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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