As we have said many times before, corporate executives love to extol the purity of the free market until they do not like the outcome. And fossil fuel companies would rather spend the shareholders’ money promoting climate change denial and interfering with market assessments of the inevitability of their decline than actually transitioning to a post-fossil fuel future.

The influential right-wing lobby group the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is driving a surge in new state laws to block boycotts of the oil industry. The group’s strategy, which aims to protect large oil firms and other conservative-friendly industries, is modeled on legislation to punish divestment from Israel.

Since the beginning of the year, state legislatures in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Indiana have introduced a version of a law drafted by ALEC, called the Energy Discrimination Elimination Act, to shield Big Oil from share selloffs and other measures intended to protest the fossil fuel industry’s role in the climate crisis. A dozen other states have publicly supported the intent of the legislation.

The push to blacklist firms that boycott the oil industry follows a meeting in December between politicians and ALEC, a corporate-funded organization that writes legislation for Republican-controlled states to adopt and drive conservative causes

ALEC Is Driving Laws to Blacklist Companies That Boycott the Oil Industry | The Nation