Arlington, Virginia - Climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and in 2021 alone was responsible for over billions of dollars in damages. However, an influential conservative lobby group is saying that the climate crisis is no good reason for investors to move their money away from polluting companies.

As reported by the Guardian, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is giving states a helping hand in writing laws to target banks and companies that drop their investments in the fossil fuel industry.

In short, businesses must explicitly agree not to boycott the fossil fuel industry if they don't want to lose state funding and investment deals.

The model legislature unintentionally reads like a perfect argument for divesting from the polluting industry: a boycott means "refusing to deal with... a company because the company... engages in the exploration, production, utilization, transportation, sale, or manufacturing of fossil fuel-based energy and does not commit or pledge to meet environmental standards beyond applicable federal and state law."

It bears keeping in mind that businesses looking to divest aren't necessarily working to pull money from any one state's energy market – just from the energy projects that happen to be responsible for the greenhouse gases destroying the planet.

States like Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and West Virginia are currently moving on bills based on ALEC's suggestions, and Texas, which already passed a similar law, started listing companies to target for refusing to invest in the fossil fuel industry.

The tactics used to punish companies for divesting from the fossil fuel industry are nothing new.

According to the Guardian, they are based on laws drafted by ALEC to target companies involved in the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) campaign against Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

Naturally, such activism has some strong opponents, including the ALEC.

The lobby group moved to draft laws, which were quickly adopted by 35 states between 2015 and 2021.

Officially, the anti-BDS laws seek to link any boycotts of Israeli products, businesses, or services – even those active in the illegally occupied territories – to antisemitism and a threat to the very existence of Israel.

As of 2021, 35 states had anti-BDS legislation on their books, despite growing criticism that they are unconstitutional, as they amount to cracking down on free speech.

For now, there are only a handful of states actively pursuing the laws meant to protect polluting companies, but if the anti-BDS legislation is any indicator, more states will adopt a similar version of ALEC's model.