The sun crests over a California facility. A guitar twangs a gritty version of “Farmer in the Dell” over shots of massive outdoor ponds sloshing with bright green liquid. Lab-coated scientists beam.

In 2018, ExxonMobil’s ad campaign for algae biofuel was in full swing on prime-time television. The message was loud and clear: The future is green, renewable and right around the corner.

Exxon even put a number on it — 10,000 barrels of algae biofuel per day by 2025.

Source: Exxon commercial, Bloomberg

The year 2025 came and went. Along with Exxon’s commitment.

Exxon quietly killed the program in late 2022, slashing support for Viridos Inc., the California biotech which was the oil giant’s key partner since the algae push began in 2009.

Fourteen years. $350 million spent. Zero commercial barrels produced.

Jim Rickards has written about just such climate-agenda theater for years. “The so-called climate crisis is no crisis at all,” he says, “and is better understood as the ‘Green New Scam.’”

The term stuck so well that Donald Trump riffed on it at a December 2023 campaign rally in New Hampshire. The phrase has since appeared in White House fact sheets and press releases across federal agencies.

Jim had the thesis. Trump borrowed the label.

And Exxon’s algae saga happens to be the perfect specimen of what Jim means.

Your Rundown for Friday, April 3, 2026...

The Green New Scum Exposed

Before Exxon called it quits on the project, the House Oversight Committee had already uncovered internal emails showing the company knew its algae investment would never become a viable commercial reality.

And even in the best case scenario, Exxon’s 10,000 barrel-per-day target would have amounted to less than one-tenth of 1% of the company’s total oil production in 2022.

Congressional investigators drew the obvious conclusion — a company loudly advertising unproven technology wasn’t running a science program. It was running a PR operation.

“The persistence of the climate narrative is not about science,” Jim says. “It's about money and power. The climate agenda has enabled the transfer of trillions of dollars [with] political and financial elites acting as intermediaries.”

Now the machinery is running in reverse — and Exxon’s stealthy retreat from the pond turns out to be just one early sign.

On Feb. 12, 2026, the Trump EPA finalized what it called the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history, eliminating the Obama-era 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding and all subsequent federal greenhouse gas emission standards for vehicles and engines.

The Endangerment Finding was the legal skeleton of virtually every climate regulation under the Clean Air Act. Without it, the regulatory architecture built on top of it starts to collapse.

This matters enormously, according to Jim. When the government’s foundational claim — that CO₂ is a threat to public health — gets stripped of its legal authority, the entire edifice of mandates, restrictions and subsidies loses its footing.

“The question now is whether that dynamic is changing,” Jim says. “There is reason to think it is.”

A federal judge recently removed the climate science section from the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, the resource courts use to evaluate expert testimony.

Climate claims in litigation will now need to stand on actual data rather than model projections.

“It represents a move away from theory and toward evidence,” Jim says. “It may also mark the beginning of the end for the climate narrative as a legal and regulatory foundation.”

And the company that spent hundreds of millions allegedly saving the planet with pond scum is back to pumping oil full tilt.

Money moved the meter. Algae biofuel never did.

No market notes today — the market is closed for Good Friday. Enjoy the pause, and have a great holiday weekend!