Oh it's a long, complex, and dirty story on both sides of the aisle. Restricting access to resources using regulatory power is a process that has progressed for over thirty years, acelerating since the collapse of the Brettonwoods agreement. At that time, Nixon offered the mineral estate of the United States as collateral for the Federal debt. The Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, NEPA, the Clean Air Act, were all passed immediately pursuant to that deal. Since then, environmental law and the has been used to sequester those resorces, whether for purposes of manipulating market prices or putting competitors out of business.
The system is basically racketeering on a massive scale. The creditors use their tax-exempt "charitable" foundations to fund NGOs to sue the feds to invoke the statutes on a selective basis. The game centers on using regulatory power to shut down domestic production of competitors and to increase the profits on foreign investments via the resulting artificial shortage. Consider how hard Rockefeller's boy, Jimmy Carter, worked to shut down nuclear power plant construction. What resulted was more oil importation. Create more wilderness areas, monuments, or offshore sanctuaries and domestic oil production comes to a screeching halt.
The manifestations are so numerous as to boggle the mind.