State courts are an emerging venue for victims of climate-change-induced harms to hold corporate polluters accountable. Read the news release over CPR's November 2019 Climate Justice report.

Given the scope of the damage from climate change, individuals, organizations, and specific jurisdictions have turned to litigation to hold industry accountable for past and continuing behavior. Such litigation is the only way those who have suffered climate-related damage can seek recourse for loss of homes, livelihoods, health, and the death and injury of loved ones. It could also have an important impact on climate change policy in the United States. Read CPR's November 2019 report on the trend toward state-based litigation.

On February 26, 2020, CPR Board Member Joel Mintz, Cynthia Rice of California Rural Legal Assistance, and Jon Mueller of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation discussed challenging low-road employers who take advantage of people who face immediate threats from extreme heat, holding polluters accountable for their contributions to the climate crisis, and the challenges of using 1970s-era laws to address community-level impacts of the climate crisis and opportunities for progress.

On March 24, 2020, webinar participants heard from from  three leading experts on the climate crisis and tort law about the growing movement of local and state governments, as well as small business owners and workers, seeking climate justice in state courts across the United States. The discussion of these climate justice lawsuits considered recent, ongoing, and prospective litigation, as well as the increasingly clear science showing that the harms of climate change are largely attributable to fossil fuel producers. Presenters also examined the legal, policy, and scientific challenges for plaintiffs, which include local governments in California, Colorado, Maryland, as well as the state of Rhode Island and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations.

The impacts of climate change do not fall equally. As the waves rolled over New Jersey, New York, and much of the Atlantic seaboard during Hurricane Sandy last fall, climate scientists’ austere graphs predicting severe climate impacts suddenly popped to life. With that in mind, Alice Kaswan writes, policy-makers at all levels of government, whether considering the use of existing authorities or developing new ones, should attend to seven key principles and themes.

On CPR's April 29, 2020, webinar, participants will hear from leading experts on pandemics, public health, and climate change, as part of our series of Climate Justice webinars. Dr. Monica Schoch-Spana is an expert in epidemic and disaster management, with decades of experience advising federal, state, and local officials on health security. Dr. Aaron Bernstein brings experience as a pediatrician on the front lines and cutting-edge expertise on the intersection of public health and climate change. Finally, seasoned environmental lawyer and CPR Member Scholar Daniel Farber offers expertise in legal and policy tools, such as the Stafford Act, that may be used to help protect vulnerable communities from bearing the greatest burden of the pandemic.

In April 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court's ruled in favor of Hawaiian environmentalists who had waged a 12-year battle to ensure that sewage discharged into the Pacific Ocean via groundwater was subject to a Clean Water Act permit. CPR’s Member Scholars played important roles in convincing the Justices that we need a more scientifically relevant conception of the Clean Water Act’s coverage, and they joined key participants in the litigation in a May 28, 2020, webinar on the topic.

Writing in The Hill, Alice Kaswan praises the judgment of the House Select Committee on Climate Crisis that carbon pricing is one of several tools necessary to combat climate change. Carbon pricing, she writes, is necessary but insufficient.

In The Revelator, CPR Member Scholar Dan Farber explains that the incoming Biden administration can leverage energy industry and state policy trends to advance an ambitious climate agenda.

In an op-ed published in The Hill, CPR Member Scholars Shalanda Baker and Alice Kaswan offer recommendations for moving from rhetoric to reality when it comes to delivering climate and energy justice to America's communities.

Center for Progressive Reform Executive Director praises U.S. House passage of the "Build Back Better" budget bill, notes its historic investments in climate action, and urges Congress and the White House to go even further to secure a just, inclusive transition to clean, renewable energy.

The Center for Progressive Reform joined with partners at the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform and others to submit comments on the Council on Environmental Quality's climate and economic justice screening tool.

Center for Progressive Reform Policy Analyst Catalina Gonzalez and Member Scholar Alice Kaswan submitted comments on California's 2022 Draft Scoping Plan Update on climate change and net-zero carbon emissions. These comments promote a vision and implementation strategies that embrace the urgent need for action and more explicitly foster improvements in well-being for the state’s frontline communities.