Climate litigation and cooperation after the 2024 election
Scholars and government leaders including California Attorney General Rob Bonta discussed the future of climate action and clean energy during a conference focused on democracy and sustainability.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta emphasized during an event at Stanford University that policy, activism, nonprofit work, and litigation will be key to helping the state achieve its climate goals amid anticipated changes to federal environmental policies and regulation.
“We will have some headwinds, but we’re ready and eager to continue down the path that we have charted, which includes being a global leader in climate action,” he said.
Bonta pointed to recent examples of this work, including two lawsuits his office brought against major oil companies over allegations the companies misled the public about the efficacy of plastic recycling and downplayed climate change for decades.
“These are groundbreaking, transformational cases,” he said, highlighting their scale. “Our climate problem is so big that we need ambitious action that meets it with similar size and scope.”
The discussion was part of a panel about courts and climate policy convened during the “Democracy and Environmental Sustainability Conference,” which took place Nov. 7 and 8 and was hosted by the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and Graduate School of Business. Co-organized by Stanford political scientist Bruce Cain and Tamar Zandberg, who directs the National Institute for Climate and Environmental Policy Research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the conference brought students and scholars in conversation with leaders in government and the private sector.
“This event takes on a particular significance because of the abrupt shift in policy that we expect to result from the recent election in the U.S.,” said Cain, who is the Spence and Cleone Eccles Family Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West and the Charles Louis Ducommun Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, and a professor of environmental social sciences in the Doerr School of Sustainability. He also encouraged a broader perspective, recognizing that at least 64 countries will hold elections this year.
“Democracies have constant turnover, and thus constant changes in policy,” Cain said. “The question is, How do you proceed with a diverse climate agenda when there are these adverse changes?”
Conversations across political and regional boundaries
A central theme throughout the conference was the benefit of bringing together perspectives from different sectors, regions, and levels of government.
Speakers covered topics including the role of local communities in shaping climate policy and the importance of forming regional collaborations across jurisdictions. Others offered insights from democracies around the world.
Eeshan Chaturvedi, a PhD student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER), shared his research on specialized environmental courts.
The courts, which have been adopted in at least 32 countries, are a type of democratic institution with the potential to support climate efforts. “We’re looking at how, if at all, the decision-making in these courts differs from regular courts,” Chaturvedi said.
David Hayes, who served in the Biden administration as special assistant to the president for climate policy, participated in the panel with Bonta and described possible obstacles that could slow the transition to a clean energy economy. Concerns included expanded oil and gas drilling and recent constraints on environmental agencies from the Supreme Court.
Hayes, now a professor of the practice in the Doerr School of Sustainability’s Department of Environmental Social Sciences, also discussed climate successes over the past few years and opportunities at both the federal and state level.
He mentioned significant increases in wind and solar generation in states across the country and the strong influence of state-level regulations on the U.S. energy mix. “In many respects, that’s going to be a large part of the climate solution,” he said.
The event was part of the Stanford Initiative on Business and Environmental Sustainability Research Conference Series.
Bruce Cain is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
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