The world is burning. Do we really need more lawyers? The climate crisis is upon us, and the politics of fossil fuels are becoming ever clearer. On the one hand, an economic and military elite, now represented by the Trump administration, builds a wall of financial influence, scientific falsehood, and racist and misogynistic resentment to...
Year: <span>2016</span>
Introduction to Climate Defense Project: Mission, Theory of Change, and Other Thoughts
Climate change is here to stay, and the window of opportunity to avert its worst effects is closing. One of the reasons that climate change is such an important issue to us at Climate Defense Project is that it’s not just about science, or politics, or what happens in the distant future. It’s about justice...
CDP in the Press: How 5 activists stopped the flow of Alberta Tar Sands oil into U.S.
An article in Street Roots News mentioned our work on the Shut It Down cases: The Climate Defense Project, a legal startup founded by a group of Harvard Law graduates, is working with Brinson’s firm on the Valve Turners’ defense.
Necessity Defense Info Pamphlet
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Necessity Defense Info Pamphlet Printable
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CDP in the Press: This Is What Insurgency Looks Like
CDP co-founder Kelsey Skaggs was mentioned in a Common Dreams article about legal support at the Break Free protests: As people settled in on the tracks, law student Kelsey Skaggs asked those risking arrest to fill out intake forms for the legal team. Then she said . . .
CDP Author: Climate Disobedience and the New “Public Trust” Laws of Nature
If you think there’s something odd about the US committing itself to at least a 26 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2025 even while federally owned lands produce a quarter of the nation’s fossil fuel energy, you just might be a believer in an old legal concept: the public trust doctrine.
CDP in the Press: Next-Gen Climate Activism
Student activists calling for a shift away from fossil fuels say that institutions that refuse to act forfeit their status as moral leaders. Harvard Law student Ted Hamilton discusses with host Steve Curwood the lawsuit that’s attempting to compel Harvard to divest its portfolio of fossil fuels, and the connections between divestment and the broader...
CDP Author: Can Breaking the Law Be a Legal Defense?
When our grandchildren write the history of the climate movement, they’ll save a few pages for the trials of 2016. First, they’ll focus on Snohomish County, Washington, where, last Friday, Seattle-area jurors found the so-called Delta 5 not guilty of obstruction for blockading a regional oil facility in 2014. The protest and the acquittal were...