Author Joey Cherney is a 2019 Summer Law Clerk for CDP. He was a union organizer from 2014-2017 with Service Employees International Union. He was also a research assistant for the Clean Slate Project at the Harvard Labor and Worklife Program, a two-year initiative to reimagine labor law and strengthen worker rights. As movements for...
The importance of combating racism in a warming world.
The past several months in global politics have been disorienting and frightening. Movements for liberation find themselves under assault from newly empowered opponents and atavistic ideologies that had appeared headed for the dustbin of history. It’s hard to have faith in progress at a moment when so much seems to be moving in reverse. But...
Climate justice and gender justice are inextricably linked.
Emily Johnston is a poet, writer, and climate activist currently facing criminal prosecution for her participation in the #ShutItDown (a.k.a. “valve-turner”) direct action in 2016. You can follow her on Twitter at @enjohnston. Climate Defense Project is part of the legal team providing support to Ms. Johnston and the other valve-turners. ______ A certain kind of anxious question...
It’s all about the numbers.
After President Trump issued executive orders seeking to resuscitate the Keystone XL (KXL) and Dakota Access Pipelines (DAPL), the climate movement returned to strategizing about how to defeat fossil fuel projects it thought it had beaten. It’s the latest round of battle in the war to keep dirty energy in the ground, and with all...
With Trump as President and both houses of Congress controlled by conservatives, what avenues remain for climate activists? Since the Presidential election, a growing chorus of voices has vowed resistance to Trumpism. Those voices have called for protests, marches, and nonviolent civil disobedience. They have called for organized, principled opposition to the unraveling of constitutional protections...
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...
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...
