LSCA law students climate
:{
}:
https://www.climateone.org/audio/enablers-firms-behind-fossil-fuel-falsehoods
february 11th, 2022
Public perception is important to any company, and fossil fuel companies are no different. Every year, they spend large amounts of money to make sure that the public is abundantly aware of all of the work fossil fuel companies are doing to help with the transition to clean energy. The problem is, the money spent on the messaging outpaces the money spent on the decarbonization.
PR firms, ad agencies, and law firms work behind the scenes to protect the fossil fuel industry and slow down the clean energy transition. Despite the industry having knowledge of the climate crisis as early as 1959, they continue to resist any change.
For example, many large oil and gas companies say they support a price on carbon pollution. Yet large oil companies invest a small fraction of their profits promoting carbon pricing policies and low carbon energy. The House oversight committee reports that less than half of 1% of their lobbying effort over the past decade focused on carbon pricing. The committee also reports that from 2010 to 2018, BP spent about 2% of its capital expenditures on low carbon investments. Exxon spent less than a quarter of 1% on cleaner energy. Jamie Henn, founder and director ofClean Creatives, gives some insight into these expenditures:
“I think it tells a story that big oil’s supposed commitment to climate action is little more than greenwashing. ExxonMobil just made record profits because of high gas prices. And what are they doing with it? They are telling their shareholders that they are going to increase oil and gas production, and they're doing a $10 billion stock buyback to reward their shareholders. In comparison ExxonMobil spent maybe upwards of about $300 million on algae research, which over the last 10 years, so that's about 30 million a year maybe. Yet that's the focus of all their advertising.”
Despite how much money these companies have to spend, they are still losing the battle of public perception. 60% of Americans say that fossil fuel companies are to blame for the climate crisis and about 50% of them want them to pay damages.Christina Arena, former VP at the global PR firm Edelman, argues that proponents of clean energy can use this reality to help deal with the climate crisis.
“This industry is kind of losing control of the narrative, even though it is trying so hard to direct it. And so, I think that opens the door for clean tech marketers and clean energy marketers to come in with a more compelling narrative. Tell your story better be more creative. Capture America's hearts and minds.”
Law firms also help fossil fuel companies' limit their legal liabilities. Michaela Anang, a research coordinator for Law Students for Climate Accountability and a law student at UC Davis, says the group grew out of a desire by law students to bring more scrutiny to their future employers.
“The top 100 law firms which we called the Vault 100 firms or Big Law are significantly contributing to furthering issues within our climate as opposed to mitigating those issues which we as students and as future legal professionals hope that they would be moving towards. ”
Related Links:
beware code
https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/law-firms-climate-change/
For too long, law firms have been given carte blanche for their contributions to the climate crisis: They lobby on behalf of the fossil fuel industry, file the paperwork necessary for carbon-emitting projects, and litigate cases against indigenous and frontline communities. With over 1,500 lawyers in offices around the world, Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher LLP is regarded as one of the top law firms in the United States.
Like many of its peers, Gibson Dunn profits from squashing class action lawsuits and labor organizing drives, keeping shareholders from reforming corporate practices and debtors from getting their day in court, and shielding US companies from accountability for their actions overseas and from regulation at home. Even by the standards of the legal industry, however, Gibson Dunn’s behavior is notorious. In 2007, the Montana Supreme Court rebuked the firm for engaging in “actual malice” and “legal thuggery,” and a Delaware judge recently described its pretrial practices as constituting “fraud.”
But Gibson Dunn’s behavior goes even further. It spent more than a decade defending Chevron in a lawsuit brought by indigenous communities whose homeland was poisoned by an oil spill in Ecuador. When Ecuadorian courts awarded those indigenous communities a $9.5 billion judgment, Gibson Dunn was involved in overturning that ruling in a corporate-friendly US court, leading to the prosecution of Steven Donziger, a human rights attorney who represented the Ecuadorian plaintiffs. Gibson Dunn’s involvement in the Chevron case is a chilling example of the lengths the firm is willing to go to represent the fossil fuel industry and silence anyone in the way.
And Gibson Dunn’s record on climate change is unapologetically awful. Law Students for Climate Accountability (LSCA), an organization that scores law firms based on their environmental activities, gave the firm an F this year, the lowest score possible. In addition to its involvement in dozens of climate change cases, Gibson Dunn has lobbied for Koch Industries and represented the corporation behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, a project that would violate indigenous rights. (In another affront to native sovereignty, Gibson Dunn has also represented those seeking to overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act). Over the last decade, the firm has brought in nearly $27 billion in fossil fuel and energy revenue, with no sign of slowing down even as the need to halt and reverse carbon emissions becomes all the more urgent.
In April 2021, dozens of law student organizations signed a letter from LSCA calling on Gibson Dunn to change its contracting standards. Following Gibson Dunn’s refusal to engage with this petition, in December 2021, LSCA announced a boycott so that individual students too can announce that they are#DoneWithDunn. Meanwhile, Gibson Dunn strives to maintain a liberal, even progressive image: One of the firm’s star litigators is vocally anti-Trump, even as he heartily defends oil and gas companies. Indebted law students are enticed by high pay, diversity initiatives and pro bono opportunities, but may not be aware that their first work assignments may include overturning Covid eviction moratoriums or defeating suits for toxic exposure. In increasing numbers, however, young workers are demanding that their would-be employers disentangle from work furthering environmental and social catastrophe.
When it comes to the climate crisis, business as usual won’t cut it, and nowhere is that more true than in the legal profession. Gibson Dunn is but one of many law firms with a terrible track record on climate, yet this boycott from LSCA is a crucial step in forcing Big Law to take responsibility for how it normalizes, entrenches, and exacerbates Big Carbon work that imperils our planet and its people. By doing so, we join a movement already changing norms at ad agencies, financial institutions, and tech companies, all of which are the sites for organizing to end profiteering from carbon extraction.
Reshaping the economic and social incentives for individual workers, their companies, and indeed entire industries is no small order. But this is exactly what is asked of our generation. Law firms are not leading the way on a just transition toward renewable energy; the only way they will is if we hold their feet to the very fires they are fanning.
Leehi YonaLeehi Yona is a PhD student in environment and resources and a Knight-Hennessy Scholar at Stanford University. Her research is on climate change science, policy, and justice.
Davi...