Purpose
- Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
- Explores and develops market-based solutions.
Summary
Advocacy, research, and legal action to secure a wholesale change in federal climate policy consistent with US obligations under domestic and international law.
What More Must the US Do On Climate
Description
CPR Initiative work undertaken in 2024, with the Foundation's continuing support, materially added to the record we are constructing, step by step, for decision-making by the US Environmental Protection Agency concerning the fundamental question raised in our earlier (June 2022) citizen's petition and that we will raise again in our still-in-construction, forthcoming citizen's petition.
That is: whether the US is obliged -- pursuant to the dictates of the relevant science and our obligations under bedrock federal and international law -- to phase out the unabated production, processing, distribution in commerce, use and disposal of oil, gas and coal used in energy systems.
Towards that end, in 2024, we sponsored and conducted our third and fourth public hearings on the topic, What more should the United States do on climate? The video archives of those hearings, along with those we sponsored in 2022 and 2023, are available: https://cprclimate.org/access/videos/public-hearings-archive/.
In addition to testimony from local community leaders, through these hearings we have garnered the considered, on-record testimony of national and international experts, including Timothy Lenton, Daniel Swain, Rob Jackson, Wil Burns, Eelco Rohling, James Hansen, Sir Robert Watson, Robert Wolcott, Lise Van Susteren, Peter Tans, John Birks, Richard Heede, Donn Viviani, Jim Baker, U?ilani Tanigawa-Lum, Tom Giambelluca, Charles "Chip" Fletcher, Myanna Dellinger, Richard Wallsgrove, Richard Rood, Ken Buesseler, Jose Jimenez, Danny Richter, Chuck Kutscher, and Kevin Anderson.
Also in 2024, reflecting several significant climate and political developments, CPR Initiative in 2024 stepped up its public-education focus to connect the dots between fossil fuel emissions (both legacy and continuing), costly disasters and US and international law.
See, e.g. with respect to the recent Los Angeles fires, https://cprclimate.org/climate-fingerprints-in-the-la-burn/; and with respect to the western US and Canada, https://cprclimate.org/the-american-west-and-canada-burning/.
See also, e.g., Major Questions on Climate & the Environment:
Implicating the Supreme Court and the Nation at https://cprclimate.org/major-questions-on-climate-the-environment-implicating-the-us-supreme-court-and-the-nation/.
We have also stepped up our review and discussion of the relevant literature on major and irretrievable tipping points in the global climate system. See, e.g., https://cprclimate.org/tipping-again/ and, more generally, https://cprclimate.org/contending-with-global-warming-in-the-pipeline-and-beyond/
In addition, in light of recent developments calling into question the executive branch's eagerness to enforce federal environmental law, we are in process of developing supplemental arguments -- to wield in our 2025-26 citizen petition and public education efforts -- deriving from relevant international legal developments, including those at the International Court of Justice.
See, e.g., https://cprclimate.org/whats-international-law-got-to-do-with-it/; https://cprclimate.org/a-small-flame/; and https://cprclimate.org/four-critical-questions-at-years-end/.
Purpose
Major fossil fuel companies domiciled or operating in the US continue to freely produce, process, promote, and distribute their products in commerce (including internationally) for use in energy generation, with virtually complete disregard for the costs they impose on the economy, public health and the environment.
CPR Initiative's major initiative seeks to (a) require the US EPA to impose a rising fee on oil, gas and coal production while it also (b) fashions a rule to phase out such fuels within reach of domestic law, and (c) compels the major fossil fuel companies to remove, or pay to remove, a share of legacy emissions for which they bear substantial responsibility.
The imposition of these obligations would align US climate policy with what is required, albeit without sufficient enforcement assurance, pursuant to the final communiqué of COP 28 (December 2023), namely a "global effort aimed at transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems.”
Scope
The scope is national and international.
Our efforts continue to provide a roadmap for a rule-making process that could and should enable the United States to adopt an orderly phase out of fossil fuels, consistent with the scientific and international policy consensus.
In the event, however, that the new administration declines the option to move from laggard to leader in the fight against dangerous global climate change, we will, in 2025 and 2026, both lend our expertise to help arrest dangerous backsliding efforts at the federal agency level (see, e.g. https://cprclimate.org/not-nearly-enough-epas-proposed-power-plant-greenhouse-gas-rule/), and also move towards compelling the necessary rule-making that Congress intended with respect to all substances that critically present an unreasonable or imminent risk of injury to health or the environment.
The scope of the rule we would seek would be federal, but its impact would have substantial international ramifications. In particular, pursuant to TSCA §13, the "Secretary of the Treasury shall refuse entry" into the US of chemicals or mixtures that fail to comply with our rules.
In addition, significant climate action as we propose would elevate our nation's standing to demand more of other nations -- perhaps as soon as COP 30 slated for Nov. 10-21, 2025 in Belém, Brazil.
Information Dissemination
CPR Initiative would disseminate such information through public talks, articles, interviews, and webinars.
See prior instances, including:
James Hansen et. al on ICJ Climate Proceeding
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGGMFFhkYtk&t=1s
CPR Initiative Reports From the Hague!
https://cprclimate.org/cpr-initiative-reports-from-the-hague/
The Environmental Statute That Can Save the World
https://cprclimate.org/the-environmental-statute-that-can-save-the-world/
A View From Glasgow
https://cprclimate.org/a-view-from-glasgow/
What's Biden's Next Move on Climate?
https://cprclimate.org/whats-bidens-next-move-on-climate/
Dangerous Interference – Fossil Fuel Production
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mhQVGGdxSg&t=31s
Our Planet, on Fire
https://cprclimate.org/our-planet-on-fire/
Amount Approved$50,000.00
on 4/23/2024
(Check sent: 4/29/2024)
