Climate

Of the many, interlinked crises that define American life in the 2020s, none is as literally existential as climate change. This presidential term will cover about half of the remaining years the United Nations estimates Earth has to prevent catastrophic and irreversible global warming.

Incalculable, globally historic pain and suffering are already happening as a result of the climate crisis. Yet the forces of big business responsible — most especially the fossil fuel industry, but also Big Agriculture, the military-industrial complex, and others — continue to spend tens of millions every year blackmailing American leaders into softballing and even ignoring the literal end of the world as we know it.

The Revolving Door Project has taken a two-pronged approach to aid in the fight for government action on the scale of the climate emergency. First, we have researched and raised alarms about the tools which climate change-exacerbating industries, including the fossil fuel industry, use to ossify the departments and regulatory agencies which should be holding them accountable. We highlighted corrupt Trump appointee Andrew Wheeler’s degradation of the Environmental Protection Agency in our collaborative “Swamp Tour” with the Progressive Change Institute. We tracked and exposed political contributions from influential fossil fuel figures in our Presidential Power Map. And we’ve raised alarms about fossil fuel allies sidling up to the Joe Biden campaign, as the Project’s Miranda Litwak and Max Moran wrote about in The Intercept, and the executive branch itself, as the Project’s Dorothy Slater wrote in our Fossil Fuel Industry Agenda.

We’ve also sought to show that climate change is a whole-of-government problem, just as it is a whole-of-society problem. Scattered across the executive branch are far more powers and appointees relevant to saving the planet than just those in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or Department of Energy (DOE). As our Jeff Hauser told Kate Aronoff, “You could have the best EPA Administrator in the world. If they get overruled by OMB or NEC, it’s kind of irrelevant how good they are or how hard they fight.”

For example, financial regulators, mainly those who sit on the powerful Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), can set rules to disincentivize lending to climate-degrading industries and regulate to protect the financial system from climate risk, as we described in our “FSOC 101” explainer. BlackRock, the world’s largest investor in fossil fuels, aggressively lobbied little-known regulatory agencies which still have seats on FSOC to insulate it from a level of oversight which could have substantially changed its behavior. We have been at the forefront of calling out BlackRock’s practice of hiring Democrats in an effort to “greenwash” their brand, as well as pushing regulators like Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (as leader of FSOC) to step up and regulate BlackRock as it should be regulated.

Revolving Door Project aims to keep this kind of deep inside-game from being exploited. To that end, we’ve integrated climate change into all of our other lines of inquiry into corporate capture of the executive branch. Most of the world had never heard of Larry Summers’ horrific record on climate issues until the Revolving Door Project wrote about it and shared our research with allies. Now, his history of wrist-slapping the fossil fuel industry played a key role in the surge of pushback that led him to officially refuse any job in a Biden administration. Similarly in the case of Alex Oh, a corporate lawyer who defended the likes of ExxonMobil, Fannie Mae, Bank of America, and Pfizer. Oh resigned less than a week after being appointed as the SEC’s Enforcement Director, citing “developments” in the case where she defended ExxonMobil against Indonesian villagers citing torture and implying she would prefer not to deal with the inevitable bad press. This came soon after a letter from RDP and other progressive groups urging SEC Chairman Gary Gensler to revoke the appointment and our research publicizing the extent of Oh’s legal career.

Between the success of keeping Alex Oh out of government (which led the NY Post to blast us as a “good-government group” who put “a progressive bullseye on her back”) and our work successfully pressuring Gensler to clear house at the PCAOB (infuriating those at the Wall Street Journal), it’s clear we are making the right people mad.

Whether it’s installing Justice Department officials ready to prosecute polluters to the fullest extent of the law, or setting new rules at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to screen all government spending projects for climate equity, there are considerable actions the executive branch can take to reorient our governance around the overriding need to protect our planet. Max Moran detailed several of these for The American Prospect last July. There are also important gatekeepers scattered across the executive branch which environmentalists must know how to overcome to get the change we desperately need: the most prominent of these is the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which our Jeff Hauser wrote about in September of 2019.

Likewise, the forces arrayed against climate action are more sophisticated than just oil lobbyists and pipeline executives. Too often, individuals with seemingly strong climate credentials revolve out of government and into influence-industry positions secretly funded by the fossil fuel industry — be they think tanks, academic institutions, or the greenwashing divisions of major investment corporations — or to corporation-defending BigLaw firms, as we highlight in our BigLaw series. These seemingly upstanding institutions provide moral cover to the allies of Big Oil, allowing them to list an employer which sounds more respectable than ExxonMobil or Shell, even if those companies are the ones really paying the bills.

The Revolving Door Project aims to expose these front groups, and prevent anyone willing to take under-the-table cash from the fossil fuel industry from exerting power in the federal government again. We will not shy away from criticizing those loyal to BigLaw firms and their corporate, fossil fuel giant clients, like Michael Connor, who is set to lead the Army Corps of Engineers, or Todd Kim, set to be the top environmental lawyer at the DOJ. 

We will continue to keep a watchful eye on the Department of Justice, call out those loyal to profit over climate like Mark Gallogly, push for Biden to utilize the most obscure aspects of his power, (like appointing five new members to the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, who could divest federal retirement money overnight), and spotlight little-known positions in places like the Treasury Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission which could have huge impacts on climate action.

The stakes of the climate crisis leave us morally obligated to use every tool in the executive toolbelt that can prevent irreparable harm, and to shield the government from anyone willing to accept anything less.

Below you will find some of the project’s writing and research on climate policy. For a selection of quotes and interviews on the topic, please visit this page.

March 17, 2023

Hannah Story Brown

Blog Post

ClimateDe-TrumpificationDepartment of Justice

Justice Department Revokes Trump-Era Support for Fossil Fuel Companies in State-Level Climate Cases

Just last week, I highlighted the enormous stakes of the Justice Department’s long-anticipated filing in a climate liability case brought by Boulder County, Colorado against fossil fuel companies Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil seeking damages for their campaign of corporate deception. […] Yesterday, the Justice Department finally offered its answer.

March 15, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter

Hannah Story Brown

Newsletter

2020 Election/TransitionClimateFinancial RegulationInterior

Selling Out the Arctic; Bailing Out the Rich

The year is 2023, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 50 percent higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution, and the so-called “climate president” has decided to go ahead with industrializing the Arctic wilderness, a region already warming four times faster than the rest of the world. 

March 08, 2023

Hannah Story Brown

Blog Post

ClimateDe-TrumpificationDepartment of JusticeGovernance

A Test For DOJ De-Trumpification: State-Level Climate Liability Cases

Over halfway through Biden’s term, Attorney General Merrick Garland is maintaining the Trump Justice Department’s position on an alarming number of legal cases. Our litigation tracker documents approximately 40 such cases across education, immigration, the environment, criminal justice, transparency, agriculture and other issues. It is by no means a comprehensive list.

March 01, 2023 | The American Prospect

Hannah Story Brown

Op-Ed

ClimateConsumer ProtectionCorporate CrackdownExecutive BranchGovernanceGovernment Capacity

Calling Deficit Squawks’ Bluff on Environmental Enforcement

A 38-car train wreck. Toxic chemicals seeping into water and soil, and a black plume rising in the sky. Sick people, sick pets. As the Prospect’s Jarod Facundo wrote last week, the national spotlight remains fixed on the ecological consequences of the February 3 derailment of a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio.

In the context of this ecological disaster, arguing for a reduced budget for federal investigators, air and water quality testing, and programs that hold polluting corporations accountable for proper cleanup and restitution is sheer madness. But that’s exactly what the current right-wing push for massive government spending cuts in the name of deficit reduction would entail.

February 15, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter

Hannah Story Brown Emma Marsano

Newsletter

ClimateEthics in GovernmentGovernance

The Value of a Human Life, According to Economists

Last week a shocking story from NPR largely slipped under the radar. The headline: “Why the EPA puts a higher value on rich lives lost to climate change.” Climate Correspondent Rebecca Hersher shared the “twisted tale of math, ethics and climate change” that is the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to decide what’s been called the most important number you’ve never heard of: the social cost of greenhouse gases. 

February 03, 2023

Hannah Story Brown

Blog Post

2020 Election/TransitionAdministrative LawClimateDepartment of JusticeGovernance

Revolving Door Project Reading List: The Justice Department

The Justice Department was deliberately weaponized under Trump to advance and defend his corrupt agenda. How successfully has Biden’s Justice Department, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, replaced Trump appointees and policies, and charted a new course towards a more just interpretation and application of the law? Below, we’ve compiled a non-comprehensive reading list of some of our work from the past year plus on the Justice Department, and its all-important, uneven progress out of Trump’s long shadow.

February 01, 2023 | Talking Points Memo

Dorothy Slater Hannah Story Brown

Op-Ed

ClimateHealth

Biden Should Wed His Cancer Moonshot To The Energy Transition

But succeeding at his Cancer Moonshot’s goals will require more than funding research into cancer treatments. As the first day of February marks the beginning of National Cancer Prevention Month, it’s worth acknowledging that cancer prevention requires different approaches than treatment, and must include a reckoning with the carcinogens that pervade our environment. If Biden really wants to fight cancer in America, he’s going to have to challenge the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries. Among other things, this means confronting an Achilles heel of the Democratic Party: domestic fracking.

January 18, 2023

KJ Boyle

Blog Post

ClimateDefenseIndependent Agencies

Good News, Everyone! Space Force Has An Astronomical Budget

Congress passed a $1.7 trillion omnibus bill, ensuring that our government is funded for Fiscal Year 2023. You probably haven’t seen the amount given to the most stellar agency: Space Force. Thankfully, Congress listened to the space advocates and appropriated the Space Force the money we’ve all been begging for – $26.29 billion. Americans can now sleep soundly knowing the Space Force has an overflowing pocketbook to protect us from aliens and whatnot.

January 11, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter

Hannah Story Brown KJ Boyle

Newsletter

2022 ElectionClimateExecutive BranchGovernanceGovernment CapacityIndependent Agencies

Government Spending and its Discontents

We spent October highlighting the perpetual underfunding of most federal departments and agencies, and urging Congress and the Biden administration to use December’s omnibus bill to finally provide them with the money and resources they need. Sadly, while appropriations did increase for FY2023, budgets consistently fell short of what agencies requested. The most jarring example may be the Department of Housing and Development (HUD), whose budget is a whopping $16 billion shy of the requested $77.8 billion. Biden recently announced his goal to cut homelessness by 25 percent in the next two years, but it’s hard to see how even this meager goal will be achieved without a fully funded HUD.