Summary
The US House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary released a report on the Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project at the end of last month.
The report focused on how a group of climate attribution activists conspired to push their political dogma into training programs intended to indoctrinate judges ruling on climate litigation cases.
The House Committee revealed evidence on how the activist campaign targeted left-leaning judges in regions with frequent weather-related damages.
The NGO presented a biased and highly contested position (of weather events being caused by climate change due solely to fossil fuel emissions) as fact.
CJP-linked academics worked with litigators involved in climate lawsuits with no conflict of interest standards.
The emails released in the report reveal how interconnected the climate activists were, seeking strategic partnerships and coordinated actions, adding further evidence of a choreographed cabal managed by their foundation funders.
The Committee on the Judiciary charged the groups involved with trying to “rig the game” and take control of the US judicial system.
The last section of this series on climate attribution science looked at how five organizations, linked by the foundations funding them, had essentially formed into a cabal, working together to control the public narrative, break the rules and go against any sense of fair play to ensure they can win climate lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry. They are not paying off the judges (that’s what the law firms do at election time) but rather these groups were getting into their heads and telling the judges what to think, where opposing views are merely disinformation and why energy companies need to pay for climate change.
Using words like “cabal” might be considered conspiracy-theory laden until the evidence presented by the US House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary is considered. The committee was so fed up with the how these activists were corrupting the US judiciary that they recently released a report entitled: “How Radical Environmental Special Interests Manipulate the Federal Judiciary”. The Congressional report weaved their commentary around email evidence showing how the attribution science organizations have been secretly coordinating their activism in strategic partnerships … like a cabal.
While the House Committee on the Judiciary ostensibly looked at how the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) has been targeting judges for training courses via its Climate Judiciary Project (CJP), the emails shed light into how ELI was part of a wider strategy, not just organized by a coordinated group of activist law professors, but by the consultants and fund managers of the foundations pulling the strings from the shadows to advance their climate lawfare campaign.
The email evidence released in the House report showed strategic partnerships forming between ELI and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, with ties to Sher Edling and Climate Central (and how individuals from these groups used their network to influence the NASEM and the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence).
This climate attribution science series started with a presentation of how a conference in La Jolla, CA in 2012 put the climate lawfare strategy into motion, although the tobacconization of the oil industry relied on establishing a clear link between extreme weather events and greenhouse gas emissions linked to fossil fuels. Part Two looked at how climate attribution science developed as a litigation-led research field relying on tens of millions in annual donations from foundations like Rockefeller, Bloomberg, Bezos, Packard, Schmidt, Hewlett, and Grantham. A side article showed how Michael Bloomberg funded a program in NYU to get their salaried lawyers into eleven State Attorney General offices as special assistants with powers to prosecute energy industries (while it vanished overnight a few weeks ago, pending an investigation, the same nine staff and leads have all reemerged at another law school in Vermont). Part 3 cited five main organizations that have formed into a “Climate Attribution Cabal” to try to plant the climate attribution evidence needed for their climate litigation strategy into several NASEM publications.
About ELI and CJP
The Environmental Law Institute is not a school, but an NGO. It states its mission “is to foster innovative, just, and practical law and policy solutions to enable leaders across borders and sectors to make environmental, economic, and social progress”. They modestly take credit for “shaping the fields of environmental law, policy, and management” but their main focus seems to be on climate litigation. Funding for the NGO’s $8.8 million annual budget is provided by the usual climate-oriented foundations (Packard, Hewlett, Grantham, Walton, Pew, Sloan, regranters like ClimateWorks, New Ventures Fund and a very large number of law firms).
The Climate Judiciary Project claims it “is building and facilitating a network of judges and scientists advancing climate science education for the judiciary.” CJP was started by Paul Hanle in 2018 and employs five staff out of ELI. Hanle came to ELI from Climate Central, where he was the president and CEO, to set up this judicial training project. Climate Central was managing the World Weather Attribution organization (funded by Bezos Earth Fund) that was leading the campaign to link extreme weather events to climate change caused by fossil-fuel emissions. See an earlier section from the Firebreak climate attribution series on how Climate Central spends $21 million a year in foundation funding on climate communications messaging.
While CJP is a project managed by ELI, it also attempts to raise its own foundation funding. In 2020, it received a direct donation from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Hewlett, also funding ELI, is heavily involved in funding climate action projects (donating $241 million to climate actions in 2024) including funds to the strategic litigation NGO, EarthRights International. They are also one of the key foundations funding Sher Edling’s climate lawfare strategy, Climate Central and the Sabin Center (via ClimateWorks)..
Firebreak readers may recall that we covered the corruption of the CJP strategy in 2023, well before it became a focus of regulators.
A Blatant Corruption of the Judicial System
Bias and deception has been built into the CJP training program. The courses argue how certain claims made by climate attribution scientists were settled and widely accepted. It is important to note that ELI had not included sessions on skeptical positions or wider views on climate issues in their course modules. There was no balance of views or credible pedagogic value to these courses. They were designed to indoctrinate judges to the extremist climate activist dogma to advance the litigation strategy against the fossil fuel industry.
As the Congressional report observed: “in developing and presenting the curriculum available to judges, CJP partnered with presenters, attorneys, and climate advocates who are aligned with special interest plaintiffs in climate litigation.” CJP’s courses were meant to prepare judges to interpret data presented before them in a way that would favor the plaintiffs and advance the La Jolla lawfare strategy.
The House Committee document revealed how trial lawyers litigating ongoing cases against energy industries were involved in the CJP course materials (without transparently disclosing this to the judges). It is possible then for the lawyers trying the cases to be able to prepare information before a judge, knowing how that judge had been trained to understand the information in a favorable manner.
How is this not a blatant corruption of the judicial system?
Scientific and Judicial Integrity
This is not an investigation into the causes of climate change, but rather the integrity of the academic institutes and law professors who are trying to hammer a simplistic concept called climate attribution into a litigation-ready science. As the last part of this series argued, by ignoring scientific methods and research integrity standards, these activists are destroying trust in (climate) science.
The House Committee report noted that their investigation was about restoring the integrity of the judiciary. “By biasing judges that these issues are “settled” science, ELI and CJP stacks the deck against some litigants before they even enter the courtroom. The Committee and Subcommittee will continue to conduct oversight to inform legislative reforms to better protect the integrity of the judiciary and judicial proceedings.”
And integrity is seriously lacking in this climate litigation strategy. The Committee report described the damage ELI and CJP have done.
Let this quote just sink in for a moment. “By targeting judges, failing to safeguard against conflicts of interest, and promoting disputed science as fact, CJP’s activities amount to an improper ex parte influence on the federal judiciary.” From this conclusion, can the US federal government shut down ELI for corrupting the justice system?
Sadly, this is exactly what the foundations wanted them to do, so ELI and CJP will likely increase their funding in the coming years. The only thing the US government can do is no longer be a party to this madness. They need to change the law allowing the funding of such advocacy programs to be tax deductible. End the foundation tax haven abuse and demand full transparency on funding and university “institute” front groups.
But the legislators who could do this are also funded by many of the billionaires who founded these same foundations, so the entire system has been corrupted by loose money.
The damage has the potential to get far worse.
In 2019, the House Judiciary report identified 70 judges who were “educated” on climate issues to align with the interests of the climate lawfare litigators. By 2022, when the Sher Edling state and local litigation strategy was gaining speed, the CJP was intentionally targeting states where climate cases were being filed. In that year, they ran 400 judges through their propaganda machinery.
400 judges in one year … they indoctrinated more than a judge a day.
But it was not only prepping judges to react in a certain way, they also wanted to identify and prepare a selection of judges to become “judicial leaders in climate science” (see email below from CJP head, Paul Hanle). This program, started in 2022, would allow high-level judges to become climate influencers for other judges.
Activist law professors (funded by climate campaign foundations) telling judges what to think on climate litigation issues is a transgression that might someday get found out (perhaps by a House Judiciary Committee). Training judges, especially chief justices, to be judicial leaders in climate science, though, and having them tell other judges what to think on climate litigation, is so diabolically brilliant that I can only applaud these activists for their efficiency (albeit, lacking in any ethical principles). But from the perspective of scientific integrity, all of these academics must be sanctioned for their destruction of public trust in legitimate climate science.
A Rigged Process
The US House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary summed up, in one paragraph, the interference of CJP on the judicial process:
Fair play is an important part of the justice process. While these climate activists may not agree, even the oil industry has the right to a fair trial. It seems stunning to think that a group of lawyers and law professors, who are teaching or training the next generation of legal experts, are demonstrating to these students that cheating to win, rigging the game, is an acceptable legal practice.
Mentors or menteurs?
The word “malpractice” should be used, but these professors and lawyers are too far gone down their rabbit hole of bias and anti-industry vindictiveness to even realize their transgressions.
Puppets on a String
Behind the curtain are the foundations pulling the strings and choreographing the La Jolla Playbook, litigating the fossil fuel industry out of existence and pricing fossil fuels out of the energy market (... making energy, transportation, heating and material/industrial products far more expensive for those without their wealth and affluence). This is a post-capitalist strategy put forward by many foundation consultants (whose wealth was created by capitalists and entrepreneurs). See an email revealed in the Congressional report and see if you can recognize a voice from the shadows.
The line “we have some interest from a funder” means that a foundation is telling the Executive Director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Michael Burger (who is also employed by Sher Edling, the main foundation-funded law firm active in suing oil companies for damages from climate change), to form a strategic partnership with the Environmental Law Institute and the Climate Judiciary Project.
The problem is that there are at least 12 foundations donating to these climate attribution campaign groups that would like to rationalize their funding with several strategic partnerships. The philanthropy industry is not in the least bit transparent, and the work involved in managing and coordinating a cabal of organizations implementing their strategy is complicated and unruly, so I suspect the 12 foundations have moved to appoint a fiscal sponsor to manage their climate attribution campaign funding from a backroom.
This email indicates the obvious: activists like Michael Burger and Paul Hanle are mere puppets for the Big Change foundations controlling the climate litigation gameplan. Academics like Burger protect and covet their institution’s funding – he would never tell Hanle about his funding ... unless he was told to.
Five years later, Michael Burger again contacted Hanle (see email below) to ask if his group, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, could be involved in a course module. Someone informed Burger that CJP had developed a module to train judges on how to manage lawsuits against the siting of renewable energy facilities. This could be Michael Gerrard, founder of the Sabin Center, who heads the Renewable Energy Legal Defense Initiative within Sabin, or maybe a foundation funding both campaigns.
Even more conflicted, Michael Gerrard serves on the CJP’s Advisory Committee so it would not be a stretch to conclude that the CJP judge training module on dealing with lawsuits against renewables was built on the advice of a Sabin Center director (if not a foundation fund manager).
It is interesting to note (not that conflicts of interest seem to matter to these people) that the Renewable Energy Legal Defense Initiative was launched with Arnold & Porter, one of the world’s largest law firms and a leader in climate litigation. Having the academic veneer of an institution like Columbia Law School to hide behind is a useful partner for grooming plaintiffs for litigation fees.
Time was these academic institutions would have closed down such activist organizations for violations of research standards and ethical improprieties. Now, serving as fiscal sponsors taking in at least 10% of the captive foundation funding, universities like Columbia or NYU have learnt to stretch their necks to look the other way.
“I know a man who can be bought.”
Another curious thing that the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary report touched upon, only marginally, is how there seems to be a practice of lawyers suing the fossil fuel industry making donations to law professors involved with the CJP training modules.
Lawyers are donating to environmental law professors involved in training judges with the CJP who are then referring these lawyers to plaintiffs to represent them in climate litigation lawsuits, and then the lawyer turns around to hire an environmental law professor to act as a litigation consultant in preparing the case. What happens if the judge hearing the case had attended a CJP training program?
No conflicts of interest here, no, certainly not.
More investigation needs to be given to this situation. The emails above reveal how the Sabin Center works directly with climate litigation law firms. The Roger Worthington story suggests that those aligned with CJP are also working directly with law firms (it is certain from the testimonials that ELI is).
As the philanthropy industry is not in the least bit transparent, data on this corruption would be difficult to obtain. And given how the foundations funding these groups also provide dark, donor-advised funds, a lawyer can simply donate to a foundation earmarking the anonymized funds for the CJP or the Sabin Center for, well, “strategic partnerships”.
The Climate Attribution Cabal at Work
The close strategic partnership between ELI, CJP and the Sabin Center (whose executive director works for the climate litigation firm, Sher Edling) adds further evidence to the claim that there are at least five organizations working as a cabal to advance the climate attribution litigation strategy. The US House Committee on the Judiciary report added a case study at the end to show how these groups were working together to try to corrupt the Federal Judicial Center and NASEM by inserting their political ideology into the climate science chapter of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence (see Part 3 of this series).
Everybody who plays the game wants to win, that is normal. But only liars and cheats would find a way to change the rules of the game, to rig it in their favor.
And this is exactly what ELI / CJP are doing in trying to indoctrinate judges to accept their political activism on climate attribution as scientific fact.
And this is exactly what the Sabin Center is doing in trying to get their programs built into CJP training modules.
And this is exactly what the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center was doing when they paid for their staff to prosecute energy companies under the guise of State Attorneys General.
When these activists secretly work together with others in Climate Central, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Sher Edling and certain scientists in NASEM to rig the game, it is a cabal.
But who is running the cabal?
How many of these strategic partnerships are being directed by the foundation fund managers? Who is pulling the strings, choreographing the cabal to implement the La Jolla climate litigation strategy? I mentioned there could be any of 12 climate-campaign oriented foundations pulling the puppets’ strings from behind the curtains, funding and managing these climate attribution litigation strategies.
Lobbying 101: Follow the money to the end of another sorry chapter in the destruction of climate science integrity. It is to the shadows that the last part of this exposé now turns.