Promote Climate Justice

The increased focus on climate change in the U.S. Congress has yielded a growing number of proposals aimed at reducing the pollution that causes it. Unfortunately, the widely preferred policy approaches carry important and often poorly understood economic consequences. Application of the most widely promoted policy option for limiting pollution, a cap-and-trade system, is likely to produce climate policy that may limit emissions of greenhouse gases, but would place undue economic burdens on those least responsible for causing the problem—and least able to bear the costs of solving it. With a coalition of like-minded groups, ELI is working to inject environmental justice concerns, including disproportionate economic and environmental impacts on economically-disadvantaged groups and communities of color, into state and federal policy debates.

ELI’s work on climate justice builds on our long history of advancing environmental justice.