A child plays near the Cheswick coal-fired power plant in Pennsylvania. Burning coal is a major cause of climate change and releases toxic pollution that threatens our air and water.
Photo by Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice
The unchecked emission of climate pollutants such as carbon dioxide and methane threatens to make our planet unfit for life. Recent legal decisions that Earthjustice has helped to secure have affirmed EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act to reduce climate pollution from vehicles and industrial facilities, but anti-environmental members of Congress and the dirty energy industry are determined to prevent any action to reduce dangerous climate pollution.
Nearly twenty percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are generated by the United States, which is home to less than five percent of the world’s population.
Earthjustice is reducing climate pollution by:
- Using advocacy and litigation to secure strong national limits on emissions from new, modified and existing power plants, oil refineries, cement kilns, and oil and gas production facilities.
- Litigating to secure stronger and/or new limits on climate and conventional air pollution for cars, trucks, ships, aircraft and non-road engines.
- Defending EPA’s legal authority to regulate carbon pollution from motor vehicles and stationary sources—such as coal plants—from industry attacks.
- Pushing for stronger federal regulation of methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride, which all contribute to climate change.
- Seeking stronger limits on black carbon pollution through litigation and advocacy to spur enforcement of the Clean Air Act’s standards and requirements for fine particle pollution.
