“I’ve always been an outdoor enthusiast. I consider the outdoors my temple.”
That’s one of things that drove Jillian Blanchard, the Director of Lawyers for Good Government’s (L4GG) Climate Change program, to cross the Pacific on a 35-foot sailboat with only her husband as fellow crew.
“I’ve been thinking about the issue of climate change for a very long time,” says Jillian. “What I’ve found is that tiny changes make real impacts, especially at the state and local levels. It really is up to us. Sometimes, people view the environment as this existential thing removed from our daily lives, but it’s all around us. If we don’t care for it, it’ll impact everyone in ways most people can’t even imagine.”
Below, Jillian discusses her beginnings with L4GG, the work of the climate change program, and what’s on the horizon for 2022.
““I’ve always been an outdoor enthusiast. I consider the outdoors my temple.” ”
How did you start working with L4GG?
On the night of the 2016 presidential election, I was one of the panicked attorneys who saw Traci Feit Love’s original Facebook post that began L4GG. I’ve worked in environmental law for 20 years, and in that moment I knew that we were all going to have to work very hard to prevent a major regression on environmental issues. I also recognized, as Traci did, that if the nation’s lawyers, in the form of this new organization called Lawyers for Good Government, focused on climate change, we could make a real impact.
My immediate reaction to the election and knowing that Trump would pull us out of the Paris Accord was ‘it’s all up to us now.’ Without the federal government’s support of the Paris Accord, I knew that the only way we could meet, and then beat, the terms of the Paris Accord was at the state and local levels. That’s why the day after Trump announced the country’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord, I reached out to Traci and pitched her on an initial sketch for a climate change program that could help all 50 states to meet and then beat the Paris Accord.
Traci was immediately on board, and I began in earnest. I reached out to the major players making a difference in the climate change space and colleagues from my years of practice, like the Sierra Club and Bloomberg Philanthropies, and asked them how an army of lawyers could enhance their existing climate work?
I was told that cities and states were making verbal commitments to move towards 100% renewable energy, but many didn’t have the resources or technical knowledge to get there. I found that leveraging a team of over 125,000 legal advocates to fill the legal gaps and provide technical assistance to support the country’s shift to 100% renewable energy at the local and state level could lead to meaningful, impactful action on climate change right now.
What is the work you’re most proud of having done with L4GG?
In my time with L4GG, the Climate Change Program has been able to mobilize 350 attorneys to assist us and educate 47 different cities in 21 states on tools to help them switch to renewable energy sources. Helping cities meet aggressive climate targets creates a new and reliable demand for clean energy that moves markets, creating a ripple effect of positive action to address climate change. It has been incredible to see how many different NGOs, cities, and small communities have responded to this service.
We’ve done amazing research for our State Profiles, which provide a general overview of policies affecting local renewable energy policy in that particular state. That research can make a world of difference for communities with smaller budgets. These communities want to make changes, but they don’t have the resources or funding to hire lawyers to navigate municipal and energy law to meet aggressive targets. That’s where L4GG’s work is so impactful.
I’m also really proud of the partnerships we’ve created with the Sierra Club, RMI (formerly Rocky Mountain Institute), World Resources Institute and other impactful climate organizations to help them enhance their climate campaigns. My goal is to make sure we’re standing in the gap and magnifying existing efforts, not trying to reinvent the wheel.
There’s so much work to be done, and lawyers are poised to do it.
What are the things you’re most excited about in 2022?
We’re currently working on a massive research and reporting effort with the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center to establish a right to clean, affordable water in Michigan. Our plan is to prepare a report that highlights the inequities around access to clean, affordable drinking water, and then propose stronger state policy to enforce this right. We’re also working with Great Lakes to directly assist the community of Benton Harbor, an environmental justice community whose drinking water has been contaminated with lead for over three years, to ensure their service lines are replaced. We also plan to expand our efforts to research, analyze, and propose model policy around the right to water in all 50 states. By doing so, we’ll help create a coordinated, national push for the right to water, at the state level.
What does a ‘right to water’ mean?
‘Right to water’ relates to whether or not someone has access to clean and affordable drinking water. For example in Michigan, there are two issues, affordability and quality of water. We’re looking at the Safe Drinking Water Act, a piece of federal legislation, and analyzing whether it’s doing enough to ensure affordable drinking water for Michiganders. For example the communities of Flint and Benton Harbor in Michigan do not have access to clean water. Benton Harbor has had lead contaminated water for the past three years despite the fact that the Michigan and Federal Lead and Copper Rule regulations on lead contamination limits exist.
Disadvantaged communities, predominantly communities of color, still have to rely on bottled water for drinking, and we want to know why.
L4GG’s climate change program seeks to identify the immediate needs and make a direct impact right now, while at the same time learning from that work so we can propose systematic change.
We’re doing this work with pro bono attorneys and virtually no money — imagine what we could accomplish when we have more sustainable funding!
Lawyers have the unique opportunity to make a difference, in the way only we can. We can take what we’ve learned in our research and use it to push critical policy. Part of our reporting is to tell you exactly what is happening, and what needs to be done. On the ground programs and communities already know what they want and need, and we can help them get there.
What else is going on in 2022?
We’re rolling out resources to identify federal funding for US cities to increase renewable energy and divest from fossil fuels through the big infrastructure bill that just passed in Congress. Similar to L4GG’s COVID-19 clinics, we hope to create a program where pro bono lawyers provide consultations directly to communities who need it most to help identify funding sources for clean energy and climate resiliency projects.
We’ll also continue to directly assist cities, and hope to provide direct assistance to at least 150 cities, helping them make the transition to renewable energy and implement other climate tools.
As an example, we have helped cities in 5 different states with guidance on contracts for renewable energy credits. Using our guidance, cities can engage their own contracts to incredible results. , One city entered a contract to purchase 79 million kilowatts of energy from a new solar panel project — the equivalent of taking 12,000 gas vehicles off the road yearly.
And that’s just one contract for one city!
We’re working with on the ground organizations like RMI and World Resources Institute to get cities on board, teach them how to put these tools into practice to make actual change.
We can’t do this work alone, though. We need volunteers, and we need funding. Climate change work isn’t just addressing environmental justice in the immediate, it’s building the path for a sustainable future for the planet. I hope you’ll join me.