A Transformative Era of Action: How the Public Land and Private Sectors are Realigning to Solve the Energy Transition and Climate Change

Over the last 50 years, environmental laws have transformed the areas we inhabit—and Planet Earth—for the better. Since the daybreak of the environmental law movement in 1970, our air and water are clearer, the lands we navigate are cleaner, and the food and products we consume are safer. Unfortunately, this same legal framework has not met the same success when tackling two of the biggest challenges of ours and future generations: the energy transition and climate change. Since the Supreme Court empowered the Environmental Protection Agency to act on climate change over fifteen years ago, conventional environmental laws and policies have not budged the needle toward climate change action with the urgency that these challenges warrant. The last few years, however, have ushered in a long overdue, transformative era of action on the energy transition and climate change. For the first time, we are seeing definitive forward momentum toward implementing solutions and reducing emissions. While the pathway to 2050 net zero remains blurred, both near and long term direction are getting within sharper sights. Importantly, this seismic shift toward progress is due to having the courage to pivot from using the same legal tools in the toolbox that have solved other environmental challenges so effectively, and adapt to a fundamentally new way of approaching environmental law. In short, what’s driving this transformative era of action is less sticks, more carrots. A new series of policies and laws in the United States has ushered in action by pivoting away from what has not worked in the past and embracing something new: an orientation between the public and private sectors to—for the first meaningful time in history—affirmatively align the interests of government and companies. Rather than work crosswise with the private sector, new policies and laws are incentivizing corporate action to tackle the energy transition and climate change for the first time. What this means for the law and the lawyer is a stronger and broader but different role than in the past. By embracing these transitions and transformations, the law and lawyers can now play a meaningful role in solving climate change and furthering the energy transition during this transformative era of action.