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climate justice
By Keeping Climate Funds on Ice, the DC Circuit Is Complicit in Trump’s Overreach
By refusing to act, the DC Circuit has turned oversight into obstruction, procedure into punishment, as it helps the executive hollow out Congress’ most basic power.
Sep 03, 2025
On September 2 the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that $16 billion in climate grants will remain frozen. The case, Climate United Fund v. Citibank and Environmental Protection Agency, grew out of the Trump administration’s February decision to halt the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The order was only a few lines long, a clerk’s note that the mandate would be withheld until rehearing petitions were resolved. In appellate procedure, withholding the mandate means the decision below is not yet enforceable. The court could have allowed the money to move while review continued. It chose not to.
This is not paperwork. This is power. Power in this case means leaving billions locked in a Citibank vault while families ration air conditioning, patch storm-wrecked homes, and haul water across dry land.
The money is real. Congress appropriated it. Treasury obligated it. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded it. Projects were ready. Tribal governments had contractors lined up to install solar pumps. Rural co-ops had bids in hand to replace cracked water lines. Community lenders had retrofits prepared for families who spend half their paychecks on electricity. Yet the funds remain frozen, generating interest for a bank that once needed a taxpayer bailout and still bankrolls oil expansion.
Judges call this a pause. A pause in Washington is a crisis everywhere else.
Maria Ortega in Phoenix knows it. She is 76, widowed, living on a fixed income in a house that traps the heat. Phoenix endured its fourth hottest summer on record, with 12 days at or above 110°F this July. Maria shut off her air conditioning most afternoons to avoid a $287 bill, half her Social Security check. The thermostat read 98°F. She sipped water slowly, blinds drawn, a box fan pushing hot air. At night she ran the AC for three hours so she could sleep. She asked a question no one should face: Is surviving this month worth going hungry next month?
Daniel Robinson outside New Orleans knows it too. Another September storm peeled shingles from his roof. He was 19 when Katrina came. He rebuilt, married, worked double shifts. He was told resilience would come. But this fall he found himself again hammering blue tarps while his kids carried buckets. Federal funds exist for stronger roofs and elevated homes. They were approved, obligated, ready. But they remain locked in limbo.
And Sarah Begay on the Navajo Nation knows it as well. She drives every other day to a community well, filling barrels for her livestock. The dirt tanks her father used have been dry for years. Gas prices climb, the miles wear down her pickup. She was told federal money was coming for solar pumps. Instead she is told to wait.
Three people, three regions, one reality: Delay is not neutral. It kills.
Maria is not waiting for abstractions. She is waiting for a power bill she can pay.
Judges insist they are bound by law, not outcomes. But law already spoke. Congress passed the appropriation. Treasury obligated it. EPA awarded it. The Constitution gives Congress the purse for a reason. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 codified that a president cannot cancel or withhold funds Congress has approved. President Richard Nixon tried, and Congress stopped him. What this administration has done—freezing appropriations indefinitely under the language of review—is a backdoor impoundment. And by withholding the mandate, the DC Circuit has not merely tolerated this maneuver. It has validated it.
This is the judiciary’s quiet habit: Retreat into formalism while people pay the price. Courts claim neutrality but exercise discretion constantly—choosing when to grant stays, when to expedite review, when to let money flow. To call delay neutral is a fiction. Delay is a ruling in all but name. The choice to freeze funds is as consequential as striking them down.
The consequences reach far beyond climate. If this precedent stands, any appropriation can be stalled. Veterans’ healthcare, housing aid, disaster relief—all can be frozen at a president’s discretion so long as courts are willing to play along. Congress will hold the purse only on paper. In practice, presidents will wield the choke chain, and judges will provide cover.
Every day of delay bleeds value. A retrofit not installed means another summer of unbearable bills. A pump not delivered means another year of hauling water. A roof not secured means another tarp, another moldy wall, another child growing up in a house that never dries. A dollar spent today prevents five dollars in damage tomorrow. A dollar withheld compounds harm. The storm does not wait for petitions. The fire does not wait for oral arguments. The flood does not wait for a court’s sense of timing.
Judicial restraint here is not harmless. It is complicity. By refusing to act, the DC Circuit has turned oversight into obstruction, procedure into punishment. It has helped the executive hollow out Congress’ most basic power. It has reduced law to theater while real life burns.
Maria is not waiting for abstractions. She is waiting for a power bill she can pay. Daniel is not waiting for legal formalities. He is waiting for a roof that will hold. Sarah is not waiting for judicial review. She is waiting for water that flows.
The storm will not wait. The fire will not wait. The flood will not wait. Politicians will still gather in front of cameras to praise oversight and congratulate themselves on restraint. Judges will polish their dockets and write opinions about consistency.
But history will record something else. The money was there. The need was there. The chance was there. And power chose not to use it. That is not oversight. That is abdication. It is not neutrality. It is complicity. And it is a verdict that will damn the judiciary as much as the executive.
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Climate Justice Is Under Siege; Help Us Defend It
Why we can’t afford to lose the progress frontline communities have built.
Aug 26, 2025
The climate justice infrastructure dedicated to serving vulnerable communities across the United States took decades to build. And it is now at risk.
After nearly 20 years working in frontline communities on environmental justice and community development, I joined Emerald Cities Collaborative as president and CEO in April 2022. Hope around renewed commitments to climate justice, community resilience, and economic opportunities was palpable, as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act had just been signed into law shortly after my start. With an influx of federal investments and mandates for racial equity, the promise of that moment energized the climate justice and environmental justice movements.
Today, a coordinated attack on the environmental nonprofit sector and diversity, equity, and inclusion threatens to dismantle the physical and social support networks that serve frontline communities. It is imperative that we understand what’s at stake, who benefits from the current infrastructure, and what the consequences of inaction could be.
Climate justice infrastructure provides the framework for implementing equitable climate investments for all that advance racial justice, economic justice, and environmental justice. This infrastructure includes the physical investments—such as green buildings, solar panels, green infrastructure—and the social supports necessary to ensure their equitable implementation. From community organizing to capacity building for grassroots nonprofits and workforce development programs, environmental nonprofits serve as the backbone of this social infrastructure. These efforts address both climate change and the systemic inequality that leads to disproportionate impacts on vulnerable communities.
We must stand up for nonprofits and the future that they help build—a climate future that is not only green but just.
Significant public and private investments in greener, more resilient energy, water, food, and housing infrastructure—driven by the urgency of climate change—created an unprecedented opportunity to address the environmental, income, wealth, and health disparities within low-income communities and communities of color. Realizing the full potential of these rapidly accelerating investments required a coordinated strategy that integrated local coalition building, policy, project, workforce, and small business development support. This is where the environmental nonprofits stepped in. Environmental nonprofits provided their expertise, on-the-ground leadership, capacity building, and connective tissue to support community-led climate projects, advocacy, and policy.
The breadth of organizations building this critical climate justice infrastructure is remarkable—from national nonprofits and statewide advocacy groups to grassroots organizations and volunteer community groups. We are grateful for their commitment! At Emerald Cities Collaborative (ECC), our history, experience, and dedication to climate justice, along with our support for coalitions and partnerships, equity-centered clean energy policies, and economic inclusion efforts, uniquely positioned us to serve as an intermediary within the broader ecosystem. ECC deployed a coordinated strategy of local coalition building, policy education, project implementation, workforce initiatives, and contractor development to connect disadvantaged communities nationally and in our primary regions (Northwest, Northern California, Southern California, DC-Maryland-Virginia, and Northeast) to the growing clean energy economy. We connected federal and state funding to grassroots implementation and translated new federal initiatives into community-accessible dialogue. The overarching goal was to ensure that the climate and economic benefits of the emerging clean economy were reachable to low-income communities and communities of color.
As a result of the efforts of national nonprofits, community-based organizations, and institutions, many organizations and communities historically left out were able to access federal funding for community climate investments, many for the first time. Communities that have borne the brunt of environmental injustice have benefited from stronger leadership, enhanced organizational capacity, and new tools for community education and organizing.
These gains are all at risk due to the growing attack on environmental nonprofits, the rollback of climate policies, and the disintegration of environmental justice funding. Legal and reputational attacks, such as naming Emerald Cities Collaborative in the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Exploring the Green Group Giveaway Behind the Biden-Harris Environmental Justice Programs report, demonstrate how politically motivated attacks are being used to sway public opinion. This, coupled with the outright illegal termination of environmental justice grants, has had a chilling effect on our work.
However, the impacts are not evenly distributed. Grassroots organizations and BIPOC-led nonprofits are disproportionately vulnerable to these attacks compared with large national organizations with greater resources and political capital. Fear and misinformation have caused some philanthropic funders to pull back. Organizations are being forced to divert resources from mission-critical work to legal defense and crisis communications. And this does not include the mental and emotional toll that environmental justice and climate justice leaders are experiencing.
The stakes are high. Without the valuable work of these organizations, climate solutions may revert to top-down, extractive models that center profit over community. The loss of high-road jobs, apprenticeships, and clean energy workforce programs, along with increased vulnerability to extreme climate events, will unduly affect frontline communities already facing the greatest risk. At the same time, the voices of Black, Indigenous, and immigrant-led movements are in danger of being systematically excluded from the climate conversation.
For us to meet our national climate goals and the just transition agenda, we need strong local, community-driven infrastructure. How can we ensure that the momentum for equitable climate investments in frontline communities is not entirely lost? Will we use this moment to accelerate climate justice—or allow fear and misinformation to dismantle it?
Now is the time for philanthropy, government, and the public to stand in solidarity with national and frontline organizations. Philanthropy must fund general operating support and legal protections for national BIPOC-led and frontline nonprofits. We must resist and roll back state-level attacks on nonprofit speech and operations, as well as the easing of climate policies. And we must educate audiences, donors, and lawmakers about the irreplaceable role of climate justice organizations.
The attack on climate justice infrastructure is about PEOPLE, PROGRESS, and PRINCIPLES! We must stand up for nonprofits and the future that they help build—a climate future that is not only green but just. We must stand up for communities that are resilient and thriving, not just surviving. The alternative is not an option.
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The Fire This Time: Capitalism and the Limits of Survival
Can capitalism survive the climate crisis it helped create? Or must we finally admit that it’s the system itself that’s killing us?
Jul 17, 2025
The world is burning, both literally and figuratively. Temperatures are shattering records. Wildfires sweep across continents. Glaciers melt while droughts deepen. Inequality balloons. Billions go hungry while billionaires build bunkers. And through it all, one system marches forward, extracting, exploiting, expanding.
Its name is capitalism.
And the question we must now face, urgently, collectively, without illusion, is this: Can capitalism survive the climate crisis it helped create? Or must we finally admit that it’s the system itself that’s killing us?
This isn’t just a theoretical question. It’s a matter of survival.
Contrary to what some economists would have us believe, capitalism didn’t arise through peaceful trade or natural evolution. It was forged in conquest, enclosure, slavery, and plunder.
Capitalism is not broken because it has failed to innovate. It’s broken because it has succeeded, at concentrating wealth, externalizing costs, and turning the Earth into a profit machine.
In early modern Europe, peasants were forced off common lands so the wealthy could raise sheep for profit. The so-called “Enclosure Movement” turned shared resources into private property, creating the first landless laborers, people with no choice but to sell their labor to survive.
From there, capitalism scaled outward. Empires expanded, fueled by the theft of land, labor, and life. The Atlantic slave trade, the colonization of the Americas, and the pillaging of India and Africa were not side effects, they were the fuel that powered capitalist growth.
Later came the Industrial Revolution, mechanizing exploitation, churning out commodities, and giving birth to the cult of “growth.” What had once been measured in survival and sustenance was now measured in productivity, output, and profit.
By the 20th century, capitalism had globalized. And by the 21st, it had digitized, financialized, and fully detached from the ecological limits of the planet.
The Myth of Green Capitalism
Today, we’re told that capitalism can fix the very crises it’s caused. Silicon Valley technologists, global financiers, and political centrists speak of green growth, decoupling, and innovation. Solar panels, electric vehicles, carbon markets, environmental and social governance portfolios, these are the new gospel.
But while emissions rise, forests fall, and temperatures climb, the promises feel increasingly hollow.
Capitalism is not broken because it has failed to innovate. It’s broken because it has succeeded, at concentrating wealth, externalizing costs, and turning the Earth into a profit machine.
The logic of endless growth is fundamentally at odds with a planet that cannot grow. And no amount of green branding can change that.
In places like Rochester, New York we see both the consequences of capitalism and the seeds of resistance.
The private utility company, Rochester Gas and Electric, is facing a people-powered campaign for public takeover after years of rate hikes and service failures. Community land trusts are reclaiming housing from speculative markets. Regenerative farms are feeding neighbors instead of shareholders. These are not utopias, they’re struggles. But they are real, local, and rooted in solidarity.
They remind us that the fight for climate justice is also a fight for energy democracy, housing justice, and food sovereignty. It’s not about tweaking the system. It’s about transforming it.
Gandhi’s Warning and Vision
Over a century ago, Mohandas Gandhi warned of where industrial capitalism would lead. In Hind Swaraj, he rejected not only colonial rule, but the Western model of “progress” itself. He saw clearly that a civilization based on speed, greed, and machinery would eventually consume itself.
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs,” he wrote, “but not every man’s greed.”
Gandhi’s vision wasn’t a return to the past, it was a radical call for restraint, community, and moral clarity. He called for economies rooted in place, not profit. He believed wealth should be held in trusteeship, not hoarded for personal gain. And he insisted that any real revolution must begin within the soul.
Capitalism is not compatible with climate justice. It never was.
To many, this sounded naïve. Today, it sounds prophetic.
The reckoning is now. A dead planet can not turn a profit. Capitalism gave us vaccines, satellites, supercomputers. But it also gave us rising seas, poisoned air, and mass extinction. We cannot separate the gifts from the costs. And we can no longer pretend that reform is enough.
Yes, we need innovation. Yes, we need policy. But we also need imagination. We need the courage to envision systems not based on extraction, but on care. Not on growth, but on balance. Not on domination, but on solidarity.
We need, as the late David Graeber wrote, a world where we treat each other as if we actually matter.
The road ahead will not be easy. It will be full of contradictions, compromises, and uncertainty. But we must begin with honesty: Capitalism is not compatible with climate justice. It never was.
And we cannot build a livable future with the same tools that built the crisis.
It’s time to stop asking whether capitalism can be fixed, and start building the alternatives that already exist in our communities, our movements, and our collective memory.
There may still be time.
But not much.
And history, like the atmosphere, is watching.
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