Our Work: Climate

Recognizing that there is no path to reducing climate change without limiting fossil fuel production, RFF’s climate program funds and develops the best opportunities to slow the production of oil and gas and make climate polluters pay for the damage they have caused.

Climate Accountability Initiative

Meaningful climate progress will require breaking through the resistance of the fossil fuel industry and its allies, who to this day, continue to advance a business model that accelerates the climate crisis. To accomplish this, we support programs designed to engage and motivate citizens demanding change, deepen public recognition of those most responsible for the climate disruption now unfolding, unmask forces working to prevent climate progress and policies, and require polluters to pay their fair share of the climate damages they caused to help the public meet enormous climate adaptation expenses we now face.

Specifically, RFF’s initiative helps cities and states pursuing climate damages in court from deceptive companies, enacts first-of-its-kind laws to make polluters pay their fair share of climate adaptation costs, supports scientists working to improve climate attribution methodologies; and holds responsible companies accountable for their ongoing efforts to greenwash and deceive the public about the crisis they have caused and for blocking a sustainable energy future.

The Funder Collaborative on Oil and Gas

Over two decades, RFF has worked in opposition to the coal industry while increasing support to groups fighting oil, gas, plastics, and petrochemicals infrastructure. The United States became the world's largest gas producer in 2011 and the largest oil producer in 2018. To meet the Paris agreement’s climate goals, oil and gas must decrease by at least 80% worldwide by 2050. Yet the US government expects that domestic production will increase by ~20 percent over the next three decades.

Launched in December 2018, the Funder Collaborative on Oil and Gas focuses philanthropic attention on the fact that the US is producing more oil than any country ever before and is the world’s largest gas producer and largest gas exporter. We aim to accelerate the energy transition by limiting US production and weakening the industry’s influence, working through direct grantmaking, recommendations to funders, and funder education. We also play an operational role helping campaigns coordinate activities, fill identified gaps, and convene strategy meetings, often in partnership with advocates fighting fossil fuels because of health and environmental justice concerns.

Collaborators

Collaboration is key to our success. Our staff work in close partnership with aligned funders, experts, and national, state, and local leaders to build and implement complex initiatives that can drive necessary progress.

Case Study

#ExxonKnew Campaign

RFF created and became the public face of the #ExxonKnew campaign, led by RFF-initiated investigative journalism and academic research projects and boosted by high-profile articles in the New York Review of Books by then RFF President and family member David Kaiser and our director Lee Wasserman. The campaign exposed decades of deception by major oil companies and their in-depth knowledge of the damage fossil fuels would cause. The project catalyzed dozens of lawsuits brought by states and municipalities against oil companies for the damage they have caused by their history of climate deception.