California has long been at the forefront of efforts to protect the environment. As the fifth largest economy in the world, we are uniquely situated to effect positive change for both people and the planet. Earthjustice’s California Regional Office is not only ensuring key environmental and health protections stay in place and are strengthened, but we are advancing some of the most ambitious climate and energy policies in the country.

Earthjustice’s work in California is particularly important because even though California is a public health and climate leader, it is still one of the largest producers of oil, home to some of the worst air in the country, and faces some of the most challenging water issues.

With teams located in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Earthjustice’s California Regional Office fights for the rights of all to a healthy environment, including:

Spurring a Transformational Shift to a Zero-Emissions Future

Earthjustice has teamed up with community, conservation, health, labor, and clean-tech business groups to transform California to a zero-emissions state where we no longer rely on fossil fuels — and the pollution and carbon they emit — to power our homes, building, and cars.

Our “Right to Zero” campaign is using tools at its disposal, including existing federal laws and new state laws we support in Sacramento, to push California for a complete shift away from dirty fossil fuels to “zero-emitting” clean fuels in its transportation, building, and energy sectors. “Electrifying everything” is the only way to make the air breathable again across California, and the only way to reach the state’s ambitious greenhouse reduction targets.

Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice

Angelo Logan (left) of the Moving Forward Network with Paul Cort, Earthjustice attorney and Director of Right to Zero, in Sacramento.

Fighting Dangerous Pesticide Use

California, one of the nation’s top agricultural producers, is also a major user of agricultural pesticides. These pesticides cause significant harm to both people and wildlife, including the all-important honeybee that is responsible for pollinating one third of our food crops in the U.S.

Earthjustice works with partners including farmworkers and fenceline communities, to phase out and ban where necessary the most dangerous pesticides, such as chlorpyrifos, which has been proven harmful to children and babies, and to impose safeguards on those that remain in use. We are also working with beekeepers and others to limit the use of the group of pesticides linked to bee colony collapse disorder which threatens both our food crops and the honeybees survival.

Preserving the Wild

Nearly 50 years ago, Earthjustice’s first court fight helped preserve the Sierra Nevada’s magnificent Mineral King Valley from development. We’ve been winning victories for the wild and wildlife in California ever since.

Recent victories include ensuring protections for the State’s beloved sea otter to the gray wolf, who has returned to California almost 100 years after their extermination, to the fisher and marten, ferret-like creatures who are integral to a healthy forest ecosystem and on the brink of extinction here in California due to largescale timber activities and habitat encroachment, to protecting the Mojave Desert from a devastating water project that had the backing of Trump’s new head of the Department of Interior (who was the former lobbyist for the project).