We have until 2030 to cut emissions in half yet the fossil fuel industry blocks progress every step of the way. The tide, however, is turning. People from all walks of life are leading the fight to prevent climate catastrophe, and to ensure economic and racial justice. It’s time we invest in their power.
The Equation Campaign is a new ten-year funding initiative working to bring about a safe and just future by enhancing the power of movements to keep oil and gas in the ground.
The science is irrefutable: to avert the worst effects of the climate crisis, carbon emissions must be cut in half by 2030. While supporting the rapid growth of renewables and energy efficiency is essential, this support cannot solve the climate problem alone. There is a missing piece of the equation: stopping oil and gas at the source.
The Equation Campaign supports the climate movement by funding resistance on the ground and diminishing the industry’s sources of financial support. We also make grants for strategic litigation and the legal defense of activists. And we work to revoke the industry’s social license by countering its deception and unmasking its deceit.
The Equation Campaign is premised on the belief that we can keep it in the ground by funding movements on the ground — enabling historically underfunded grassroots groups to stand shoulder to shoulder alongside their peers in the national environmental community.
The fossil fuel industry has used its immense power, wealth and political influence to keep expanding its operations by selling the lie that we cannot live without their oil and gas. To counter this power, the climate movement needs to channel the kind of unstoppable momentum we have seen in social justice movements throughout history. Only this scale of mobilization can disrupt the industry’s continued obstruction of climate action.
We provide funding that supports two missing pieces of the equation in most climate philanthropy and activism to date: (1) supply side strategies to stop or delay new or expanded projects, and to directly target the power of the fossil fuel industry, and (2) racial justice movement strategies that center the expertise and power of the communities impacted first and worst by both the climate crisis and the impacts of oil and gas operations. Our goal is to amplify the voices of people on the frontlines, for whom the expansion of the oil and gas industry is a matter of life and death.
Chronicle of Philanthropy | Activist groups are calling on philanthropists to stop focusing so much on technocratic solutions and instead fund local, grassroots activists’ efforts to stop fossil-fuel extraction and promote community-based solutions to the climate crisis. Some philanthropists, including several heirs to the Rockefeller oil fortune, are responding to that call and urging others to follow their lead.
The Guardian | Congress must help usher in a new energy age – a clean energy age with the same level of support that fossil fuels companies have received for over a century.
Chronicle of Philanthropy | Rebecca Rockefeller Lambert and Peter Gill Case have created the “Equation Campaign” and pledged a combined $30 million of their personal wealth to the effort. Another $5 million was pledged by other sources so far, with an ultimate goal of raising $100 million.
Alliance Magazine | The climate movement needs to channel the kind of unstoppable momentum we have seen in social justice movements throughout history. That means following the lead of communities on the frontlines of climate catastrophe – often the same communities that are adjacent to fossil fuel infrastructure projects and bear the brunt of the industry’s dirty business.
Here are some of the grantees that The Equation Campaign is currently supporting:
Appalachians Against Pipelines is a frontline organization defending Appalachia from the Mountain Valley Pipeline, Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and more by empowering communities to organize and take action against hazardous projects. They formed in 2018 when they took nonviolent direct action to obstruct construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
Movement Rights’ mission is to work with Indigenous tribes and communities to align human laws and culture with the laws of the natural world in the time of climate chaos. We work to elevate the voice of Indigenous people at the UN, community meetings, regulatory hearings, and more. Movement Rights’ work offers a deep structural analysis of the role of corporations in creating and sustaining the conditions for climate chaos by using our political, economic and legal systems to create wealth for the few.
The Gathering of Eagles is a convergence of canoe families from across the Salish Seas of the Pacific Ocean, who are gathering for a two-day ceremony in May followed by a celebration of Lummi elder and veteran land defender Jewel James. This convergence is led and designed by Indigenous Earth, Sky & Water Protectors in the Pacific Northwest, to build solidarity across multiple campaigns tackling the threats of pipelines, tankers and other Oil, Gas and extractive industries across the lands and waters of the Salish Seas.
Gidimt’en is one of five clans of the Wet’suwet’en Nation, based in British Columbia, Canada. The clan is fighting the expansion of the Coastal GasLink, a fracked gas pipeline now endangering the pristine territory and waters of the Wet’suwet’en Peoples, without the consent of the Hereditary Chiefs. This pipeline is being financed by the Royal Bank of Canada and Gidimt’en is leading a climate finance campaign to challenge RBC and working to strip the Coastal GasLink of its social license to operate.
Indigenous Climate Action (ICA) is an Indigenous-led organization based in Canada guided by a diverse group of Indigenous knowledge keepers, water protectors and land defenders from communities and regions across the country. We believe that Indigenous Peoples’ rights and knowledge systems are critical to developing solutions to the climate crisis and achieving climate justice.
The Descendants Project is an emerging organization committed to the intergenerational healing and flourishing of the Black descendant community in the Louisiana river parishes. The lands of the river parishes hold the intersecting histories of enslavement, settler colonialism, and environmental degradation.Through programming, education, advocacy, and outreach, The Descendants Project is committed to reversing the vagrancies of slavery through healing and restorative work. They aim to eliminate the narrative violence of plantation tourism and champion the voice of the Black descendant community while demanding action that supports the total well-being of Black descendants.
Foundation for Louisiana (FFL) is a Black-led, social justice philanthropic organization that provides “critical justice infrastructure” in Louisiana, responding to crises fueled by the intersecting threats posed by oil and gas projects, climate change, and racial injustice. FFL was formed In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to channel national and international relief money to the local communities that were hardest hit. FFL has built out continuing services and programs running high impact programming in the spaces of decarceration, reproductive rights, and climate justice. They have also begun to build an arm dedicated to fiscal sponsorship for small grassroots groups across the state, many of which are fighting oil and gas expansion along the gulf.
info@equationcampaign.org
Note: We do not review unsolicited proposals.