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:
Highlander is a training organization that focuses on social and economic justice, environmentalism, and grassroots movements, especially in Appalachia and the American South. Highlander is expanding its finance team’s capacity in order to offer fiscal sponsorship to vital grassroots organizing in the South.
The Line 3 Storytelling Anthology is a collection of stories from the movement to Stop Line 3 that will be published and given to water protectors. Over the past decade, hundreds of people in Minnesota and around turtle island dedicated themselves to this fight for the climate, for water, and for Anishinaabe sovereignty. At this crucial moment of loss and transition after the completion of the pipeline, our anthology team is taking a pause to collect the stories of water protectors. Through this collection of writing, drawing, photography, and more, we hope to honor and commemorate the diverse experiences of those who resisted and struggled for a better world through the movement to stop Line 3.
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) works with communities under threat to fight for justice and liberation through litigation, advocacy, and strategic communications. In the fight for climate justice, CCR works to defend environmental activists and water protectors who are protesting as well as journalists who are seeking to document and report on environmentally harmful industrialization in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley — particularly new facilities proposed by petrochemical companies and other companies posing environmental hazards.
The mission of the Vessel Project of Louisiana is to help our most vulnerable black, indigenous, people of color, low income communities in the most efficient way possible while allowing them to keep their dignity and advocate for themselves through empowerment and by providing them with their most emergency needs as barrier free as possible. The Vessel Project of Louisiana envisions empowered, resilient individuals and communities that will restore hope following crisis and revolt against disaster capitalism and climate chaos, in favor of a more peaceful and sustainable world.
The mission of the Campaign to Free Jessica Reznicek is to lessen the amount of time that Jessica Reznicek has to spend in prison and spread awareness about her case. One main objective to lessen her prison sentence is to get the terrorism enhancement dropped. The team plans to pursue legal angles; educate the public about her case and those it relates to; build alliances with relevant organizations; and organize strategic actions to achieve these goals. As part of these efforts we will educate the public about the sweeping global trend of governments to criminalize nonviolent climate protest.
The Climate Litigation Accelerator (CLX) based at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law – is a global collaborative hub that nourishes, catalyzes, and disseminates the ideas, tools, strategies, and partnerships needed to secure urgent and ambitious action on the climate emergency. CLX is developing its Youth Legal Defense Network which will match youth climate advocates from around the world with regionally based lawyers that can provide legal defense services. To lay the groundwork for this network, CLX also plans to have a year-long youth fellowship.
Ronald K Turney Jr captures and compiles drone footage to monitor the Line 3 oil pipeline, with particular emphasis on water crossings. Ron is an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation and has been an integral part of the fight to protect homelands, ecosystems and waterways, including the iconic Mississippi River, from the environmental destruction brought by this irresponsible and ill advised oil pipeline. The Makwa Initiative stands to protect the sacred land and rice lakes of the Anishinaabe people against Enbridge’s Line 3 Replacement Project.
info@equationcampaign.org
Note: We do not review unsolicited proposals.