This is some OSINT I collected this morning. Names and subs have been removed. Different selections have been lettered. I did a search for something like "environment law", looking for communities. I found only one small community. Mostly I found lots of posts from law students asking for advice on becoming environment lawyers, so I switched my focus to those posts. Comments from real lawyers with first-hand perspectives on environment law were revelatory; I have sampled selections of these comments. These comments show internal attitudes of some real lawyers with environmental law perspectives and reveal some useful terms and information. Some conclusions and forward-looking statements are offered.

Examples of different internal attitudes of lawyers with environmental law perspectives or related commenters, & other information:

a

I'm an environmental major and conservationist at heart, but I'm a realist. My dad has worked oil refineries for 25+ years. It put a roof over my head, clothes on my, back and food on the table...not to mention as you said, the phone I'm using and the numerous products we use daily. Often the "big bad wolf pollutors" are indeed a necessary evil to be in a material and modern society.

b

A professor in my environmental science master's program once told us that without industry (especially in petrochemicals and agriculture), we'd all be living in the 18th century.

A typical smartphone takes hundreds of different materials to make (plastics, adhesives, coatings, sealants, solder, etc.), none of which occur naturally. Making those materials is a lot cleaner than it used to be, but it requires large factories using and producing chemicals with scary names to do it. Living without a smartphone or plastic cutlery might be doable (or even preferable), but what about laundry detergent, aspirin or synthetic fabric?

Industry and large companies aren't your enemies. It takes a lot of money to make the building blocks of the modern world. Sure, we could be doing better from an environmental perspective, but that is true of just about everyone.

c

It’s easy to fall into a trap of seeing things too black and white, but there is obviously merit in working for the ‘bad guys’ and making sure they’re complying and being the best they can.

I think people like to shit on corporates a lot (myself included), but without them, we’d be living considerably more difficult lives.

d

I'm an in-house environmental lawyer (actually we are typically Environmental, Health and Safety - EHS) for a big, bad company that has multiple factories and the air, water and waste issues that come with them. I advise the business and operations staff on what the law requires, how to comply with our permits and advise on M&A activities touching on environmental issues. I also work on legacy (i.e. Superfund) sites, OSHA matters (including pandemic response) and advise on ways our company can meet its sustainability and ESG goals.

When mistakes happen, I negotiate or litigate with EPA and state regulators, but most of the time I'm building long-term relationships with our regulators because some of the same state and EPA folks are literally going to be in their same jobs for my entire career. It helps a lot if they view me and my company as an honest company that is trying to partner with the agency on ways forward rather than as someone who is going to fight tooth and nail over every permit. I save the fighting for when it really matters.

EPA and NGO attorneys will tell you that they are saving the world from people like me, but they are typing that on a phone that my company's products create. They talk about another rulemaking that might squeeze a few percent more of carbon out of the atmosphere, while I'm advising on projects that reduce our CO2 emissions dramatically while increasing production. At the same time, I'm providing valuable internal guardrails on processes and discussions that EPA cannot ever hope to be involved in.

Thus, in my own way, I too save the environment every day. I do that making 2-3x in salary that an EPA attorney does with all of the benefits of a corporate in-house job. Are there days I don't like the outcome? Sure, but that is true in any area of law.

e

There are significantly more jobs on the "bad" side of environmental law than the "good" side. Everyone I know from law school who went into environmental law wound up working on the corporate/insurance side, there are very few environmental non-profit jobs out there and they are typically in high demand. I briefly handled environmental/toxic tort cases for an insurance defense firm and I can tell you it's not a feel-good area of practice.

f

I don’t work in environmental law, but my firm has an environmental practice so I will say this. Unless you work for the government or a not-for-profit, you’re not going to be saving the planet—your job will be to figure out how much your client can pollute and what the fine will be for doing so. They will then use this to decide whether polluting is a good business decision

g

What do you hate about the field?

Because environmental regulation can get so contentious, there's a lot of weird and bad law out there. Also, the Clean Air Act is a poorly drafted statute.

h

If you're hoping to make that much, you're going to be looking at working for a firm that does environmental compliance for big companies. This is a path some people I've talked to like because they feel like they are actually making change happening, instead of endlessly advocating and not winning a case.

conclusions/analysis

-there's more people who want to be environment lawyers than there are jobs available for them. this means we should have a large body of people to draw on: they're hungry to do stuff about the environment, and they're not going to get the jobs they wanted, but they will be left with law degrees. These people can be drafted by us.

-a lot of them voice a complaint like "well what would we do without the modern world? we need every single amenity we're used to just to get by another day, and it would be unthinkable to change any of this, even to substitute or alter any of this".

-most people have a lack of motivation and a lack of imagination when it comes to solving or even attempting to solve the simple-to-fix environment problem.

useful terms learned:

-"environmental compliance" this is the term for, as was mentioned by commenters, 'helping companies figure out how much they can pollute'

-"environmental law" general name for environment field of law

Forward-looking statements:

-I think lawyers might be our best chance to do things about the environment legally. I'm thinking of starting a lawsuit for fraud against Fox News and Newsmax, for reporting that climate science is a hoax, when climate science has a record of successful peer-review in major science journals. Should be an easy case to prove. Need to round up the right lawyers. If they settle, this money can be reinvested in pursuing further, more vigorous lawsuits, with more funding for more and better lawyers.

I remind us all that you don't need to be a lawyer to file a lawsuit; anyone can file one. It just needs to be a good enough case on paper that the judge doesn't reject it. If you can file a good-enough-lawsuit-that-the-judge-doesn't-reject-it, you should, from there, be able to attract pro-bono lawyers like flies, because the groundwork will have been laid already for them to potentially win a great case. Filing such a lawsuit is not beyond us. 

-Fines seem to be the best weapon yet devised against pollution. More fines seems like a good general tactic for the EPA & others to continue to pursue.

-the Clean Air Act needs to be rewritten

Endquote:

Miles Davis once said to John Coltrane, while John Coltrane was working for Miles Davis... Believe it or not, there was a time when Coltrane was up-and-coming, and who else but Miles Davis was his boss at the time. 

Coltrane was up-and-coming even at this time, meaning... He was beginning to experiment with taking never-ending solos. He liked taking these and it pissed the other guys off. 

Miles talked to him about it. Coltrane said... "Look man, I can't, I just can't stop once I've started..."

Miles said, "Look man, just take the goddamn horn out your goddamn mouth". 

TURN OFF GREENHOUSE GAS PRODUCTION- SUBSTITUTE FOR DIFFERENT OR INNOVATIVE PRODUCTS OR MEANS. MEANWHILE PURSUE STRATEGIES FOR LEGAL CHANGE.

MAGA: "Climate change is a hoax invented by China to sell electric cars and destroy the American auto industry."

Tankies: "Climate change is a hoax invented by US Imperialists so they can be white saviors and take away China's coal power."

Liberals: "Climate change is real but let's keep the fossil fuel industry going, we don't want anyone to lose their jobs, c'mon man!"

Anarcho-capitalism: "The market will deal with climate change when it happens."

Anarcho-syndicalism: "Burn it all down and pretend that green energy will magically rise from the ashes."

Anarcho-primitivism: "Let's just send 8 billion people into the forest so they can hunt & gather, as if that totally won't be ten times worse for ecosystems than agriculture is."

I was a member until something like recently. There was a video conference call with the usual cast of characters, and since it was drawing near the election (this was a few months ago now), somehow the topic was broached about who we were voting for. I was surprised to find that the apparent majority of U.S. XR members on the call were Green, and that there was no concerted effort to vote blue just to save the environment. I said something along these lines in no unclear terms. We must vote blue to save the environment.

There was no answer and I found myself not invited to any further call.

I hereby disband the U.S. Extinction Rebellion. No more stupid hourglass logo, no more stupid EXTINCTION REBELLION in all caps, no more "art puppets", no more b.s. The other international brances can stay; they haven't screwed up, and they're doing good things in the UK. U.S. Extinction Rebellion is a domestic failure.

As for us I say let us form a new group: Green Sword, whose logo shall be any variant of a green sword. I recommend an upside-down cross in green spraypraint, as it looks like an upturned crusader's sword.

Let this sub, unchanged, be its hideout.

The strength of a lot of rebels can also be a risk. Hope this helps.

Article on the devolution of Homo Sapiens Sapiens into Homo Sapiens domesticus

https://www.academia.edu/124451844/Emergency_Management_in_the_21st_Century

If you really want to rebel, resist extinction and domestication.

Where does Roger Hallam get his numbers from? I haven't heard them anywhere else. They are also very much sped up compared to all the other timelines that I have heard. No hate. Just want to understand you guys is point of view.

As there is Good and Evil here on Earth, I would like to share this "Star Wars (Movies)" analogy.

In the "Star Wars (Movies)", there was Obi Wan vs Darth Vader. The Rebellion vs The Stormtroopers. Yoda vs The Emperor. "The Alliance" vs "The Evil Empire ("The Dark Side")".

In Capitalism, and Countries governed under Capitalist Rule, for example, Capitalists are in the pursuit of autonomous "wealth". Capitalism is a driving fore behind Man Made Climate Change.

In the Holy Bible, for example, New Testament 1 Timothy 6:10 " for the love of money is the root of all evil...".

Money, in modern times, can also be equated to Material Items, Land/Property etc.

In North America, daily life consists of the pursuit of Money, Land/Property, Material Items etc., as well as the concern for taking care of the Household, for the most part.

In many places around the world, daily life consists of the pursuit of "Survival".

Within the realms of the pursuit of Money, "Survival" etc., does corruption exist?, for example.

If corruption exists, this is "Darkness". If corruption exists in the pursuit of Money, this is Evil, aka "The Dark Side", in the "Star Wars (Movies)" analogy. "The Dark Side" has allies.

Where do we find corruption? What is the Hierarchy of the corrupt?

These answers, provide us with members of "The Evil Empire ("The Dark Side")".

Those who walk in lockstep with "The Dark Side", or those of whom are Apathetic or Complacent, and therefore are walking in lockstep with "The Dark Side", are the "Stormtroopers" in this analogy.

Where there is conflict in the world, there is also War. In many cases it's "The Alliance" vs "The Dark Side", from this analogy.

In this analogy as well, there is "The Force". On the good side, "The Force" is "The Truth". You cannot destroy "The Truth", as once something happens/occurs, we cannot go back in time to change "The Truth". It happened. To silence "The Truth" is an attempt from "The Dark Side".

When a person or group utilizes "The Truth", and movement occurs, this is "The Force".

The same can be said for Evil, when " for the love of money " is at play, and this can cause and effect outcomes. This is a "Force".

When these two "Forces" collide, "The Alliance" vs "The Dark Side", the outcome can be War.

With bias in the Media, Propaganda and Censorship, and with the information available, the question is, where do we find ourselves in this world? At the end of the day, are we "Stormtroopers" or are we a part of "The Alliance"? (in this analogy) as individuals and as groups. Where is our conscience, collectively and individually?

Industries that pollute and provide the materials to pollute, have gone to great lengths to deny the Truth, in order to maintain their Industry and their wealth.

The United States goes to War to defend its "interests". To say money and power are not involved in this, would be blatant denial. The same goes for other nations.

With regard to Man Made Climate Change, the Earth is like the "Death Star", with the laser pointed at itself.

P.S. ( I took off my Helmet a couple of decades ago) - "Finn" "Star Wars (Movie)" analogy.