Annals of Environmental Law: A Practitioner's Journey

I will discuss my progression from working in corporate America through to co-founding an organization seeking to make corporate America responsible for the harm it has done and is doing to the earth. In my law career of over 40 years, my goal was to ensure corporate legal environmental compliance from the inside of major fossil fuel companies. While I believe I was successful in doing this on a small scale, particularly as it relates to clean water and soiI for my companies' New Jersey locations, I came to believe that I, along with many others, were brainwashed into believing that the science surrounding climate modeling was uncertain. My company's stance involved actively sowing doubt about climate science and opposing policies aimed at addressing climate change focusing questions on the extent to which human activities were responsible for global warming. After retirement, when I finally had enough distance from my company and enough time to look carefully at the science of climate change, I realized that I, along with the rest of the public, had been misled. Discussing this with a friend who had also been an executive in my company, we decided to start an organization (PACEemissions.org) seeking to influence the people who could influence the legislators to regulate carbon capture, working towards a Global Net Zero by 2050, per the Paris Agreement. Our hope is to progress legislation to shift the burden of atmospheric CO2 cleanup from taxpayers to the corporations that created the pollution.

Jessica Nacheman is a retired attorney with 37 years of experience counseling major U.S. energy companies on regulatory matters. She began her career as an environmental scientist but transitioned to law due to her increasing focus on regulatory affairs. After earning a JD in environmental law, she specialized in environmental regulations at major law firms before joining Exxon Corporation as in-house environmental counsel. She rose to an executive legal position at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering following the 1999 merger. Beyond environmental law, her practice expanded to include immigration, antitrust, lobbying, and corporate law. Since retiring from ExxonMobil in 2015, Jessica has focused on climate change and other key issues. She holds a bachelor's degree in biology and English from the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree in public health from Columbia University, and a JD from New York Law School.