PROGRAM OVERVIEW
CSE uses its economic, scientific and legal expertise to develop innovative policy solutions to some of humanity’s most tenacious challenges. We work on market based solutions as well as new or amended regulatory approaches. We work with partners to develop solutions that are internationally applicable but tailored to institutions that operate at the local level. We have successfully fought for changes in public policies to protect at risk forests, farmland, wetlands, and wildlife habitat, halt new fossil fuel infrastructure, change priorities for public finance and help alleviate the growing inequality divide through affordable housing and living wages. Our policy work takes two basic forms:
- Model legislation – CSE works with partners and legislators at the national, state, and local levels to draft model laws, resolutions, ordinances that speed the transition to a sustainable society and halt new projects or programs that accelerate climate change, extinction and poverty.
- Regulatory reform – CSE works within the administrative processes of federal, state, and local public agencies to update regulations, rules, and guidance manuals to better reflect legislative intent, best available science and best practice.
PROGRAM NEWS AND UPDATES

Oregon Department of Forestry Fails to Step Up to their Climate Responsibility
Conservation groups and community members are sounding the alarm in response to the Oregon Department of Forestry’s woefully inadequate plan to meaningfully address climate change as they are required to do under Governor Brown’s Executive Order EO 20-04. In March 2020, Oregon Governor Brown issued EO 20-04 to prevent the ... Read More

Victory: Pressure on PGE, Global Partners Pays Off
A political strategy which CSE helped advance has put a snag in the plans of a major Koch Brothers ally, Richard Kayne, in expanding Global Partners’ crude oil storage capacity by 1 million barrels in Clatskanie, OR. The story starts in 2017, when Portland General Electric (PGE) sold its nine largely unused ... Read More

Analysis of Governor Kate Brown’s Climate Change Executive Order, 20-04
A Positive Direction: Governor Kate Brown’s Executive Order (EO) is breaking with the carbon market-based approach of the past and is instead pursuing a declining cap on Oregon’s emissions on an emergency, science-based timeline. Needs Improvement: The EO’s targets and timetables are neither ambitious nor comprehensive enough. The EO leaves ... Read More