Last week, Fox News reported that Ann Carlson – former UCLA environmental law professor and a primary fundraiser for climate lawsuits – has been nominated by President Biden to serve as Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Carlson’s nomination is before the Senate Commerce Committee, where her transportation safety record – or lack thereof – will be scrutinized.
Carlson was first appointed to NHTSA Chief Counsel in January 2021, and assumed the role of Acting Administrator in September 2022 when the previous NHTSA chief departed after just three months on the job. Fox News reported:
“President Biden’s nominee to lead the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was previously involved in a dark money-fueled effort to file numerous climate nuisance lawsuits across the country.”
It was Carlson, according to additional Fox News reporting last year, who raised money from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation and other millionaire donors to support climate litigation against American energy companies.
Earlier this week, a follow-up story from Fox News shed light on Carlson’s plans to turn NHTSA into a climate agency. Fox reports that according to public records, Carlson viewed her initial appointment to NHTSA as part of the administration’s “whole of government” approach to addressing climate change:
“‘I have been appointed by the Biden administration to serve as the chief counsel for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,’ Carlson wrote to fellow UCLA Law staff in an email on Jan. 18, 2021. ‘The agency is in charge of climate standards for cars and trucks, which is why they have recruited me for the position.’”
Carlson used the same language to describe the purpose of NHTSA in her official UCLA leave forms and in additional correspondence with colleagues. However, NHTSA – an agency under the Department of Transportation – works to “save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce economic costs” due to road traffic crashes. Ann Carlson, evidently, plans to shift the focus of the agency towards climate. Following her 2021, appointment, Carlson described her plans for the agency to another academic:
“I’ve been appointed to the Biden-Harris team to serve as NHTSA’s Chief Counsel. The deputy is also a climate person…I understand NHTSA was not the partner it could have been in the Obama era – our appointments plan to change that.”
Ironically, the announcement of Carlson’s nomination – and the revelations about her motives – come on the heels of a tough few months for President Biden’s DOT, from the train derailment in Ohio to the failure to fill the top vacancy at the Federal Aviation Administration.
Here are three things you need to know about Carlson as her nomination progresses.
Previous bombshell reporting from Fox News revealed that Ann Carlson and fellow UCLA academics were an integral part of the climate litigation campaign from the beginning. Dan Emmett, founder of the Emmett Center at UCLA where Carlson was previously employed, worked with Carlson to solicit donations from top donors including Leonardo DiCaprio’s foundation to funnel financial resources to Sher Edling, a for-profit law firm that is leading the charge for the plaintiffs in court.
In the most recent reporting, Fox News recapped Carlson’s role as a fundraiser and “advisor”:
“In 2018, the records showed Carlson emailed Emmett asking if she could mention his and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation’s involvement in the fundraising scheme to other prospective donors.
“Emmett green-lit the idea, adding that she could tell others that ‘Terry’s organization and I are both serious supporters, that you are an advisor, that the science is there, that it could do more for the environment than just about anything going on if it succeeds.’”
Public records show that Carlson and Emmett coordinated with Sher Edling’s former Director of Strategic Client Relationships, Chuck Savitt, to fundraise on behalf of the firm using a secretive vehicle called the “Collective Action Fund for Accountability, Resilience and Adaptation,” a fund managed at the time by Wyss Foundation–backed Resources Legacy Fund and later managed by the progressive dark money behemoth New Venture Fund.
According to Fox News reporting, Savitt emailed Emmett in July 2017 to announce that the firm had “filed the first three lawsuits supported by the Collective Action Fund on Monday.” These first three suits were those filed by the City of Imperial Beach and Marin and San Mateo counties – ground zero for the climate litigation campaign.
In addition to her work fundraising on behalf of Sher Edling – a for-profit law firm – Carlson also offered pro bono consulting services to the firm while employed at UCLA.
EID Climate has previously reported on Carlson’s hands-on role. For years, she served as a consultant for Sher Edling in their lawsuits against energy companies, a fact confirmed by NBC News in 2018. Despite this, she was often quoted on climate litigation in the media as an impartial, academic observer. Carlson’s current consulting status with Sher Edling is unknown.
Despite all of these extracurricular projects – or perhaps, because of them – Carlson had access to a blank-check pool of money at UCLA curiously titled the “Ann Carlson Discretionary Fund,” in addition to her salary. A report by Government Accountability and Oversight describes the unusual latitude UCLA gave Carlson to pursue activities beyond teaching:
“Donors named Dan Emmett and Ralph and Shirley Shapiro gave a combined $1.5 million to a ‘Carlson discretionary fund’ which, according to the Shapiros’ instruction, is ‘to be used at the discretion of Professor Ann Carlson… in her sole discretion as she deems appropriate.’”
Public records provide at least some insight into how Carlson spent money from the Discretionary Fund. Emails show that funds from this account were used to partially cover costs for a 2019 trip to Hawaii where Carlson tried “to encourage Hawaii to consider a nuisance lawsuit.” Additional costs were covered by the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) and the Union of Concerned Scientists, who co-sponsored the event.
During the Hawaii trip, Carlson appeared on a panel discussion on climate litigation alongside Vic Sher of Sher Edling in May 2019, just ten months before the City & County of Honolulu filed its own climate lawsuit.
Where CCI and Ann Carlson appear, climate litigation often follows. Energy in Depth recently covered CCI’s playbook, revealing how the organization embedded itself in New Jersey and provided elected officials with messaging, polling, draft resolutions, and more materials to push for new lawsuit filings.
Up until her appointment to NHTSA, Carlson was also a member of the board of the Environmental Law Institute, a non-profit with a focus on environmental law education. Through its Judicial Education Project, ELI holds supposedly impartial seminars and workshops for judges across the country.
In early 2023, ELI released its Climate Science and Law for Judges Curriculum, which is meant to “educate” judges on climate science and climate-related law. In the acknowledgements, Carlson is described as an advisor who contributed to “content of the whole curriculum,” which includes modules tailor-made for climate litigation, such as “Applying Attribution: Impacts of Climate Attribution Science on Tort Litigation” and “Procedural Techniques Available for Climate Litigation.”
Bottom Line: The nomination of a climate law professor to head NHTSA is curious, but it’s clear that Carlson was nominated precisely because of her climate activism. President Biden’s NHTSA pick has a long resume, but not in transportation safety. From fundraising for climate cases to consulting with the lawyers to recruiting plaintiffs, Ann Carlson is embedded in the campaign to sue American energy companies. These same companies produce the fuel that allows people to keep driving on the highway.
