Matthew Eisenson

Matthew Eisenson, a Senior Fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, lives in Brooklyn and has been in the climate space for 15 years. His journey into this field was inspired by his love for birding, which has taken him to the cloud forests of South America and the plains of East Africa. Next on his birding bucket list is the Pantanal in Brazil. Eisenson began his professional career at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), where he worked from 2009 to 2012. In 2018, he joined the Environmental Protection Bureau of the New York Attorney General's office, and in 2022, he became a part of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. 

Matthew Eisenson 

He/him

Senior Fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law 

Brooklyn 

Q&A 

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What originally drew you to the climate sphere? 

As a child, I was always interested in wildlife, but I became a pretty serious birder when I was 13 years old. We had a seventh grade science project where the assignment was to build a bird feeder and keep a journal of the birds that visited. So for me, it was always just sort of a love of nature.

What I love about birding is anytime you go somewhere new, or even if you go somewhere you've been before but a different time of year, you'll see new birds. I've been doing it for 24 years now, and I've seen over 1700 species. I can look at my bird list and remember entire days and entire weeks based on what's on the list. 

Have you been birding with your children? 

I have a six year old son and a four year old daughter, and we'll go out together. But I think they're both still a little bit too young to hold binoculars, and I really don't want them to grow up having memories of me forcing them to go birding with me. So I’m sort of not going to be heavy handed about it.

What scares you most about the climate crisis?

I think what scares me most is how quickly things can deteriorate – how you've had single seasons where you've lost significant percentages of the Great Barrier Reef; you go to Yosemite and you see dead pines everywhere. I knew climate change was going to be bad, but I had thought it would happen more slowly than it seems to be happening.

What do you do at the Sabin Center? 

I lead a program called the renewable energy legal defense initiative (RELDI) that's focused on overcoming legal obstacles to getting wind and solar facilities and transmission projects approved. It's essentially a YIMBY project – a yes in my backyard project – where the goal is to give voice to local supporters, so that the decision makers, whether it's a state siting board or a town board, they aren't just hearing from the developer on one side and the local opponents on the other side. 

In our work, in supporting offshore wind projects, we've typically worked with local resident groups who are motivated by concerns about climate change. These are groups like Win with Wind in East Hampton, and Climate Action Rhode Island. In other parts of the country, the people that we work with are farmers and local residents and neighbors of projects, and often they have very different interests.

What do you love about the job?

What I love about the job is that we have a positive mission. I think a lot of environmental public interest work has historically been focused on stopping things from happening, whether it's shutting down a coal plant or stopping the construction of an LNG terminal. Our project is unique in that we're trying to allow projects that are necessary for fighting climate change to be built. 

What's the most challenging part of your job? 

I think what's challenging is that opponents of projects are often more motivated than supporters. If you think about who shows up at a public hearing to talk about a proposed project, the people who show up are typically the people who want to stop it. We found that for a lot of these projects, especially the ones that are approved at a local level, a show of support is really essential to getting approval. It's a challenge to motivate people to show up. 

Do you have suggestions for how to motivate people to show up?

A lot of people don't realize that showing up has a big impact. So we need to do a better job of explaining to local supporters of a project that submitting a comment letter on the public docket is helpful. Showing up at the public hearing and speaking for five minutes is very helpful. Sometimes I show supporters examples of siting board opinions that provide a tally of supporters and opponents. The opinion will say “there was a local public hearing on April 4, and you know, 50 people showed up in favor and 90 people showed up against.” And this stuff matters. 

Do you think being in New York offers any specific resources or challenges?

New York is sort of a center of gravity of the legal field. There are so many lawyers here, you know, and so much legal talent. And I think being housed at the Sabin Center, with other lawyers working on related issues, is a great benefit for RELDI. 

Do you have any advice for people who are looking to break into the field or take a first step? 

A lot has changed in terms of opportunities in the climate space in the last 10 or 15 years, and it's been driven largely by the fact that we were so much farther along in the energy transition. When I was in law school, it seemed like if you wanted to do something to help protect the environment, you needed to be a litigator. But now there are so many companies that are doing important work in the private sector for the energy transition. This creates really great opportunities for transactional lawyers too. Most of the in-house positions at companies are more on the transactional side and less on the litigation side. Some of the big law firms also have dedicated renewable energy practices which really didn't exist when I graduated. 

Who are your mentors or inspirations in the climate field?

I've been lucky to have amazing mentors in the climate field. My first boss out of college was Peter Lehner, who was serving at the time as the Executive Director of NRDC. We have stayed in touch for 15 years, and I see him or speak to him at least once a month. He has been extremely helpful to me at many different points in my career. Another mentor is Lem Srolovic,  Bureau Chief of the Environmental Protection Bureau at the New York Attorney General's Office. Peter and Lem are both incredibly creative and energetic lawyers. They seek out challenges. They are also more deeply and genuinely interested in the subject matter of environmental law, as well as the craft of lawyering, than anyone else I know–and they are also very generous with their time. At the AG’s office, a 15-minute meeting with Lem would sometimes turn into a 2-hour meeting, because Lem was so interested in the subject matter and would keep coming up with new ideas and insights about the case or investigation we were talking about. It was an amazing experience for me as a mid-level lawyer to be part of those conversations.