Who will protect our planet from the corporations, governments, and individuals who pollute, destroy, and devastate our natural world?

Step forward a fresh new breed of passionately purposeful environmental lawyers, whose client is the Earth itself. At the head of this legal army stands James Thornton, who takes governments to court, and wins.

In Client Earth, we travel from Poland to Ghana, from Alaska to China, to see how citizens can use public interest law to protect our planet — and our future.

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‘[A] great book about how to save the planet using the long arm of the law.’

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‘A hopeful book about the environment and a page-turner about the law.’

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‘Client Earth provides a tantalizing glimpse of how a variety of strategies can converge to create a global environmental enforcement effort.’

"‘Really inspirational.'" - Anthony Giddens

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‘For an inspiring account of how social entrepreneurialism and ingenuity can make great strides in holding governments to account, this volume is well worth reading.’

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‘An inspiring read. It shows how the law is not just within the gift of the authorities to wield. Engaged citizens can do it too.’

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‘The book is inspirational in a hard headed, let's go to work-and-get-real-results sort of way … There's a global vision. It's quietly amazing. One of the more significant books of the year.’

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‘When Ronald Reagan appointed Anne Gorsuch (mother of the newest Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch) to head the EPA, he asked if she was willing to ‘bring it to its knees’. She slashed its budget and, as the New York Times put it, ‘sabotaged the agency’s enforcement effort’. In response, James Thornton, a crusading lawyer, brought private actions to hold polluters to account. In 1982, while the EPA brought 14 cases against industries under the Clean Water Act, Thornton brought sixty.’

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‘Anyone with an interest in environmental activism and environmental law will take pleasure in this vigorous account of justice in the making.’