James Thornton (environmentalist)

Thornton's father was a law professor, and he, James, studied law at Yale.[2]

Before heading for Europe, Thornton worked for Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), for whom he set up the citizens' enforcement project focusing on the Clean Water Act when the Reagan administration dropped its own enforcement.[3] He brought and won sixty cases in the federal courts in six months [4] It was funded by the McIntosh Foundation, which under Mike and Winsome McIntosh became the founding funders of ClientEarth.[5]

Thornton then moved to the NRDC office in San Francisco, from where he founded the LA Office of NRDC. He moved to LA to run it, staying at the Zen Center of Los Angeles.

Thornton founded ClientEarth in 2006. The International Bar Association has called ClientEarth “a public interest law firm, the first in the UK and continental Europe”.[6] Now with offices in London, Brussels, Warsaw, New York and Beijing, and operating globally, it uses advocacy, litigation and research to address the greatest challenges of our time - including biodiversity loss, climate change, and toxic chemicals. Its work is built on solid law and science. ClientEarth’s patrons are Coldplay, and Brian Eno is a trustee. In 2012 ClientEarth won Business Green’s NGO of the Year[7] award. In 2013, it won the Law Society Gazette's Excellence in Environmental Responsibility Award.[8]

In 2011, ClientEarth’s action[9] in the High Court forced the UK government to admit that it was breaching legal limits for air pollution. In 2012 ClientEarth’s amicus curiae[10] (friends of the court) brief in the cases challenging the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate carbon pollution was the first time that European groups have entered a US environmental case this way. Thornton calls the Common Fisheries Policy 'the worst law in the world'[11] and is working with the Fish Fight campaign of TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to make it workable.[12] He also works to enforce the Aarhus Convention,[13] working to give citizens access to courts in order to seek environmental justice.

Thornton appeared on stage with Brian Eno at the Luminous Festival, Sydney Opera House, in 2009 to discuss the environment.[14] He also featured in the BBC2 Arena documentary of Brian Eno.[15] At this time Thornton wrote for The Sydney Morning Herald[16] on why humanity needs a new renaissance.

In 2009 the New Statesman named Thornton as one of ten people who could change the world.[17] He was also called 'a new kind of environmental hero' by BBC Radio 4[18] and Metropolitan magazine called him 'La force tranquille'.[19] In 2013 The Lawyer identified him as one of the Top 100 lawyers practising in the UK.[20] The Financial Times awarded him its Special Achievement Award at the 2016 Innovative Lawyer Awards.

Thornton is a member of the bars of New York, California, and the Supreme Court of the United States, and a Solicitor of England and Wales.[21] He is a Conservation Fellow of the Zoological Society of London[22] and a fellow of Ashoka,[23] the network of leaders in social innovations. His latest book, Client Earth is described by Nature as "a tantalizing glimpse of how a variety of strategies can converge to create a global environmental enforcement effort."