Seeking Undergraduate RAs for Government Website Archiving Project–Climate Change & Animal Agriculture Litigation Initiative

The Climate Change & Animal Agriculture Litigation Initiative (CCAALI) is a project within the Climate, Animal, Food, and Environment Law & Policy Lab (CAFE Lab) of the Law, Environment & Animals Program (LEAP) at Yale Law School. CCAALI, which launched in 2021, works at the intersection of climate change and the food system, evaluating the likelihood and impact of litigation in U.S. courts relating to animal agriculture's climate impacts. CCAALI is focused on exploring the potential for litigation to help address the climate harms of animal agriculture.

Position Overview:

CCAALI seeks motivated and detail-oriented Research Assistants to join a critical project aimed at preserving publicly accessible data from government websites. Considering past instances where vital information related to climate science, public health, and animal welfare was removed from federal websites, this initiative is dedicated to archiving essential resources before they are lost or altered.

The RA’s work will be overseen by Laura Fox, CCAALI Litigation Fellow, Caroline Zhang, CCAALI Litigation Fellow, and Daina Bray, LEAP Legal Director. This position is paid at the undergraduate RA hourly rate of $16.25. The expected time commitment is 6 to 8 hours per week. The position would begin immediately.

Be part of a team committed to safeguarding vital information and ensuring it remains accessible!

Key Responsibilities:

•        Develop and deploy scripts to scrape and archive data from federal government websites using Python or available web scraping software.
•        Implement spidering techniques to recursively navigate website structures and capture comprehensive datasets.
•        Utilize web scraping software and cloud platforms (e.g., Google Colab) for scalable data collection and analysis.
•        Use progress monitoring to assess data size, storage capacity, and time needed to collect.
•        Document processes to ensure transparency and reproducibility of the archiving efforts.

How to apply: 

To apply, please email your resume or CV and a brief message explaining your interest, relevant experience, and when and how long you are available to contribute to Laura Fox at lauraj.fox@yale.edu. The priority deadline is December 6, 2024. Applications received after the priority deadline will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

Background on CCAALI: 

Even if emissions from electricity production and transportation ended immediately, global emissions related to food production alone could preclude limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or less above pre-industrial levels, a goal of the Paris Climate Agreement. The vast majority of U.S. agriculture emissions are related to the production of livestock animals and their feed. The livestock industry’s emissions are particularly concerning because livestock and their manure are the United States’ top source of methane, a climate super-pollutant.

Yet, agribusinesses have received little legal or political scrutiny for their climate pollution, and the industry’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions remain effectively unregulated in the United States. Given the urgency of the climate crisis and the current lack of political will to address GHG pollution from the livestock industry, climate advocates may turn to litigation as a potential leverage point for holding livestock corporations responsible for their greenhouse gas emissions. CCAALI seeks to understand the nature, likelihood, and potential impacts of such strategies.

The CCAALI team includes LEAP Legal Director Daina Bray, LEAP Faculty Director Doug Kysar, LEAP Executive Director Viveca Morris, Litigation Fellow Laura Fox, Litigation Fellow Caroline Zhang, and LEAP Postgraduate Fellow Laurie Sellars.