{"pk":65667,"title":"Weaponized Uncertainty: Addressing Antitrust Law’s Climate Cooperation Problem  ","subtitle":null,"abstract":"<p>As federal and international approaches to climate change falter, private sustainability agreements have emerged as a promising alternative for large-scale environmental coordination. However, the absence of a formal legal framework governing such agreements creates a dangerous ambiguity: discouraging climate cooperation through the chilling effect of antitrust enforcement while enabling anticompetitive actors to exploit environmental rhetoric as legal cover. This article examines the tension between Environmental Sustainability Goals and American antitrust law, arguing that the current legal landscape fails both purported goals. This article demonstrates that the absence of clear statutory guidance has allowed investigatory power to function as de facto enforcement, dismantling voluntary climate coalitions without adverse merit rulings. This article recommends creating a narrowly tailored federal safe-harbor statute modeled on the National Cooperative Research and Production Act and informed by the European Union's 2023 Revised Horizontal Cooperation Guideline. Sustainability agreements would receive conditional antitrust protection in exchange for disclosure to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, public transparency, nondiscriminatory participation, and periodic agency review. </p>","language":"eng","license":{"name":"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0","short_name":"CC BY 4.0","text":"Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\r\n\r\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"climate change"},{"word":"antitrust law"},{"word":"sustainability"},{"word":"sustainability agreement"},{"word":"environmental law"},{"word":"environmental regulation"},{"word":"environmental protection"},{"word":"private governance"},{"word":"private environmental regulation"},{"word":"climate cooperation"},{"word":"Chilling effect"},{"word":"Weaponized uncertainty"},{"word":"Private climate governance"},{"word":"safe harbor"},{"word":"Social Cost of Carbon"},{"word":"Consumer Welfare Standard"},{"word":"esg investing"},{"word":"climate cartels"}],"section":"Article","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8s6173xs","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Harrison","middle_name":"","last_name":"Burkholder","name_suffix":"","institution":"","department":""}],"date_submitted":"2026-05-12T03:17:51.278957Z","date_accepted":"2026-05-13T01:58:10.994808Z","date_published":"2026-05-13T15:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/ucsdulr/article/65667/galley/50322/download/"}]}