The man who was helping a tiny Eskimo village in Alaska sue energy giants like Chevron for allegedly destroying their land is gone. Luke Cole, a pioneer in environmental justice law, died June 6 in a car crash in Uganda. He was 46.
Cole, '84, had impeccable academic credentials and could have worked anywhere, blogged Elizabeth Martin, CEO of The Sierra Fund, but used his life to help underprivileged communities fight corporate polluters. At Stanford, he studied political science, worked for the Daily and was a member of Delta Upsilon fraternity. After graduating cum laude from Harvard Law, Cole aimed to combine his passions for law, the environment and social justice.
"He was told by poverty law firms that they don't do environmental law, and the big environmental groups said they don't do law for poor people," Brent Newell, legal director of the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment (CRPE), told the San Francisco Chronicle. Cole then met poverty lawyer Ralph Abascal, who helped him found the CRPE in San Francisco in 1989. The organization has fought against garbage dumps, mega dairies and other entities they believe pose hazards disproportionately to poorer districts.
Cole was a member of the E.P.A.'s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council and taught seminars at Stanford Law School and UC-Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law.
Survivors: his wife, Nancy Shelby; his son, Zane Shelby; his parents and stepmother; two brothers; a sister; and a stepbrother.
