Jim Blackburn

Jim Blackburn is the Founder and former CEO of BCarbon. He currently serves at the Chairman of BCarbon’s Board of Directors. He is a professor in the practice of environmental law in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Rice University as well as a Rice faculty scholar at the Baker Institute. At Rice, he serves as the co-director of the Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disaster (SSPEED) Center and as director of the undergraduate minor in energy and water sustainability.

Blackburn has had two books published by Texas A&M Press – The Book of Texas Bays (2004) and A Texan Plan for the Texas Coast (2017). He also co-authored three books of art and poetry with artist Isabelle Scurry Chapman – Birds: A Book of Verse and Vision, (2009), Hill Country Birds and Waters: Art and Poems (2018), and Earth Church (2022).

He was recognized as a Distinguished Alumni Laureate of Rice University in 2018, and he has been voted by his peers as a Texas Monthly Texas Superlawyer for the last 16 years. Blackburn received the Armand Yramategui Conservation Award from the Armand Bayou Nature Center in 2018, the Good Egg Award from the International Crane Foundation in 2015 for litigation to protect the whooping crane, the Barbara Jordan Public Advocacy Award from Texas Southern University in 2007 and the Robert Eckhardt Lifetime Coastal Achievement Award from the Texas General Land Office in 1998.

Mr. Blackburn received a B.A. in history and a J.D. from The University of Texas at Austin, and an M.S. in environmental science from Rice University.