Harmed by Climate Change . Our dark tonight dartistinguished group are and extinguished group. Please welcome our wonderful panel and welcome them for us. [applause] we will ask bill to begin. We just saw, for those of you that have not heard, and amazing judicial feet today where the is in a 30t opinion, cap the temporary restraining order nationwide in place over the travel ban. [applause] it is wonderful news, and it is an excellent example but how are our courts, who serve as the third branch of government, branches,other two the congress and the executive, when they overstepped their bounds. Actions,nt just stop but they can cause actions. Courts can cause the executive branch to take steps, and that is the basis of our suit. That, im going to turn it over to julia olson, who is the colead counsel on our case. Thinks everyone to being here tonight and thanks for the club organizing the event for the young people involved in this case. The lawsuit you are about to see forere is about a case everybody. It is case for all the children in your life that you love. I want to tell you about a story about one child who is a plaintiff in the case. She is 13 years old, and her name is jaden. For those of you in the audience, you can see the picture of her on the screen. On august 15, at 5 a. M. In the morning, she stepped out of her injured her ankles in her home. Words, she stepped out of bed and stepped right into Climate Change. The waters are flowing in, coming up through her home, pouringp to her room, in. There is sewage water flowing out of the top and sinks in her home. She is a home with her siblings, her mom was in a neighboring Community Helping neighbors struggling with putting the day before. Took her 13 hours to go several miles to get home to her children. She was tied even water and her car was flooded. That family survived the flood. 13 in the 13 people in the region died. Our federal government said this is a 1000 year storm event. The problem is these arent coming every 1000 years anymore. Theyre coming with increased occurrence and severity. Directly attributable to Climate Change. We elevated the voice of young people and gave them a platform to secure their rights to a healthy atmosphere and a stable climate system. Screen, 20, on the one of these plaintiffs who were involved in the giuliana versus United States case that we will talk about and more depth tonight, and so we lift of these voices and give ways to take of action against governments about things that will stabilize the climate system. For them and for future generations. We connect them with lawyers like phil gregory who dont notes donates all his time pro bono to the cause. He has been doing that for six years. [applause] he truly is a hero. He has been in it from the beginning. There are many lawyers like him around the country and around the world that are doing the same thing on behalf of youth everywhere. The laws we turn to in this effort are foundational laws. They are laws that explain why we have government in the first place and what our basic human rights are. One of those is the published public trust doctrine. This goes back to ancient roman times. , bedrock ofseline Legal Systems around the world. It is simple. It says that governments, as a trustee, and it holds the vital resources that we depend upon and share in common, in trust for the benefit of future generations. The citizens, all of you out there and the youth we represent, are the beneficiaries of that trust. As our future generations. Those resources need to be protected so they can be there for everyone and not just for the exploitation by the fossil fuel industry. Aboutr thing that is core what our Childrens Trust does, we are not willing to compromise the stability of our climate. Ystem we look to scientists and experts around the globe who are doing the most incredible research to identify what needs to happen to protect the climate system for our great, great, great grandchildren. Ms. Olsen what they say is a two degree celsius rise from pete preindustrial levels, is actually catastrophic. Humans have never lived in that kind of world. We will see catastrophic sealevel rise, storms beyond belief, and global chaos and disruption. And we can do it, we need to return to a Carbon Dioxide level of 300 and 50 ppm 350 ppm. Also less than a warming difference of one degree celsius. I hope you are seeing the right slide there. I have an image reflecting this. As i turn it over to fill to talk a little bit more, about this movement and campaign, this is strategic litigation that is coordinated and we do a lot of media work to use the platform to speak. We look to other social Justice Movements to inform the work we are doing and he will talk about some of those. Mr. Gregory im going to use three expressions. One is unprecedented, another, a is, thisory, the third is no ordinary lawsuit. You think these would be coming from press clippings but, in fact, they are from the opinions judges have written about our case. We are really not a new theory. This has been going on for decades. When we first started formulating these cases, we focused on the civil rights cases. Youth that is the were put front and center. Not only through high school, and segregation rallies, but the naacp put kids on trial as well as the science showing the harm that separate but equal was causing to the kids in the south. An excellent book on this is richard klugers book, simple justice. Its on the history of brown versus board of education and how they got to the decision. Essentially what the naacp was doing was putting civil rights , asrial by having the youth well as scientists from around the nation testify against the harms that were occurring. Decision,d the brown it really talks about the science that was put before the courts. Book that i want to commit to you is called unlikely heroes. Its by a guy named jack bass. Its about the judges in the fifth circuit in the south who had to implement these decisions. Judges who courageously took on the entire ingrained segregated world. There werethat judges in the south that could do that, but are there judges nowadays that are prepared to take on the fossil feel industry . The other cases we looked at were tobacco cases. We all know that the Tobacco Industry was very big and doubt is their product. That is a book by david michaels. The whole theme for the Tobacco Industry is sewing uncertainty. Based on the documents we have gathered and received from independent sources, the same Public Relations folks, the same lobbying outfits, that we are dealing with, tobacco, were in parallel dealing with the oil companies. The other cases we have been , are thet, to track cases involving wall street. My partner joe, just wrote a book called people versus greed. That is what is really going on out there. We are trying to address problems that wall street once to continue to exist. How do we do that . How do we go after these groups of people. Had a majorlifornia line of cases involving its prison system. The prisoners went after the prison system and said what we are in during, the conditions, overcrowding, poor medical treatments, those violate the eighth amendment, cruel and unusual punishment clause. So they went after the california prison system. Those of you who dont know about this line of cases, it is fascinating because the prison system was found to be so overcrowded that the target, the courts set for the prison system youll bee, that said ok if you hit a target. Is a hundred and 35 occupancy is 135 occupancy. The court said we are going to start releasing prisoners until you get to that target. That is very important for our case. The Court Setting a target and bodyring the governmental to reach the target, come up with a plan, and if the governmental body cant come up cases,e, in these prison they said we will have the prisoners set up a plan to come up with the target. Low and behold, the prison system came up with that target. Weally, i want to say that focused in on who is going to be the most harmed by whats the government has known historically about what is going on with Climate Change. Obviously, the people that are going to be most harmed our youth and future generations. That is how we came to determine that kids might be an Excellent Group to bring this case. Why dont you talk about why you became a plaintiff here. Of the 21 youth bring the suit against the federal government. It was the spring of my senior year so, 2015. Oregon, my hometown. With the use of High Schoolers trying to bring, basically we were trying to get us to go to City Council Meetings to get the Climate Action plan to cut carbon emissions. Was because eugene had just passed a similar plan and, how they did that, youve had consistently gone to City Council Meetings that their rights were being infringed upon and that eugene needed to be responsible on cutting carbon emissions. A group of us are trying to do that as well. It is through that that i got connected with Kelsey Giuliana she contacted me asking if i wanted to be a part of meaningful Climate Change. She meant by suing the federal government. [laughter] i was intrigued of course. [laughter] my parents were as well. It was intriguing to me because ive always been interested in environmental law and the fear he of it. I was deeply concerned about the place that i loved. It was more than just the fact that the past winter i had seen beingorite ski trails closed down because of lack of i saw theas that people that i love being threatened. Water is essential to life. It begins with the small things and then grows. Once you realize the impacts of Climate Change, you realize how extensive it is and how it is affecting everyone. It is a nobrainer to jump on Something Like that. I can honestly say that i didnt realize exactly what it was going to be like and im so excited that it is growing to be this big. I dont think i knew it was going to be this big. [laughter] each of us, each of the plaintiffs, we all have a background in Environmental Activism and we all have our own injuries listed in the complaint against the federal government. As you can see, julia talked one. There are 20 plaintiffs and two roseburg, have farms there being threatened. The list goes on. We each have our own stories. Julie gets in court and tells the very eloquently. She is against the federal government, which is really what our case is alleging against the federal government. She is going to explain why we brought it against the federal government and not just the fossil fuel industries. That is important to distinguish. [applause] ms. Olsen one thing that youll see is that storytelling is important and bringing out the Human Element of how Climate Change is affecting people. We will share a few more of these stories as we go along tonight. I want to talk to about the claims in the complaint. We filed in august of 2015, against the United States, president s, all the major departments and agencies that are responsible for our also feelbased energy system, and also responsible for not controlling the pollution coming out of that system. I will try to make it as simple as possible. This is a constitutional case under the fifth amendment. It protects our rights to life, liberty, and property. Is theth amendment substance of due process of our constitution. What it means is that government that infringe on our rights to life, liberties, and properties. In this case, the personal security of these young people, and for manyves, of them who live in coastal region, their property is being threatened by the actions of the federal government. I will go into that a little more. Aboutrt of the claim is when the government knows that it is putting citizens in danger , it creates a duty on government to act to prevent or, if the danger exists, to do something about it. They cant act with indifference to the harms that they have created. A really important part of the case is looking back, for just how long the United States has known that if we kept burning fossil fuels we would call cause catastrophic Climate Change. When we started doing research, we were shocked to find that the knowledge goes back to the 40s and 50s. Perhaps even earlier to the early part of the 1900s. 1965, when moment in lyndon b. Johnson issued a report out of the white house, and there was an entire chapter Carbon Dioxide and carbon Climate Change. They predicted with unbelievable accuracy what was going to happen if we kept digging up and burning fossil fuels. They knew it would cause climate destabilization, and they knew the impacts would be catastrophic. 1969,s a letter from white house letter, and you can see on the screen that the letter refers to the potential for apocalyptic change. In terms of talking about Sea Level Rise, they wrote this could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. If i new york, goodbye washington for that matter. This is 1965 knowledge. Ining the Nixon White House 1970, another report came out the said in the longterm, quality of the atmosphere may determine whether a man survives or parishes. I want everyone who is listening to this to really understand how deep and long lasting the knowledge has been about the climate dangers posed to our country and the very survival of future generations. The question then, and im showing another chart for those listening in, it shows going back to going going back to times inh the various showedent where they impacts. This was repeated every decade, every administration, we need to act on Climate Change. We need to transition off of fossil fuels. Instead, we permitted more development, production, leasing of our public lands for oil and gas extraction, and we kept our fossil fuel Waste Energy System in place. No citizentem could do anything about it. This is a government embedded system that we depend upon. Just for little comic relief, there have been a lot of international processes that you know about with climate talks and going back 22 years. The United States initiated them to defer taking action on Climate Change. Whole unit i did nations the whole United Nations avoided setting limits on climate pollution and to keep talking, and talking, and stalking. Settled,on says, its we will continue to have discussions to determine when we when this can be resolved. This boys home will be if we dont stop a we are doing. I bring him up because one part of the discrimination one part of the case is under discrimination and the right to protection under the law. The case that had a decision that says everyone has the right to marry, that case was about protecting a group of people who are being discriminated against with respect to an exercise of a fundamental right. These children are being discriminated against with their ability to not have their personal security threatened. I just want to show you two more quick slides, and for those showsing, this slide under president obamas Clean Power Plan, which was, in his words, the single most important thing the United States government has ever done on Climate Change, would eventually flatlined our emissions, and climate pollution all the way to 2040. A slight dip when we lose some. Oalfired plants this is one of the biggest frauds perpetrated on the American Public to lead them that the Clean Power Plan was going to solve Climate Change. It was never intended to do so. Shows how, this graph steep our emission cuts need to be. Thats to get back to safe levels of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. It is the blue dotted line that said that wea should start, if we started, but now the decline is significant and it is what we aim to achieve in this case. Phil is going to tell you a little bit about the defendants and the defenses they raise. , you ares an clark listening to the Commonwealth Club of california. Our program tonight is the constitution, climate, and children. Is there a right not to be harmed by Climate Change. Gregory, and public trust case. And julia olson, executive director of our Childrens Trust. Phil, back to you. Mr. Gregory thanks, and. Anne. I get to wear the black cat here. [laughter] we only sued the federal government, so the first step in the case was the key trade associations for the fossil fuel industry. Bunch, and the National Association of manufacturers, a moved to intervene in our case. Why did they do that . Case goes if this forward and these kids when, our business could be dramatically cut back and very well could be eliminated. In these tradet associations as defendants. , whate had to face everybody faces in litigation, it is a motion to dismiss. They said your claims are all huey. Call it standing, under article three of our constitution, that they have a viable case or controversy. Standing has three elements. The first element is that there has been an injury in fact and the defendants argued, climate widespreado bad, so that to these grievances are general for everybody. Sue fore law, yo