On the case. From the Commonwealth Club of california, this is an hour. Our program tonight is our constitution, our climate and our children. Is there a right not to be harmed by Climate Change . And our speakers tonight are a distinguished group with phil gregory, partner, cojet petrie and macarthur llp, tia hatten, youth plaintiff in constitution and public trust case and julia olsen, executive director, our Childrens Trust. So please welcome our wonderful panel and greet them for us. [ applause ] and well ask phil to begin. Well, we just saw for those of you who havent heard, an amazing judicial feat today where the ninth circuit in a 30 opinion kept the temporary restraining order nationwide in place over the travel ban and that is [ cheers and applause ] its wonderful news and an excellent example about how our courts who serve as the third branch of government check the other two branches, the congress and the executive when they overstep their bounds, but courts dont just stop actions. Courts can cause actions. Courts can cause the executive branch to take steps and thats the basis of our suit and with that, im going to turn it over to julia olsen, executive director of our Childrens Trust and colead counsel on our case. Thanks, phil. Thanks, everyone, for being here tonight. Thanks to ann and the Commonwealth Club for organizing the event. Its great to see such support here for the young people involved in this case. So the last thing youre about to hear about for the next hour or so is really a case for everybody, and its a case for all the children in your lives who you love, and so i want to start by telling you the story of one child who is a plaintiff in the case. Shes 13 years old. Her name jaden and she lives in louisiana. For those of you in the audience you can see a picture of her on the screen. On august 15th at 5 00 a. M. , she stepped out of her bed and stepped into water that was up to her ankles in her home. This was during the storms you might remember last august in the south, and in her words, she stepped out of bed and stepped right into Climate Change. So the waters are flowing in. Theyre coming up from the floors of her home, theyre coming through the roof, pouringing in and theres also sewage water flowing out of the tubs and the sinks and the toilets in her home. So shes at home with her siblings. Her mom was in a neighboring community trying to help friends struggling with flooding from the day before and it took her several miles to get home to her children, she was five deep in water and her car was flooded. Jadens family survived the flood. 13 people in the region died and our federal government said that this is a 1,000year storm event, but the problem is these 1,000year storm events arent coming every 1,000 years anymore and theyre coming with frequency and severity and the government says that its directly attributable to Climate Change. So thats a story of one of the youth and the reason that we founded our Childrens Trust in 2010. We did so to elevate the voice of young people and to give them a platform to secure their rights to a healthy atmosphere and a stable climate system and you can see on the screen, 21 of these plaintiffs who are involved in the juliana versus United States case that well talk about in depth tonight. We lift up these voices and give them a way to bring action against government that will stabilize the climate system for them and also for future generations on whose behalf they stand sop owe we connect them with lawyers like phil gregory who donates all of his time probono to the cause. Hes been doing that for six years. [ applause ] and he truly is a hero. Hes been in it from the beginning and there are many lawyers like him around the country and around the world who are doing the same thing on behalf of youth everywhere in the state cases and other global actions that we support. So the lawses that we really turn to in this effort are foundational laws. Theyre laws that explain why we have government in the first place and what our basic human rights are and one of them is the Public Trust Doctrine and this goes back to ancient roman times and the justinian code is the baseline and the bedro of Legal Systems around the world and its simple. It says that government, as a sovereign trustee, and it holds those vital resources that we all depend upon and share in common like air and water entrust to future generations and you, and the youth we represent are the beneficiaries of that trust as the future generations and those resources need to be protected so they could be for everyones benefit and use and not just for the exploitation by the fossil fuel industry. Another thing thats core about what our Childrens Trust does is we are not willing to compromise the stashlity of the climate system and the longevity for the resources we need for survival so we look to scientists and experts from around the globe who are doing the most incredible research to really identify what needs to happen to protect the climate system for our great, great, great grandchildren and a 2degree celsius rise in temperatures which is what the Global Community has been focused on is actually catastrophic. Humans have never lived in that kind of world and well see catastrophic Sea Level Rise. Well see storms beyond belief. Well see immense drought, global chaos and disruption. So what we really need to do and we can do it is we need to return to an atmosphere Carbon Dioxide level of 350 parts per million and we need to stabilize temperatures that at less than a longterm warming of 1 degree celsius. So all of our actions on behalf of youth are uncompromising and based on the best science. I hope youre seeing the right slide there. I have an image of what this reflects and the other thing, just before i turn it over to phil to talk a little bit more about this movement and this campaign. This really is strategic litigation thats coordinateded and it is based on the campaign. So we do a lot of media work and we give the youth a platform to speak and look to other social justice movements, and ill let phil talk about those. Im going to use three expressions. One is unprecedented, another, a novel theory, third, this is no ordinary lawsuit. You think they would be coming from press clippings, but theyre from the. S. Judges have written about our case, but were 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 and we said its the youth that 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 if you havent read it is richard klugers book simple justice its on the history of brown versus board of education and how they got to the decision, but essentially what the naacp was doing was putting civil rights on trial by having the youth as well as scientists from around the nation testify about the harms that were occurring. So if you read the brown decision it really talks about the science that was put before the courts. Another thing book that i want to commend to you that i handed out my last copy is called unlikely heros and by a guy called jack bass and what it is is about the judges in the 5th circuit in the south who had to implement these decisions, judges who courageously took on the entire ingrained, segregated world. We thought if there were judges in the south that could do that are there judges nowadays who are prepared to take on the fossil fuel industry . The other cases that we looked at were the tobacco cases and we all know that the Tobacco Industry was very big. Doubt is their product and thats a book by david michaels, but the whole theme for the Tobacco Industry is sowing uncertainty and based on the documents that weve gathered and weve received from independent sources, the same Public Relations folks, the same lobbying outfits that were dealing with tobacco were in parallel, dealing with the Oil Companies and so the other cases weve been looking at to track are the cases involving wall street. My partner joe kochet wrote a book people versus greed and thats whats really going on out there. We are trying to address problems that wall street wants to continue to exist. So how do we do that . How do we go after these groups of people . Recently, california had a major line of cases involving its prison system, and the prisoners went after the prison system and said what were enduring, the conditions were enduring, overcrowding, poor medical treatment and those violate the eighth amendment cruel and unusual punishment clause, and so they went after the california prison system and those of you who dont know about these this line of cases, its fascinating because the prison system was found to be so overcrowded that the target the court set for the prison system to achieve that said okay, youll be okay if you hit a target is 135 occupancy so they had to bring it down and the court said were going to start releasing prisoners until you get to that target, and thats a very important for our case when we talk about later. The Court Setting a target and requiring the governmental body to reach that target and come up with a pan and if the governmental body cant come up with the plan and these prison cases, they said well have the plaintiffs and well have the prisoners set up a plan to come up with the target and lo and behold the prison system came up with that target and finally, i just want to say, the last thing we focused in on is who is going to be the most harmed by what the government has known historically about whats going on with Climate Change . And obviously, the people who are going to be most harmed are youth and future generations, and thats how we came to determine that kids might be an Excellent Group to bring this case. Tia, why dont you talk about how you became a plaintiff here . Yeah. Im one of the 21 youth bringing the suit against the federal government and it was the spring of my senior year it was 2015 before we filed the lawsuit and i was in oregon, my hometown and we were with the youth of High Schoolers trying to bring a basically, we were trying to get us to go to City Council Meetings to get a Climate Action plan to cut carbon emissions. And this was because eugene had just passed a similar plan and how they did that wases that youth had consistently gone to City Council Meetings telling them that their rights were being infringed upon and that eugene needed to be responsible to cut carbon emissions. So a group of us youth in bend were trying to do that also, and it was through that that i got connected with Kelsey Juliana which had previously been on the oregon state case and she contacted me asking if i wanted to be a part of meaningful Climate Change and by meaningful she meant was suing the federal government. I was intrigued, of course. My parents were, as well, and it was intriguing to me because ive always been interested in environmental law. I was interested in the theory of it, and i was deeply concerned about the place that i loved and it was more than just the fact that that past winter i had seen my favorite ski trails be closed down because of lack of snow. It was that the places that i loved and the people that i loved were being threatened because water is essential to life and it begins as these small things and then is grows and it grows and once you realize the impacts of Climate Change you realize how extensive it is and that its affecting everyone. So its kind of a no brainer to jump on Something Like that. I can honestly say i didnt realize exactly what it was going to be like, and i am so exciteded that its grown to be this big. I dont think i knew at all that it was going to be this big, and each of us, each of the plaintiffs we all have a background in Environmental Activism and we all have our own injuries listed in our complaint against the federal government is our own personal injuries. Theres, as you can see, as julia talked about is jadens impact is just one. There are 20 plaintiffs and two of my good friends in roseberg have farms in roseberg that are being threatened and the list really goes on and we each have our own stories and julia gets in court and tells them very eloquently, and she is against the federal government which is really what our case is alleging is against the federal government and shell explain why we brought it against the federal government and not just the fossil fuel companies which is important to distinguish. [ applause ] thanks, tia. So one theme i think youll see as we talk tonight is story telling is really important and bringing out the Human Element of how Climate Change is impacting people so well share a few more of these stories as we go along tonight, but i want to talk to you about the claims in the complaint. We filed in august 2015. We filed against the United States, the president , all of the major departments and agencies that are responsible for our fossil fuelbased Energy System and also responsible for not controlling the pollution thats coming out of that system, and ill just walk through the claims and try to make it as simple and understandable as possible. So this is a constitutional case which protects our rights to life, liberty and property and the fifth amendment is the substantive due process part of our constitution, and what it means is that government cant do things that infringe on our rights to life, liberties and property, and so in this case, the personal security of these young people, their very lives in the future and for many of them who live in coastal region, their property is being threatened by the actions of the federal government and ill go into that a little bit more, but one part of the claim is about when the government knows that its putting citizens in danger, it creates a duty on government to then act to either prevent that danger or if the danger exists to then do something about it and they cant act with indifference to the harms that theyve created and so a really important part of our case is looking back at for just how long the United States has known that if we kept burning fossil fuels we would cause catastrophic Climate Change and when we first started research we were shocked to find out that the knowledge goes back to the 40s and 50s and perhaps even earlier, to the early part of the 1900s, but there was a moment in 1965 when lyndon b. Johnson issued a report out of the white house and there was an entire chapter on atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Climate Change and they predicted with unbelievable accuracy what was going to happen if we kept digging up and burning fossil fuels. They knew it would cause ocean acidification, and climate destabilization and they knew the impacts would be catastrophic. This is a letter from 1969, a white house letter, and you can see them on the screen that the letter refers to the potential for apocalyptic change and in terms of talking about Sea Level Rise they write, this, in turn, can raise the level of the sea by ten feet. Goodbye, new york, goodbye, washington, for that matter. This is 1965 knowledge. Then during the Nixon White House in 1970, another report came out that said that in the longer term the quality of the atmosphere may well determine whether a man survives or perishes. So i want everyone to 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 to the very survival of future generations. So then the question and im showing another chart for those listening in right now that just shows going back to 1955 all of the way through the present, the various key moments in time when our government issued reports and made critical findings, by the top scientists around the world and by the highest levels of our government to the presidency about the need to act on Climate Change, and this is repeated, every decade, every administration we need to act on Climate Change. We need to transition off of fossil fuels, but instead what we did was we permitted more development, more production, more leasing of our public lands for oil and gas extraction and Coal Production and we kept a fossil fuel based Energy System in place so that no citizen could do anything about this because this truly is a government embedded system that we all depend upon. So just for a little comic relief there have been international processes that you all probably know about with climate talks going back 22 years. The United States initiated the climate talks as a way to defer on Climate Change so the Framework Convention was orchestrated by the United States to avoid setting limits on climate pollution and to keep talking and talking and talking and so this cartoon says its settled we agree to sign a pledge to