ECOS (The Ecology and Sustainability Resource Center at Southern Oregon University) and the League of Women Voters Rogue Valley will present a climate forum, “Nature’s Trust, Our Children’s Trust: A Climate Forum on Litigation to Save the Future,” on Thursday, April 13, 2017 from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. in the Rogue River Room of the Stevenson Union on the SOU campus in Ashland, Oregon. Doors open at 5:30.
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The program will feature Mary Christina Wood, Philip H. Knight Professor, Faculty Director of the school’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center., and author of Nature’s Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age and a panel of youth climate activists. Panelists will include two Plaintiffs in Juliana et. al. v. the United States et. al., a landmark constitutional case based on the public trust legal concepts developed by Ms. Wood and brought by 21 young people against the federal government. Plaintiffs allege that for decades, the federal government has willfully failed to guard and protect natural public trust resources essential for a livable future. They charge that the government has actively facilitated fossil fuel development, known to release of greenhouse gases and cause climate change, thereby allowing irreparable harm to those resources that now jeopardizes current and future generations. The trial, now officially against President Donald Trump and major organizations representing the fossil fuel industry, is expected to begin in U.S. District Court of the District of Oregon this summer. Juliana Plaintiffs will be joined by two youth activists affiliated with Ashland Youth Climate Action currently working to convince the Ashland City Council to make the city’s Climate and Energy Action Plan a legally binding, scientifically grounded, equitable ordinance.
Admission is free, but donations to Our Children’s Trust, the nonprofit organization managing the lawsuits of Juliana and scores of other young persons against state governments, will be gratefully accepted. Doors open at 5:00.
