Olson, Colorado, and Peduto

Juliana v. United States

Julia Olson, an environmental attorney, is no mountain climber but she really loves to climb mountains, in fact, she’d take the longer ways with the steeper hills any day if there were any. She recently climbed Spencer Butte in Eugene, Oregon right after a federal court hearing. Although she does have her own office with the conference room and the long table and a bit of chilled kombucha on tap in the kitchen, the top of that mountain is where she goes to do her “legal thinking.” She could fixate on the shrouding pines, the vista of the cataracts, and the summer wildfires that put a bit of a haze in the sky once she’s reached the summit, it’s not too much ask really, but these days, she had all that and more to turn over in her head (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Building a Movement With a Climate Suit Vs. the Government, A17).

Ms. Olson will be representing 21 juvenile plaintiffs, ages 11 to 22, in a landmark federal lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday. Olson filed a similar suit back in 2015 against the Obama administration with a similar, but more deep-seated motivation: for a faster move-on in undoing climate change. Nobody likes a sluggish president any more than they like a hypocritical one. Olson is a subscriber to the Public trust doctrine, a legal principle that states that the quickest way to decide which politicians America favors most is by checking how well-preserved their resources for public use are, under the influence of her alma mater’s law professor, Mary Christina Wood, who had proposed the doctrine as a resourceful way to get head and shoulders above climate change for her students, a lesson not to be scoffed at and if you do scoff at it, joke’s on you because according Erwin Chemerinsky, chairman of the UC Berkeley School of law and head over heels for the suit, that resourcefulness is responsible for what we got in cases like Obergefell v. Hodges or Brown vs Board of education (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Building a Movement With a Climate Suit Vs. the Government, A17).
Ms. Olson met with the young plaintiffs during their stay at the converted 1920s bungalow that houses her nonprofit organization, Our Children’s Trust, from a campground retreat sponsored

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, one of the 21 

plaintiffs on Ms. Olson's panel

by her a week ago. She interviewed each of them, going over the personal ordeals climate change had put them through. Levi Durheim, for instance, lives in the red zone of Florida on a barrier island where sea-levels escalate (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Building a Movement With a Climate Suit Vs. the Government, A17). 
In her opening statement, she claims that the Trump administration had willfully disregarded the dangers in fossil fuel burning. The government has turned what makes up part of the youth’s oyster upside down with their rising climate levels. But that on its own was merely a metaphor. Last the supreme courts heard -- and the Obama administration made the same argument when it tried to dismiss the case back in 2015 -- pedophilia, abuse by parents or legal guardian, and kidnapping were the biggest fish to fry as far as the constitutional rights of the youth were concerned. Jeffrey H. Wood, the head representing attorney for the government, states that the supreme courts can’t be bothered with anything that can’t be proven without a few bruises or scars to show. There are two kinds of scars in this world. There are physical scars and there are emotional scars. And you can’t gain the former from a few gases released into the air (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Building a Movement With a Climate Suit Vs. the Government, A17). Everybody, including Chemerinsky, has always considered

Kelsey Juliana (Left) in a Eugene courtroom for an Earlier 

climate case she filed against the state of Oregon

creative legal theories and the courts a bad combination. However, Anne Aiken, the judge presiding over the trial, as a subscriber herself to the Public trust doctrine said she will allow the case to go forward. People actually can like it when their instincts are incorrect. Olson didn’t think she do so well on her LSAT and the results were a pleasant surprise. And so gave way to another case rumbling toward the courts that the government have sought to dismiss and have yet to succeed, but Kelsey Juliana, the eldest of the 21 plaintiffs, was still very much down in the mouth at the aftermath of the election (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Building a Movement With a Climate Suit Vs. the Government, A17).

Colorado widens divide  

Meanwhile, local leaders are concerned that the statewide anti-fracking measure -- dubbed Proposition 112 -- added to the Colorado ballot could have dire consequences on the oil and gas companies of Colorado if passed in November. In the last decade, fracking has been the gold standard for Colorado’s diverse economy and it gave new meaning to the phrase ‘pennies from heaven’ in Colorado’s book. It, however, like many other greenhouse energy sources, is also at the center of the state’s tug of war between economic development and environmental protection. Colorado is one huge melting pot full of Republicans, Democrats, and independents and there will never be a tie breaker, though building on a way to pull out of this bottleneck may just be what they need to earn a progressive stamp (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Fight Over Fracking Widens Divide in Colorado, A18). Supporters of the measure say that there are fracking sites awfully close to the many homes, schools, and schoolyards and you’d have to be a huge nostalgic for the Neolithic age to

Sean Ewaskowtiz riding his scooter 

near an oil rig

overlook the possibility of the children being exposed to chemicals from fracking-produced fumes. Just ask Beth Ewaskowtiz of Erie, Colorado, who had her son Sean Ewaskowtiz tested for various diseases obtainable from fracking operations and the results from the blood sample she sent came back positive -- the prognosis was 79^th to 85^th percentile for benzene, ethylbenzene and o-xylene. But the state’s main toxicology cast doubt on the prognosis and a 2017 state study found no direct linkages to fracking. A year later, scientist of the Colorado School of Public Health found that oil combined with gas wells creates the risk of cancer (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Fight Over Fracking Widens Divide in Colorado, A18). There are only two ways to handle the issue, either fight it or to run from it. Many residents of the Denver suburbs have chosen to fight and all the representatives, the district courts, and the regulatory firms have intervened. The Proposition 112, if passed, would set a distance of 2,500 feet for newly constructed well sites away from these homes, schools, waterways, and other areas designated as “vulnerable.” Opponents of the measure believe that fracking ties the economy of Colorado together. The state’s 43,000 jobs rests on fracking with better than $200 million in tax revenue. The Brighton rally that took place just north of Denver was participated in by those who live off those wages. Their argument, in short, is that Proposition 112 is radical work, so radical, it could permanently shut down an entire blue-collar industry and put its

Employees gather for a rally against Proposition 112

employees out of work for good. The industry executives who are deathly afraid of the measure had all that and more to worry about (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Fight Over Fracking Widens Divide in Colorado, A18). They had the sense that Colorado was just the beginning of the gamble. New York, Maryland, and Vermont have become completely frack-free recently whose reserves are relatively unparalleled to Colorado’s anyway. What’s next on the list would be California and New Mexico. Other countries across the nation could adopt to the Proposition 112 as well. And what good would money do the supporting party? Anadarko Noble and Extraction contributed better than $30 to the opposing party. The secretary of the state says that opponents outspent proponents by roughly 40-1 (The New York Times, 10/24/2018, Fight Over Fracking Widens Divide in Colorado, A18).

Pittsburgh's greenhouse fund

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of the cities that was still hanging onto the idea of abolishing climate change knowing the leaders in Washington D.C. won’t help, has become one of the 20 cities actually on the verge of pulling through. On October 21^st 2018, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has been selected by the Bloomberg American Cities Climate Challenge, orchestrated by former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, as a one of the cities across the country to sign a 2-year contract with Bloomberg Philanthropies to aid in their battle with climate change, the other winning cities announced that Sunday were Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington, D.C., and whatever they have in mind, its guaranteed to work better than any other their previous plans (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/22/2018, Peduto's climate change fight results in grant, B1-B3). A National Geographic documentary entitled "Paris to Pittsburgh" -- a documentary film centered on Pittsburgh's struggles with abolishing climate change, featuring Mr. Peduto himself -- was previewed. In 2015, the 

From left to right: Grant Ervin, chief resilience office of Pittsburgh, former New 

York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and current Pittsburgh mayor, William Peduto 

at a press conference in West-End Elliot Overlook Park in Elliot 

international accord sought to turn the dial on global warming thermometer counterclockwise to 2 degrees Celsius. Last spring, the city council subscribed to the Climate Action Plan 3.0, a modified variation of the old plan to add a 50-percent limit mark on the master switch and the city hydrometer. Their proposals will be to rely on 100 percent more green energy, switch to carbon-free vehicle fleets, and dethrone king coal from the power plants. Then, there would be the matter of citywide objectives like cutting transportation emissions tied to climate change by 50 percent (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/22/2018, Peduto's climate change fight results in grant, B1-B3). When reporters approached Bloomberg about his plans that Sunday, he merely changed the subject to the upcoming midterm elections, helping flip congressional seats and selecting candidates to highlight issues on climate change and gun regulations as if a citywide lottery to abolish climate change was nothing to get all excited about. "I think that this country is in real trouble," he said (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/22/2018, Peduto's climate change fight results in grant, B1-B3).

Here is a link to the documentary aforementioned:

 https://twitter.com/MikeBloomberg/status/1039911637443010563  

With all this happening, the country is taking a huge shot in the dark, but that seems to be

Activist gathered outside the Eugene federal courthouse

nonmaterial. It's not just adults whose constitutional rights are being put after climate change but the children as well. Aside from that, there also now appears to be an imbalance in green politics. Why should either Eugene and Colorado have to take their matters to the courts, while Pittsburgh gets to tunnel through muck and come out clean on the other side because of a citywide lottery? Regardless, the tug a war between a economical development and environmental protection seems endless. If we were Julia Olson, it'd be nice to have a hobby to clear your head of this.