 I'd like to introduce our two panelists for this town hall. Todd Pahlia is Stand Out Earth's executive director. He's joining us from Bellingham, Washington, traditional lands of the Coast Salish people. And Karen Mahan, who we'll get back on video in just a moment, is Stand Out Earth's international campaigns director. And she's joining us from Vancouver, British Columbia, the traditional territory of the Slava Tooth, Musqueam, and Squamish peoples. And once we have Karen back, Karen, the floor is yours. All right. Can you see me? We can't see you, but we can hear you. OK, the host has stopped the video for me. So how we are a technical person is coming to make it all so that you want to see me as well as hear me, I'm sure. Great, thank you. Thank you, everybody. So we wanted to reflect a little bit on the year that was number first, so it's almost over, and the year to come. And thinking about that, it's been quite a year. I mean, it has been a year, both in the world at large and certainly here at Stand. And it really feels like we're living in historically significant times. And maybe every generation thinks that. Maybe every generation thinks their time is the most critical in history. But given the nature of the climate crisis and what we're living through, it really does seem like that is true. Like that this is the decisive decade. What we do in the next 10 years really will define the future for humanity and for all the other species that have the search. So if we look at it from that point of view and you take all of that and you combine it with living through the Trump era, things can get a little heavy, a little stressful. And so at Stand, one of the things that we do to deal with this is we have a mindfulness culture. So what we do is we have deliberately cultivated an organizational culture based in mindfulness. And that is a strategic choice because we believe that we cannot do our best work in the world unless we're bringing our highest selves and our full selves and really coming from a place of compassion and from a place of solutions and the vision for the world that we want to create. So at Stand that might look like starting a staff session with a meditation or it might look like actual mindfulness training. One of our board members, Angel, is a leader in this field. And recently I've started to develop a body of work on how do we take the mindfulness work, that kind of approach and actually bring it to the climate crisis. So let me take just two minutes at the beginning of this call to kind of ground us and tell you what that is looking like for me and for us at Stand. Basically, if you take a lot of the teachings around the core values of mindfulness and say how do we bring them to bear on the stresses and potential fears and something like facing the climate reality, you come up with three paths. One is that we have to ground ourselves in really the joy of living. Why we are doing this work, why we care so deeply is because the things that we care about and that we love are under threat, but we don't spend time, if we spend time that we care about and if we don't spend time enjoying those things, it's kind of all for naught. So first principle, you gotta enjoy the gift we have and be grateful for it. Second principle, we also have to feel the pain. We have to let ourselves feel the negative. There is a lot of loss and suffering. Just think about the situation in Puerto Rico right now. Think about the fires that happened this summer. It just goes on and on. And so we have to actually let that move through us because if we don't, we can kind of harden our hearts to that, which is not what we want. We want to open our hearts to that. By opening our hearts, we kind of take in that pain and we sort of, I think of it as composting it to make the fertile ground to take action. And that's what we do here at Stanford. We take action in the world from a place of mindfulness or a place of seeing the joy and feeling the pain of it all. So that's kind of for me that I want to offer as a grounding for us going into this call. We did want to, we want to tell you a lot about what's been happening. So Todd, how about let's go to you and what is the biggest highlight for you from 2017? Yeah, thanks, Karen. It was this strange year. It's not over yet. Probably get stranger in the next four weeks, but it was also a really good year and a year despite so much negative stuff happening, especially that inspired by Trump, so much positive stuff happening as well. And when I look back at the year, you know, there's a bunch of things oddly enough that we have to say thank you to Donald Trump for. And one of them is by inspiring millions of people for the first time in their lives in many cases to become activists, to become active in their local communities, to work in their counties, states and on national issues. And that is one of the most helpful things that I've seen in the last year. And we have dozens and dozens of stories of the various volunteers that make our work possible and on top of mind for this week for me is Shiloh Britt, who is a volunteer here at stan.earth. And she was actually a barista at Starbucks for a while and we have as many of you know, a major campaign to persuade Starbucks to stop using four billion single use cups. In fact, this is a cup. This is a paper cup we use occasionally that is fully recyclable. The solution already exists. Starbucks will eventually come along because of people like Shiloh Britt. But she came to us after being a barista and really wanted to try to make change happen. We have partly through Jim Ace, who's the director of our actions and demonstrations here at stand. She has been mentored up into not just a volunteer but increasingly a leader, working on our shipping campaign, working on the Starbucks campaign and this week we've had just an incredible week with Starbucks, a group of volunteers, including Shiloh and Jim Ace and other people at stand have been essentially holding a vigil outside of Starbucks all week long and it has been a rough week with rain and wind and cold. And the most amazing part of what those folks are doing and they have the cup monster, a cup wall with 8,000 cups, which is one minute of Starbucks cups out in front of the headquarters of Starbucks, engaging the Starbucks as they come to work and still there when they go home in the evenings all week long and we both Karen and I were on site at different times this week. And the most amazing thing and Karen was on site during some of the time when Shiloh was there, most amazing thing is that it's not drudgery and shivering and cold. Sure that happens sometimes but it's really joy and fun and they're having a great time and engaging with Starbucks, not from a standpoint of anger but from the standpoint of, hey, you can do this. And when I see that sort of thing happening in our own work and in our allies, that's for me one of the big stories of 2017 is people taking on this work themselves in their homes and cities and towns and doing the stuff like Shiloh's doing who has now been trained up not only to be a leader here but she's now being hired by other organizations to bottom line their demonstrations, actions, protests to help change the world and there's not much more hopeful than that. Seattle with Shiloh, oh. Yeah, you're back. Shiloh and she was sleeping in a truck outside the Starbucks headquarters and she said, I just love this. This is my happy place because doing something, taking action just does feel so good. She's phenomenal. When I look back and I think of, I see 2018, I would say I have two highlights. One is this summer I went to a meeting in the Norwegian Arctic and it was a really pivotal moment I think for the climate movement and that there were activists from all over the world from Nigeria where they are still digging all the ground and spilling it in the streets from Argentina, from Russia, from Iraq and this was a meeting of people from fossil fuel supply countries who countries who are still building their economies off of fossil fuels and what became clear in the data that we were looking at there showed us that if right now, everything that's under production right now, all the oil wells and things that are around the world, if they're allowed to continue operating just as they are, we will go well above two degrees. So not only can we not be drilling for new oil, not only can we be not developing new oil and gas which of course we are all over the world, we need to actually curtail what's already in production just to keep us under two degrees. So when you look at it from that lens, you say, okay, we need to have these frontline fights, we need to be keeping it in the ground everywhere and that's something that the grassroots activists that we work with and our teams know and know it intuitively, keep it in the ground but it's not been what people talk about in policy circles. In fact, the whole Paris Treaty doesn't say the word fossil fuel anywhere in the whole document. So we were at the UN conference in Bonn this month, trying to get this issue onto the agenda so that we can actually move to keep it in the ground movement to a policy level and get nation states and the UN understanding that we have to keep it in the ground because all the renewables in the world aren't gonna save us if we can't keep it in the ground. So for us in Canada, one of the major fights and I think it actually will become a flashpoint globally not just in North America is the fight to stop the Kinder Morgan pipeline. You might have seen some of this recently. Just yesterday, we had one of our allies from the Slewa-Tooth Nation, Will George, go to an event where the CEO of Kinder Morgan was speaking and stand up and confront him, interrupt him to let him know that they had not followed protocol. In fact, the Slewa-Tooth Nation is in court against Kinder Morgan and the federal government for their approval of this pipeline. They have never given their consent. So they are incredibly active and a huge inspiration. Just two weeks ago, we had Haley Zaks, one of our organizers, similarly confront the Prime Minister of Canada for his decision to override the First Nations local opposition and try and get this pipeline built. And just last month, I myself was arrested at a Kinder Morgan protest because they haven't started building the pipeline yet but they are building a marine terminal where the tankers will come in and fill up. And so we wanna be stopping them at every step of the way. And that's what you're gonna see here. In the early parts of 2018, you're gonna see a dramatic escalation in this fight to stop the Kinder Morgan pipeline. And we stopped the Enbridge pipeline, we stopped the Energy East pipeline, KXL pipeline, we don't know about and now we're gonna stop the Kinder Morgan pipeline. So stay tuned and get ready to come on up in that and help out with those protests as they emerge in 2018. Yeah, and not only just those pipelines, but activists all across North America have stopped over 20 oil-trained terminals. That's the other way that the oil companies are trying to move their oil to market. And so we're, we have been as a movement really successful stopping pipelines and oil-trained terminals. And that's leading to some very serious backlash. Kind of which I haven't really seen in years. And I've been doing this work for over 20 years. And what that has looked like for us is a lawsuit, many of you know, brought by Resolute Forest Products and the Casowitz Law Firm, that's Donald Trump's law firm that he's used for many years. And this is not just a lawsuit, it's campaign. And it is not quite over. We won and kind of unprecedented early dismissal of the lawsuit about a month ago in the Southern or in the Northern District of California. So in San Francisco, Federal District Court. And I think we're gonna see a lot more of this sort of thing. There's already one copycat lawsuit, same law firm, Casowitz, being bringing a lawsuit against energy transfer partners, the Dakota Access Pipeline Builder for ETP against Greenpeace, BankTrack, and Earth First, which isn't actually even a legal organization. But what's more scary about this, and what we're gonna have to contend with in 2018 is that they name a couple dozen groups, Rainforest Action Network, Bold, and many others, 350, as a warning, right? So what they're saying with these lawsuits, what Reslu is trying to say to us and to Greenpeace in their lawsuit and what energy transfer partners is trying to say to dozens of groups is if you are an activist, you'll pay a price. You will be sued, you will be dragged in to this lawsuit in some way that will cost you time, money, and effort. And so as we see success, as we see pipelines dying, as we see oil train terminals being stopped, as we see forest areas being protected, like we've seen in the Great Bear Rainforest, we're seeing the companies in desperation begin to strike back at us with new strategies. And this particular lawsuit strategy is to try to use racketeering laws, laws used to take down the mafia to try to come after civil society. And so that's very scary. On the upside, we, like I said, we won the court in California, though gave Reslu a chance to amend its complaint. You would think getting trounced the first time, Reslu might just stop its losses and it's lost a lot on this lawsuit, millions of dollars, huge reputational risks, lots of customers have left Reslu. You would think that they would be smart enough to stop this nonsense because it's getting them nowhere, but they weren't there. So they have now refiled their lawsuit and we're gonna beat them again. So that's going to be our story. Greenpeace is gonna beat energy transfer partners, but I think we have more of this coming. And so what we're doing to prepare for us at stand, we have very good insurance for lawsuits like this. It has literally saved our lives in this situation, the life of stand, I think. We are encouraging other groups to get insured, prepare for the fight. You know the fight's coming, let's get ready for it. And there's a lot of other policies and procedures, some of which we did right, some of which we really learned by being sued for $300 million, how you really ought to be treating your, even to the point of how you open and close your door or how you educate employees and former employees about private eyes that might be coming to speak with them how you deal with document retention. And we're gonna be doing some training that based on what we've learned in 2018 to all of our NGO partners to say like, here's what you need to do to get prepared for the oncoming threats. And the threats are really a sign of good things. They would not be coming after us. They would not be suing us. They would not be attacking civil society. They would not be promoting legislation, which is happening in dozens of states to essentially try to make activism illegal if they weren't losing and they're losing. So it's going to get worse before it gets better, but this is a very good sign that, they're overreaching, they're feeling desperate, and we just need to prepare for this next phase of the fight. Examples of that, oh, good, I'm unmuted. One of the most telling examples of the kind of corporate pushback is Todd and I came to work, Todd was in the Vancouver office about a month ago. And all of a sudden we're in a meeting and all of a sudden people in the front officer are like, can you come out here? Because there was a sheriff here who said he was here on behalf of Enbridge, the pipeline company to seize all of our assets. And that he was getting a moving truck. There was a moving truck coming to the building and half an hour and they would be literally taking our desks and our computers and our filing cabinets and what we actually have. This was because we had taken Enbridge to court several years ago, Enbridge and the National Energy Board, that Principal Suit was against the National Energy Board of Canada and Enbridge intervened. And the issue was that they were not allowing public participation in pipeline hearings. If you want to participate, you could write a letter but you could not actually only the corporate and private interests become and testify, no one else could at these massive hearings. And you were disallowed to speak about climate change. Literally in the regulations, no one was allowed to talk about climate change in the pipeline hearings. So we took them to court on this point and we lost. Now, subsequently that other court cases have ruled that that was unlawful and that we have won ultimately. Now we change rules of the NED and the NED does allow public participation and does allow climate change discussion. But because we lost that original case, Enbridge came after us and said we owed them for their court costs, fighting against the public interest. And we said, oh, we are so not paying for your private corporations court costs to shut out the public. So they got a judgment against us and this led to the sheriff coming to our office to seize all of our assets. Which is a little crazy because very soon after the office was full of journalists, one of them said to me, is there even, is there really, this stuff's worth a couple of thousand dollars at most, your desks are used, IKEA furniture and it's true everything is secondhand and reused at our office. But it was a real wake up call to what we are facing and what lengths the oil industry and the fossil fuel industry will go now that they really feel threatened and see that the writing is on the wall for the end of this industry. And as Todd said, this fight is going to get nastier before we win. And just a little context on that strange day in the office, I was glad I was up there for it. Our team was brilliant and rallied from this position of being, you know, strangely sort of invaded, it had a very invasive feel as they took pictures of all of our used furniture to make sure we didn't take it out the door when they went to go get the moving truck, which is very strange. You know, there was a really weird feeling of this is how far they'll go. And this is a company trying to get $14,000 and last year their revenue was 30 billion. This is not about the money. And we will see more of that coming up. And I think it's really, when we look at 2017, we're so pleased with so much great work happening from our allies and our own team here and our volunteers. And we also are seeing really troubling things happening in the world and certainly in the United States. We are seeing how Trump has created sort of a reflection of his own hate and division and anger and ignorance. And he didn't create that in the United States, but he is helping breathe that into life. He's breathing, he's encouraging bigotry and racism and misogyny and, you know, disdain for facts and for science. And you see a lot of hate. You see a lot of hate happening and people being injured and hate crimes and all of that. And I think it's really important for us really to kind of key off part of how Karen started us off today is to be very mindful about where we're at. We are really fighting from a place of love. Love for this planet, love for our neighbors, love for our cities and towns and really keeping that foremost in our minds as we go into 2018. 2018 is gonna be a year of incredible victories, I believe. And in immense challenges, both politically, legally, I think we're going to have a lot of crazy stuff thrown at us as we're getting into more and more deep death throws of the fossil fuel industry. And I think it is so important that we bring to our work and to the people around us to bring light and to really keep centered around the idea that we're fighting for the things we love, even if we're fighting against so much hate at times and that that is the sort of fuel that will bring us through the next year, not only winning, but winning in a way that's sustainable and sustainable for our spiritual selves, for our souls and for what we wanna bring into the world. And I'm looking forward to 2018. Yes, I mean, it's gonna be super challenging and super exciting. Let me just give you, before we open it up to questions and conversation, we're so excited to talk with you who are on this call, some highlights of 2018. We're gonna be moving forward in a significant way, both in our climate work and in our forest work. Our climate work, you're gonna see some new work for us. We're about to launch a campaign to try and get the fashion industry to take responsibility for their climate emissions. So fashion is responsible for about 5% of global emissions and there really isn't anyone, very few people working on it globally. And you know, here's a scary, your scary stat is that since the year 2000, the amount of clothing that each person buys in North America has doubled since the year 2000. So we just, it's kind of our therapy to deal with the climate crisis as you buy a nice new shirt. I think I might have done it once for Christ myself. And the point is that we need to get these industries to take into account their climate emissions at the point of production, which is where most of the emissions are. For instance, they're using their brain coal to make T-shirts or jeans or what have you. These companies can demand renewable energy and that will dry through renewable energy particularly in developing countries. So we're gonna be working on fashion. We're gonna be working on shipping. We, this year, had a great campaign targeting Carnival Cruise Line because shipping, we think about the emissions from aviation, but we don't really think about the emissions from shipping. But in fact, most consumer goods travel the world by ship. And if there are simple solutions available just like, for instance, slowing down shipping would decrease the emissions by something like 30, 35%. So we are gonna be engaging with the shipping industry, the cruise ship and other industries to get them to bring down their emissions. So that's 5% for fashion. Shipping's anywhere between about three to 4% right now and might go as high as 20% by mid-century. And of course, our frontline work will continue in Canada, in California, in Washington State, up and down the West Coast and across North America as we work with partner organizations to really try and strengthen the frontline fights that are happening all over Turtle Island. A lot of them led by Indigenous people and we're very happy to be able to partner and support a lot of those Indigenous live fights. And on forests, we were forest ethics, we're founded on forests. We, our goal for 2018 is a million acres of old growth protected. I think that's achievable. We're hiring some new staff, we're gonna focus, really build more of our focus on this in 2018. And part of that, of course, is related to the Starbucks campaign. That's another part of our forest program. And I think that we might get a victory from Starbucks this year, which will really, in the coming year, which will really transform the industry. If Starbucks, Starbucks makes four billion cups a year, something like 3.9 and making, I don't know, some huge percentage of those cups go directly to the landfill or incinerators, which has a whole environmental justice component as well. So I'm hopeful that we'll see a victory from Starbucks in 2018. Just two days ago, Shiloh and I were outside Starbucks giving out coffee to their employees as they were coming into the head office in one of the recyclable cups, like the kind that Todd has here. And they wanna be part of the solution. So we are gonna push corporations to go above and beyond what's easy for them and do what's hard for them, because that's what these times call for. And I would like to add one thing onto that, Karen, is that we're kind of a scrappy, mid-sized nonprofit and we're always scrambling to raise more money to really bring the heat to these companies and get them to change, do things like Karen is saying that are very uncomfortable. So one of the things that's hard for nonprofits is actually not just training, mentoring, supporting frontline groups and First Nations and leaders in communities that are hard hit by climate crisis, but actually to raise money for them and to raise money from our online folks, from our high donors and others and to use that money to bring more resources to the front lines. And in 2017, this is our biggest year ever, we raised over 150,000 for support of frontline groups and First Nations. We're going to do more of that in 2018 so that we can really bring to the front lines of people that are hurt worst and first by climate change and by forest destruction, to give them the ability to fight back and follow their lead as we try to do as often as possible and give them the ability to lead us in the direction as we need to go and to do that in 2018, like I said, from a place of love and for fighting for the protecting the things that we love, the people and places we love and that's what we're gonna do in 2018 and we hope you'll do it with us. All right, should we open up the floor for some questions? That would be lovely. All right, just a reminder that there are four ways that you can ask questions. There's a Q&A tab at the bottom of your Zoom window. You can use that. If you prefer your question to be anonymous, you can also ask a private question through the chat option also at the bottom of your Zoom window. You can pose a question on Twitter using the hashtag stand town hall. You can also email a question to townhall at stand.earth and I will be reading out the question. So let's start with one first one here. So this is from Molly. What's been the biggest surprise in each of your views for 2017? I'll start and say that for me, I think the biggest surprise and I'm gonna go with the pleasant surprise was that in British Columbia, where I'm sitting now, we against all odds at a climate friendly NDP government was elected. Six months before that, everyone was saying it's not possible. They can never be elected. And the thing is we don't know about it. We don't know. I mean, anything can happen. And they were elected on the promise to stop the Kinder Morgan Pipeline and to be climate leaders. So to me, that was, it's a very hopeful and a sign that, yes, there's all the craziness and but we are a growing majority who realize the significance of this time and this issue. And this was one high point for me and they've been doing a good job so far. They haven't stopped the pipeline but we'll make sure they do. Yeah, for me, this is easy. It's people showing up. There's so much talk about people not voting, not caring, not doing the things that they need to be doing to fight for their climate change and for forest protection. And I mean, I really think Trump has woken people up in a way I've never seen. And we've had a bunch of things that we did this last year where we were really stretched on our organizing capacity and actually put a little less into, for example, organizing the International Day of Action against oil trains this past summer. And we had in some cases like add a zero to the number of people who showed up for those protests. And a lot of that was like self organized, driven by the grassroots, driven by frontline people. And we're seeing that all across the spectrum for all the issues we work on and all the things that we care about, people are really getting up and taking this personally and getting out in the streets and calling their legislators. And when we say climate is local, and that's been one big piece of our work in the last couple of years and going forward, it's because of all those people forcing mayors, city councils, county councils to do the right thing and saying that their jobs are on the line. So that has been just incredible surprise to me. I didn't think people would go that big and it's amazing. And it's a force to be reckoned with. It's gonna become more and more powerful as we go into 2018 and get better at grappling with the idea that so many people wanna volunteer and help because we weren't really set up for that and we're getting more and more set up for its or our allies. Thanks, we have a question from Dittmar. How did the moving truck incident resolve with the, at the office? Well, I want, you know, we were both there, Karen, but what my favorite memory of that whole insane day was so as Karen was saying, we ended up getting media there as they went through with their moving truck. And then they weren't showing back up and we now had five or six media outlets, cameras going, Karen's being interviewed live on TV and radio and blogs are being written and articles are being written on the site in our office. And so I thought, all right, now bring it. Like now that there's gonna be witnesses and we want you to come back. And so I said to Karen, like call the sheriff guy, like she had his number. I said, get him back, get him back here and tell him, come and take our stuff. Now that people will see you take it on behalf of Enbridge, come back and take it. And what did they tell you, Karen? They said that they were waiting for their instruction and would let me know if they were coming back or they were not coming back at this time. And then a little while later, Enbridge tweeted out, we'll not be pursuing this further. So as soon as there was some sunlight, they disappeared. Thanks, Ditmar, didn't mean to leave you hanging there. We have a question from Diane. What is the position of Standout Earth on global animal agriculture and its impact on climate change? Karen, you wanna take that? No, I want you to take that. I'm really glad for the question because the whole agricultural issue is massive and I don't think there's enough being done generally, but Todd, do you respond? No, I mean, this is not something that we work on in a significant way at Stand, but it's something, it's not possible actually to move forward towards a climate stable world and have the number of cows, sheep, all of the livestock and all the cruelty that occurs in that system and the waste and the climate impacts and the impacts on people living near these facilities. I think it's just awful. And I've been heartened to see at least some moves happening, meatless Mondays with some high profile chefs. I think there's the millennials are certainly more oriented away from that type of diet, but I think we need a lot more campaign activity and a lot more leadership from elected officials on this because we can't get to where we wanna get to with this system. All right, here's a good question from Kenneth. How is Stand different from groups like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club? Karen, take a shot. Well, I would say that I used to work for Greenpeace and I have a lot of friends who work for the Sierra Club. So I would say one difference Greenpeace say is that we're really interested in practical solutions that we can realize right away and not to say that Greenpeace isn't, but in some instances, in many instances, Greenpeace kind of takes the moral position and maintains it, which that's a very useful role, but I see our role more as taking that position and then working at an advocacy level, at the high level of hanging the banner, but also in with the corporations, in with the corporations, the governments, writing legislation, writing policy. We really, our role is to get in there and make the ideal real. That's how I feel that we're different from them. Yeah, I would add on, the one of the things that we really try to do is we try to not pile on. I think there's a lot of things where there's just a whole bunch of groups working on it. And for the industries we're taking on, we need a lot of people. So there's nothing wrong with that. Where stand really is looking though is where are the gaps? Where are the areas where there's just not a lot of activism? It's not necessarily the sexy campaign out there, but it's important and needs to be transformed. And so when we look at, there's not a lot of groups working on the climate aspects of the fashion industry, not a lot of groups working on the shipping sector, but there are big brands in both areas. There's a lot of exposure and risk to those companies if they just continue to plow forward with business as usual. And a lot of the employees working at those places want those companies to help be a solution to the problem, not exacerbating those problems. And so we see opportunity in a lot of places where most groups are not working. We have a question from Peter. Why have we heard so little about the recent pipeline spill in the US? The KXL spill, I assume, is what he's referring to. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I think the, what I have learned over the last six, seven years that we've worked on oil trains and we've worked on pipelines for longer, there is a weird sort of silence. There was some coverage of it, but if the New York Times did an incredible piece where they mapped all the oil spills over the last decade or 15 years, I forget what the timeframe was. We thought pipelines, before we started working on them, how could you have a leaky pipeline? Like what situation would occur other than an earthquake where that would happen? And what you see is a lot of what you see in other industries. Doing it as cheaply as possible, as quickly as possible without regard for what the problems are. And I think our governments and our media have accepted that, this is a cost of doing business. They just leak whatever, get over it. And that's part of what the movement, actually, if you look at even five years ago, there's a lot more coverage of spills, of oil train near disasters or spills and pipeline spills. It's not enough, but there's so much more coverage than there was 10 years ago. And we need to keep going in that direction. And I just will add that in Canada, actually, there was quite a bit of coverage, even though the spill happened in the United States. Maybe that's because the pipeline debate here is heating up. But on that spill, you may know, but that's the third spill for KXL, which is a seven-year-old pipeline. The pipeline, there are a lot of pipelines that are 40, 50, 60 years old. So it is a real indicator of the lack of safety and quality controls in this industry. Let's segue us nicely to our question from Sarah. If the Kinder Morgan Pipeline does get final approval and starts construction, what will be your next focus in Canada? Will you continue to fight this or move on to a new issue? Good question. The answer is first, we will win this. It has, it does, and then we'll move on. It has been approved, the Kinder Morgan Pipeline has been approved by the federal government of Canada in the final approval. But just because the pipeline has been approved certainly doesn't mean it will be built. The Northern Gateway Pipeline that went to the Northern coast of Canada was approved and we worked with our allies, First Nations allies and others and were able to defeat that pipeline. And so it has been approved. I do think that we will beat it back. It is gonna take everything we have and everything everyone else can bring to the table. Once we don't have to fight that, fight anymore, we, I would, I'm very excited for us to take on more of the LNG industry. That's a, they're still trying to grow the LNG industry despite a lot of difficulties. So that will be one of the next places that we go. All right, I have a question. I have a question from Tracy. If I could give you one million extra dollars, I can't by the way, how would you spend it? I'll take a crack at that one. I would have a lot of that funding go to key allies on the ground who are the frontline for pipeline oil train as well as who are the front lines receiving a lot of the toxic impacts of the shipping industry, which often keeps their ships running 24 seven. And guess where those plumes of smoke go? Usually low income neighborhoods with people of color. So what we have seen and we, we did an oil train work, especially we have done a bunch of work on pass-through grants where you have people who are just straight up volunteering and they need yard signs, they need door hangers for getting a community meeting to happen. They need shirts because they're all gonna wear the same shirt to the hearing to provide a visual sort of exclamation point to the fact that 90 plus percent of the people they are opposed this given project. That's where I would put the funding because I think that those people who are just fueled by a passion to protect their own homes and their own communities are just doing amazing work. And that's, you know, that piece of our movement needs more and more support. I would say exactly the same thing. I would say indigenous and frontline communities and everything that we can do to support, amplify and connect them. This is a question from Pat. How do you make sense of Rachel Notley's strong stand for pipelines? For many of us, this has been a surprise and we wonder how to counter it. Yeah, it's- And Karen, give a little background for our US folks. So Rachel Notley is the premier of Alberta, basically Canada's Texas. It's our oil jurisdiction, oil producing jurisdiction. And Rachel Notley is, I think, quite strong on climate change. I was pleased to be one of her advisors on her oil stands advisory group for how to deal with squaring the circle of being a oil producing jurisdiction that understands the climate crisis. So she did introduce a number of really great policies, including a price on carbon. She was, this was the first oil producing jurisdiction of the world to self-impose a price on carbon. We were happy to be helping with that. But she has all along said that she wants a pipeline. My own view is that that is a political view and that she thinks that she cannot be re-elected unless she is out there seeing to be getting a pipeline. She as much said this last week when she was in Ottawa, she's touring the country right now, selling pipelines to Canadians. And she literally said, if I don't get this pipeline, you'll be going with the conservative party who will then be much worse for the climate. So I think it's a political issue to do with the demographics in Alberta that are generally more pro pipeline. And she's in a conundrum. It's a really hard situation for economies that have been dependent on oil. It's not their future, but a lot of the politicians are in this trap of there's an organized right wing that believes that and is gonna push for that agenda. And she's caught in that. From Becca, do you have any plans for the UK? I'm based in London and I'm really keen to make things happen over here. We don't at this point, but we work with volunteers all over the world and there's a lot of Starbucks in the UK and a lot of other issues to work on. So and there's been actually quite a bit of attention on Starbucks and other coffee companies that use throw away cups. I mean, you have this incredible system of forests to cup for a moment and then landfill. And we need to break that cycle. And if you wanna work on Starbucks, you let us know. Becca, we'll get back to you. We have a question from Nicholas. What are the next steps for the Kinder Morgan fight? Any recent updates? Yes, thanks for the question. So the biggest development that will happen in Kinder Morgan is the lawsuit. So there are 19 plaintiffs, I believe, that have, they've combined all the different lawsuits because there were so many from different nations, municipalities, environmental groups, they put them into one case and that case was heard a few weeks ago here in Vancouver. And the courts don't tell you exactly when they'll make a decision, but the best guess would be something like June. So one possibility is that we win the case and the pipeline is not allowed to proceed. Unfortunately, while the case is before the court, there's nothing that stops the company from starting building. So right now they're building, as I said, they're marine terminal and you might have seen these images. They built this huge fence around it with barbed wire all around the top to stop protesters from getting close to it. And they're gonna start breaking ground. Their schedule is to start breaking ground in January. So right now you have this aquatic nation building tiny houses in the way of the pipeline. You are going to see, and that's what we're going to see. We're going to see on the ground encampments and struggles all along the pipeline route. I encourage you to participate in any of those you can to make a donation if you can't get there. The other piece of that is that TD Bank in Canada, one of the five big banks is financing the pipeline. Basically, Kinder Morgan couldn't afford to do this. It's a 7.2 billion dollar project. So they have a line of credit with the TD Bank. So there will be TD Bank protests all across the country and some in the US. So state, wherever you live, stay tuned for how you can get involved. We're doing that along with 350.org and Greenpeace. So that's another local way to plug in. At this point, we have time for a couple more questions. If you've thought about asking a question, haven't done it yet, now's your time. So, here's a good one. Okay, so this is from Annette. How has Stan's work evolved, if at all, since your name changed? So yeah, that's interesting. Actually, our work evolved and that led to the name change. So we were, you know, we were force ethics for a long time, 15 years, and we were increasingly sort of compelled, dragged in in several cases by what was happening on climate starting a decade ago. And that became more and more of our work and more and more of what our volunteers wanted to do. And over time, it became really awkward because we were organizing in inner cities around oil trains and we were force ethics. So that took some explaining and we did that, but Stan feels like so much more of who we are and who we were increasingly becoming that it just feels right. And actually our work continues to evolve as it had been and we don't feel as hemmed in by a name that was not only felt a little bit sort of last century, but that defined our work, you know, forests in particular in a way that made no sense anymore. And we were definitely still a very forest oriented group. I'm still very passionate about forest protection and those of you who've looked at our logo, you know, there's a tree hidden in there somewhere. So that work continues, but we will really continue to expand the work on climate change and force our climate issue and Stan just feeling like home, the name to us. All right, one last question. And this is from George. For those of us who would like to get more involved, what would you recommend and where do you need the most support right now? You've, I've said, I'm always gonna say Kendra Morgan because we were talking in our Vancouver office the other day and I said to our digital director, Liz, I said, well, I mean, Kendra Morgan that you really, I mean, Kendra, it's a big issue for you. And she said, well, I mean, I care about all the issues. What do you mean? And I said, well, I thought you really, Kendra Morgan is really important. And she said, well, I mean, they're gonna build that pipeline over my dead body. And I think a lot of people feel that way. Enough is enough. So if you know, if you're in BC or in Canada, Kendra Morgan, if they're in the, if you're in the US, line three is a great issue. These oil train terminals are a great issue to get involved in. If they actually try and proceed with KXL, which is not sure, but it's not clear at this time that they will. But if they do, that's a great issue, as well as any issue in your local community around fossil fuel infrastructure or the financing of fossil fuels. So that's where I would say is the place to get involved. Yeah, I echo all of that. Climate is local. There's probably something having to do with oil and infrastructure or LNG or something in your region. And that's a great place to plug in. And I also have to say, look at what's happening on Capitol Hill today. We have enormous gift going out to massive companies that need no additional money. Like the amount of money on hand by in corporate America and global corporations is enormous and the tax bill moving forward will give them even more money. And we're really looking increasingly at companies to be the change that needs to happen when you know Trump won't do anything. We do know that if it's, we're talking about the apparel, the fashion sector, the shipping sector, Starbucks, other groups working on big corporate campaigns that will make fundamental change happen. I think this next year, they can't say they don't have the money to do it. You know, and I think increasingly what we have seen over the last 10 years is an incredible evolution of passion at the employee level. They don't want just to paycheck. They want companies that match their values. And the more we can point out that by going big on climate change, by going big on forest protection, you not only do the right thing, but you will retain your highest value employees for a longer period of time. It makes financial sense and makes environmental sense. And I think that's where we really need to go bigger in 2018. Yes, oil infrastructure and we need to hold companies to account. On that note, if we didn't get to your question, thank you for asking it. We'll follow up with you after this. Thank you to everyone who asked questions. Great, insightful. We know we have such a smart community and you're passionate about the issues as we are and we are lucky to be able to work on your behalf out in the world. And with that, I think we'll draw to a close. If you think of anything, want to ask more, please drop us an email at townhall at stand.earth or on Twitter at stand with the hashtag stand townhall. Thank you, Todd. Thank you, Karen. Thank all of you for attending. Thank you and thanks everyone for being out there and for all the work you do, whether it has anything to do with stand or not to make our world a better place. We really appreciate it. And looking forward to a great 2018. Great 2018 for all. Thanks, have a good one. Thanks.