 Welcome everybody. You are on the Stand Out Earth in 2017 and beyond webinar. Thank you so much for being with us. I'm Ann Pernick. I'm with Stand Out Earth, and we have our Executive Director Todd Paulia and Karen Mahon, our Canadian Director with us. Thank you so much, Todd and Karen. Thanks Ann. Thanks Karen for being here as well, and thanks all to all of our attendees for joining us today. This is an incredibly tumultuous time, I think, for all of us who care about the climate, care about forests, care about what happens to people on the front lines. And I wish I could say we have not been here before, but those of you who have been around for a while have seen this sort of cycle before. I'm talking about the U.S. elections, of course, and it is very troubling. A lot of people in our movement have had a really, really tough time, I think, over the last few weeks trying to absorb the surprising outcome and sort of then dealing with the news each day of the cabinet picks on the U.S. side and what's happening there. So I think this is, you know, for Stand. This is a time really for taking it back to the basics. Our theory of change is really a little bit different than a lot of the bigger national groups. And I think there's a real synergy between what we do and what some of the more inside the beltway groups do. And while inside the beltway is going to be a lot about defense in the coming years, we really need to seize the initiative and go on the offense where we can. And I think changing corporate behavior and local work against fossil fuels for alternative energy is where a lot of the progress is going to be made. I wanted to actually take you back to the beginning of Stand. You know, we started in the forest. We now work on climate change and forest issues. We started in the forest, one of the last all-growth river valleys in Vancouver Island back in the mid-1990s. And this became the war in the woods. It was what we were founded on to work on. And it was an incredible, incredibly tumultuous period, incredible conflict, the biggest civil disobedience in Canadian history. And there were people on both sides of the border working on this issue. It became a cause celeb in ways I think that were even surprising to a lot of the original organizers, Karen Mahon, joining us on this webinar today being one of those organizers. And it was an incredible sort of outpouring of opposing forces, citizen activists and progressive people of all different types against company and government who wanted to turn this older through valley into magazines and newsprint and toilet paper, which was incredible. Part of this story that is the most amazing to me is that despite hundreds of people getting arrested, massive news coverage, celebrities getting involved, local politicians, first nations, the initial push, although it exceeded all of our goals in so many ways, it actually failed. The logging company kept logging. The government stood behind them. And it was actually from that defeat that this organization was really born. And the idea that people came up with was, well, if all that didn't work, we're still not giving up. And we're going to go to the marketplace. We're going to see who's buying the wood, paper and pulp from this logging company. And we're going to see if they want to sign up to destroy this rainforest. And that began to the birth of the modern marketplace campaigns. And it was that next initiative after the failure that got the attention of government, got the attention of the logging companies when the customers started calling and saying, hey, we don't want to be part of destroying this place. It's not in accordance with our values. It's not kind of sustainability or unsustainable practices we want to be affiliated with. That's the first time that the logging companies were put on the defensive. And that many of those, that forest in Clackett Sound, later the Great Bear Rainforest, are still standing. And I bring that up because this is where we were born. It's the work we were born to do in this organization. And it didn't matter who the prime minister was, it didn't matter who the president was. It didn't matter who was the premier of British Columbia. And that, I think, those kind of strategies, the things we're going to need to emphasize in the coming years with Trump taking office in a matter of weeks. Karen, you were there on the ground. I just wanted to turn it over to you for any thoughts you have on that. Well, I think it's interesting. So the Clackett Sound protests, for those that don't know, we had over a thousand people arrested. It was the biggest protest, as Todd said, in Canadian history, the biggest source of evidence. And I think it took it up to a point. I mean, it brought the issue to a head, but it didn't tip it over. It was bringing in the international pressure and the marketplace that actually tipped it over. So it's quite interesting now that we're at, you know, in the U.S., we're looking outside of the Beltway for change. So, you know, where we really need to focus on state, municipal, and corporations, which is exactly where STAND has always focused. And here in Canada, it's very interesting because we have arguably progressive governments that has just introduced a climate plan, which is quite good. I would call it historic yet insufficient. It's a good plan to meet a weak target, which is the target established by the previous Stephen Harper government. But that plan is coming into play, so now we need to go back to the kind of public pressure to really get the plan implemented in the right way and stop the infrastructure projects that would counteract the gains that we made by the plan. So, again, it takes us back to organizing protests. We, you know, in this organization, we definitely talk a lot about that we span from the boardrooms to the blockades. And those are the two places you will find us in 2017. Absolutely. And I think this is, you know, what we're seeing in Canada and what we're seeing in the U.S. is that the local is global. And in some ways, that's a very good thing. So in 2016, on our extreme oil campaigns, we have been able, by working with local citizens, progressive politicians, incredible people up and down the West Coast, and spanning, you know, really the whole continent, we've been able to shut down a number of oil-train terminal expansions that really add up to, in total, millions of barrels per day of oil. We're talking about Venetia and California, Antichrist in Washington, and we have an interim win in San Luis Obispo, where, you know, against all odds, huge oil companies promoting expansions of oil by rail, very unsafe, not only locally, but for our climate. And in all of those cases, despite being outspent and, you know, outgunned politically in some ways, we were able to win. And we, I don't mean Stan, I mean, Stan and our allies and local politicians and all the people that weigh in on these huge flights. And that's, you know, we also are working in Whatcom County here in the northwest corner of the U.S. on expanding a moratorium that limits the further expansion of fossil fuels. And this is in an oil-refining area. So really some unprecedented, and I think world-leading efforts are happening on a local level that really means constraining oil, use constraining oil shipments, preventing further expansion, and really these are the pieces of the puzzle that globally we think need to happen at an even greater rate in 2017 to add up to a climate-safe world. Karen, I know you, you know, local being global is perhaps even more the case in Vancouver these days. Well, it really is true because, as I said, our federal government has introduced a pan-Canadian climate framework, which will take us a large distance to meeting our 2030 targets. But at the same time, they have approved a number of new fossil fuel projects, a gigantic LNG plant, liquid natural gas fracking plant in northern British Columbia. And they just announced two pipelines, Line 3, which would travel from Alberta down through the Great Lakes to Minnesota. And the Kinder Morgan pipeline, which would travel again from the oil sands in northern Alberta down through the lower mainland of British Columbia to the west coast, where the bitumen would be this sort of dirty sandy oil that comes from the oil sands, would be loaded onto tankers, which would then go through the Georgia strait across the top of Puget Sound. And to a mythical Asian market, the moment they seem to be going to California markets, one of the big drivers is that they want to get this oil to Asia. But the fact is that this kind of heavy crude, they call it, gets a lower price in Asia currently than it gets in California. So we'll see. But there's all kinds of issues with this pipeline. And we are really on the front lines of that struggle. Well, it's exactly one of those instances where we span from blockades to boardrooms. We are on the front lines of that struggle, working with the local first nations, the slave to Squamish, the Musqueam, as well as the municipalities. There are every single municipality that the pipeline travels through in Southern British Columbia is opposed to the pipeline. Over 100 first nations are opposed to the pipeline, and yet it's been approved. So we're going to see a huge on the ground struggle here against that pipeline. I expect you're going to see some kind of civil disobedience. We're working with the Indian and B.C. Indian chiefs that has put up the pledge that you can see on your screen. They put it up about two weeks ago, and already 20,000 people have pledged to do whatever it takes to stop the pipeline. So it's really looking like this will become the next kind of no Dakota access type protest, led by first nations who are totally opposed, and they are already putting out the call to ourselves, stand as an organization, and many other allies to come and stand with them to defend their territory. So you're going to see that kind of local on the blockades, there will be blockades. And in the boardrooms, we also have been appointed, we were appointed, stand last year to the Alberta Oil Sands Advisory Group. So while we are working on the front lines, we are also working with government and industry. This is a picture of Rachel Notley, the premier of Alberta, who introduced the first ever climate plan for Alberta, which is Canada's oil jurisdiction. And so this was quite an achievement. It's an oil dependent jurisdiction, and they have placed a cap on their carbon emissions, which is really fantastic. And we work with a group of oil companies, first nations and community leaders, and governments to try and move that climate plan, implement that climate plan forward. So we are in the boardrooms there, and if there are blockades, we will be there doing everything we can to make sure that they are effective, impactful, and people's energies are being channeled in a productive way. But from those two sides, this Kinder Morgan pipeline that will see these tankers go through Washington State waters, through BC waters, is going to become one of the big definitional climate struggles in North America in 2017. And Karen, for folks on the US side of the border, I think we are a little more familiar in cases like Keystone, for example, where the fight is about whether or not a permit gets issued. And in Canada, what we have been saying for years is governments give permits, but people give permission, and the people have said no. So talk just a little bit, because it's not like Kinder Morgan and the idea of beating this is crazy, given the Enbridge pipeline. No, not at all. So the other pipeline that we've been campaigning on since the proposal came into being, which was proposed by Enbridge, to go through the Great Bear Rainforest, so again from the oil sands, through the coastal temperate rainforest of British Columbia, to be loaded onto tankers. So we have worked with our First Nations and other environmental allies on that campaign for seven or eight years, since it started. And at the same time as the Canadian Prime Minister announced these two pipelines that were going to go ahead, he announced that that third pipeline would not be going ahead. So that was a great victory for coastal communities. It would have been a travesty, and when they actually issued the permit for that pipeline, it looked like a done deal. So several years ago, they actually said, yes, this pipeline is going to go ahead, and basically the movement just refused to accept it. We just said this pipeline shall never be built. And fast forward a few years, and now that pipeline isn't being built. So it's the same moment that we're at with Kendra Morgan. Just because the permit has been issued, in no way does this mean it will be built. This means now the debate begins in earnest, and I think we have a very good chance of stopping this pipeline. Yeah, and this is not just a Canadian issue, though. The border does have a strange effect on people. You know, this is going to be potentially even got built, and we're going to work to make sure it doesn't get built. But 400 oil supertankers coming not just through Canada, but through Puget Sound, likely going to Washington State refineries, California refineries, as Karen mentioned. And there's actually a lot of leverage on the U.S. side of the border that I think the Northwest groups and Northwest foundations really need to begin taking a harder look at. Just for example, as people in the Northwest well know, we were all able to beat the North America's largest coal export terminal. And that was an unprecedented resistance, much like we saw at the Enbridge. The local groups all up and down Washington State fighting against this coal export facility, working with the Lummi Native American tribe, whose fishing rights were at issue if this terminal got built. Ultimately, the Corps of Engineers under enormous pressure politically from the grassroots level from the Lummi Nation, sided with the Lummi Nation, and denied that permit. Well, those same fishing rights are in jeopardy with the kind of work pipeline. The same issues around the concern for salmon, concern for orcas, for the very survival of orcas, are at stake on the U.S. side of the border. And so far we haven't seen very little action on the U.S. side of the border. And I think that's one of our goals in 2017 is to be able to coalesce more of a pushback from this side of the border to add to the enormous pushback that's happening on the Canadian side of the border. And I would just add it's very interesting because under the Canadian Endangered Species Act essentially, the government is required to restore the habitat for endangered species. So these whales are endangered species on both sides of the border. So does the Canadian government have a right to threaten a population of endangered species? Under Canadian law they don't. We're looking at the question of can a Canadian government make a decision to negatively to impair a U.S. Endangered Species, a species that's listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. These are all really interesting questions that we are going to see play out of the courts. Yeah, absolutely. So Karen, should we switch pages here to forest a little bit? Sure. Let me start off by saying one of our great successes of the year was the final protection of the Great Bear Rainforest. So we mentioned earlier that this Enbridge Pipeline was threatened into the Great Bear Rainforest. The Great Bear Rainforest is super close to my heart and many people in the organization have worked on the campaign since its inception. In fact, it's really interesting to see how the one minute anatomy of a campaign is that when we looked at this area, it was originally back in 1997. It was originally called the mid-coast timber supply area because basically it was just all the forest that was left in the mid-coast that the industry hadn't gotten to yet. It was their last chunk of coastal temperate rainforest and that was its only designation. And we looked at it and realized given the state of global temperate rainforests, this last piece was critically, globally, ecologically important. And so we put together this campaign again with our First Nations allies and said, you know, we actually look at this area differently. The values we see are the wilderness and biodiversity values and cultural values, and thus we put this board in the Great Bear Rainforest. But at the time it was a radical vision. We basically said, you have logged 75% of the rest of the coastal temperate rainforest on the planet. We have this little chunk, so we want all of it. We want every valley that's left. And people said, you're crazy. You're trying to kill the economy. You're trying to take away jobs. These are all familiar mantras. But it was quite, I mean, we were the premier of British Columbia, Glenn Clark, at the time called us enemies of V.C., So that's how unpopular it was when it started. And now, fast forward, 20 years, a little less than 20 years, and the whole entire area is protected. We have a conservation economy in place. The First Nations and non-native communities who live there are managing funds to build the economy in a way that is consistent with conserving the ecological values. And on Earth, I think probably one of the most conservative being Buckingham Palace sent their emissaries, the Prince and Princess here this year, up to the Great Bear Rainforest to acknowledge it as one of the global treasures in the global Commonwealth Forest. And in fact, Princess Kate and Prince William unveiled the plaque in the middle of the rainforest, thanking the local First Nations as well as STAND and one or two other organizations for our work in this area. So I think it's just when we say no fossil fuel projects and when we say we will stop a pipeline, sometimes we say, is that realistic? Can that really be done? But when we started this area 20 years ago, people said we were crazy. It would never happen. And now it's lauded as one of the international jewels of forest protection. We can do the same thing on pipelines. We can do the same thing on fossil fuels. We just have to believe we can and keep at it. Yeah, and being unreasonable is part of our job description. But in hindsight, it doesn't look that unreasonable. And one of the things that I love about the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement is that 85% of the forest is protected. First Nations have more rights to their traditional territories, more sustainable economy happening there than ever before. And also it isn't as if there was no room for traditional industry who also hires First Nations, at least part of the time, to continue to operate mills. But they were able to operate mills in a way that actually really shrunk their impact on the landscape. But they were able to stay alive and continue to offer more sustainable jobs and more sustainable timber supply than they had ever dreamed possible. 20 years ago. So it's a success both on environment, culturally, and economically. So that's really the kind of solution that stands for and doesn't get any better than the Great Bear Rainforest. So on new initiatives, one of the things that we have always been looking at, you know, we worked years ago to begin reforming the office supply sector, which didn't use hardly any recycled fiber back when we started our campaigns against staples, office devolves, max, and others, cattle-lung industry. And we were always kind of looking for what's an industry that just needs reform that has really stuck in the last century, that is wasteful, that destroys forests, that has negative impacts in a variety of ways. And earlier this year we started our campaign to take on throwaway coffee cups, starting with Starbucks. And Starbucks actually does a lot of things that we think are pretty good. We don't see them as an evil company. That's sort of our philosophy, which we try to live as much as possible, is that we don't see the people at these companies or these companies as evil more that they need to wake up and start making different kinds of decisions. So we're in the process of trying to wake up Starbucks. And the reason why is that they go through 4 billion, that's with a B, 4 billion cups per year. They all are used once and thrown away. They're non-recyclable almost everywhere. And so every single year between a million and 1.5 million trees get logged again to make more of those cups. And Starbucks is just the tip of the iceberg. They are the biggest player, but the world throwaway cup market is 52 billion, which I can't even understand that number so big. And that represents over 10 million trees per year, every single year being logged to make throwaway cups. And their solutions already exist. You can see we actually, on the screen here, we came up with our own version of the holiday cup, which strangely gets a lot of press every year. But this year, a lot of the press was about how unsustainable that cup is. The photo on the lower left of the screen is our cup wall. That's 8,180 cups that we put up outside of the Starbucks headquarters. 8,180 cups is how many cups they go through in a minute, every single day, all year long. So this is the kind of thing, again, as we started off this call. It doesn't depend on anybody being president or anybody being prime minister. This is about confronting this company with a horrific practice that is really out of step, even with our own values. And I'm confident that they will eventually do the right thing on this. And that's going to be the beginning of transforming this entire industry to make cups that are more ethical, that are recyclable, that use a lot of non-void and recycled content to be made that spares forests and all the impacts on the people that depend upon those forests. And also really pushing people to make the choice to use their own cups. And Starbucks could do a whole lot more to promote that. All that I think is going to happen, it's just a matter of time. And they're a big company, perhaps the biggest brand that we've ever taken on, but we're starting to get some traction and it's very exciting. And I would, you know, the link to forest is quite direct. So we took the strategies that we developed in the Great Bear Rainforest, which are now being written up in various journals and other organizations are studying, and applied those to the boreal forest across Canada. And it's that huge vast area, of course, the northern, Canada's part of the northern forest belt that goes around the northern hemisphere. And there are some significant interesting opportunities coming up there. There is a requirement that the Canadian government has signed on to to protect 17% of different kinds of forest ecosystems. And we are not at that in most places. We're somewhere between 8 to 10 or 12. So we are engaging with the governments of Alberta in particular, Manitoba as well to look at what conservation can happen there in the boreal forest. And of course, that's important now from a biodiversity and forest preservation point of view as it always was. Now it's doubly important from a carbon reservoir point of view. So our forest work is, you know, both climate change work and forest work for its own inherent value. So there are, there's some areas in northern Alberta that we're looking at. There's some areas in northern British Columbia that we're looking at that are under threat from fracking. In Alberta, the threat would be logging. In British Columbia, the threat would be fracking. And if our current Premier has her way, she would see a massive expansion in fracking in northern British Columbia. But in fact, there is a whole area that the industry could move into in the next five years or equally that we could try and get protected. It's endangered caribou habitat and it would meet all of our goals of protecting 17%. So we're going to be active in the boreal forest in those areas in 2017 on the land-based side. Of course, that links to the consumption side with the cops and the marketplace work from the US. Absolutely. In case, first of all, we're going to be shifting to your questions soon. So if you could begin typing in your questions and Pernick will get to those in just a couple of minutes. But a couple of quick updates. In case you were wondering, does any of this work ever get us into trouble with being sued? We've already talked about being called enemies of the state back at our founding. We were considered an enemy of the state during the thick of our tar sands campaign by the Prime Minister, then Stephen Harper of Canada. And we have been expecting to be sued for a long time and it turns out being sued for $300 million is not as fun as it sounds like. So we got sued speaking of the boreal forest. This is a place that we have been working for many years to protect. We're nowhere close to stopping that work. In fact, we expect to increase our push to protect the boreal in 2017. And very powerful interests, no surprise, are against protecting the boreal. That includes Resolute Forest Products, the largest logging company in Canada who sued us in the U.S. in Federal Court, Southern District of Georgia. Perhaps the most inconvenient place possible to sue us. That was no accident in a place I've never even been to. But they are suing us, I think, in effort to take us off of focus, to take us out of the boreal agreement, to really try to reduce our effectiveness. Fortunately, 2016 is one of our best years ever. They have failed to dilute our focus or to take us off of our game plan. But they're trying. And they're a $3 billion company. In fact, we ran the numbers on this, talking about David versus Goliath. In the first eight hours of 2015, they had more revenue than Stan does all year long. Those are some big odds financially. The weird thing about the case, and I think it's sort of like so weird it could end up being dangerous, is that they are attempting to use the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act, also known as RICO, which was built to take down the mafia and organize crime. And they are actually claiming that we and Greenpeace are a criminal network because we have criticized their unsustainable, destructive logging practices. Now, the long term of this is I don't think they really believe they can win legally. My sense is that they're hoping they can just outspend us and drag us into court and drag us out of our campaigns. We're not going to let that happen. We have begun to push back already. You're seeing right here on your screen. This is an advertisement, full page ad, which you're only seeing part of it. Anybody interested in the ad will send to you. We ran it in the New York Times. 80 social justice environmental and labor groups signed on agreeing with us that free speech is not a crime and that they're going to be working with us to push back against a company that is not only attacking us, but attacking the First Amendment. That is very quickly. They can't really take criticism. Sounds a lot like President-elect Trump. And there are a lot of parallels between Donald Trump and this lawsuit, which really tries to silence critics and bully critics into compliance. And we're not very compliant. So you're going to hear more and see more about that battle as it moves on in 2017. Last quick update, Karen, you might have something to add to that. I did want to add that I mentioned that we do quite a bit of work with the oil sands companies themselves, Shell, Suncore, etc., trying to help them think about what the worsening climate crisis will mean for them as an industry and how they plan towards what will inevitably be a decline in oil supply and what that really means. But in those same conversations, they have let us know that the oil industry also is watching the resolute lawsuit. And it really, it's made it clear to us that this is a test case. This lawsuit is a test case around public interest groups speaking on behalf of the public and our ability to do that. And the whole oil industry is watching it. The whole forest industry is watching it. So it's high stakes and we will win. We'll probably need your help to do it. But it is one of those moments that is a litmus test and we just absolutely cannot afford to lose. We need to win. Yeah, and I think the story that needs to be told here, which we're going to begin telling and hopefully with your help and the help of our allies and our supporters in 2017 is that let's look at the end of 2017 or 2018. I think the story needs to be that Stan got stronger, did even better work, didn't give up on protecting the boreal or give up on any of its campaigns, financially did well, improved, beat them in the court and beat them in the court of college. That's what needs to happen and it will take those oil companies, those mining companies, those other logging companies that are looking at this approach and it will tell them this was a really bad idea. Let's not do that. So that's the story that we're going to tell. We're going to begin telling that in 2017 and hopefully making that happen. Another quick update. Not one to rest on our laurels. We launched a new campaign today to take on the shipping industry. One of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, almost completely unregulated. The days of the pirates have not passed. I think many of these companies, especially the cruise line companies, really think of themselves as beyond the law, have done very little to improve their greenhouse gas emissions for forever. Just a couple of weeks ago, Carnival Cruise Line, one of our primary targets, was fined $40 million for dumping over an eight-year period, oily waste, bilge water, all kinds of junk into the ocean. And not like accidentally, they had a thing called a magic pipe, which a bunch of their ships used to dump this water illegally into the ocean, having huge impacts on the local marine life. So I think these companies really represent sort of a criminal network in many ways. And they've had very little transparency and very little accountability. We're going to bring that to this sector. On the screen is our report, which came out today, Sinking the Climate. These companies, the shipping industry itself represents 3 to 5% of global emissions. It's projected, if it's left unchecked, to rise to 17% of global emissions by 2050, and we can't let that happen. So our challenge of the shipping industry starts today. There's going to be lots of social media and information on our website about that. And I think that's enough for updates. We should probably turn to your questions. Ann, are we ready for some questions? We are. We are. Give me just a minute. We have one. The person said they'd like that. They just want me to read it. If the question is to stand only work in BC and Canada, and if not, would Stan be willing to try and stop the Line 9 pipeline? We absolutely do not just work in BC and Canada. The reason we talk about Canada a lot is we are one of the only cross-border organizations working in the U.S. and in Canada and on cross-border issues. And a lot of the wood, for example, our forest work is really focused on Canada as the source for the wood, paper, and pulp. But it is being used in many cases by U.S. corporations. So the way that we get leverage is by going to those companies, asking them if they want to be part of the destruction of the boreal or the Great Bear Rainforest. They usually have no idea where they're buying from. And then we can then work with them to get them to help insist that their suppliers behave differently, protect key areas. And we are looking at several cross-border issues. Line 9 pipeline coming into Vancouver is cross-border because it's going to have big impacts on Washington State. Line 3 pipeline we're now taking a look at, which is coming into, projected to come into Minnesota. And we think there's a strong case that we can beat that pipeline locally. So we're taking a hard look at that right now. And Karen, Line 9, do you have thoughts on that? Line 9 is mostly a reversal, as I understand it. And we actually did do a lot of work on Line 9 when it seemed like we had a greater chance of winning. I'm not sure that we have that much of a chance anymore. But certainly we work with local groups across the country, in particular the First Nations, who are trying to stop all new pipelines and expansions. So certainly in that way we'd lend support. And Line 3 we've just been ourselves, which is the big new one that was just approved in Central Canada to the Central US. We're definitely looking at strategies there. We have another question, another person who's feeling shy. So I'll go ahead and do it. Just to talk a little bit more about the shipping campaign and some of the key parts of the report that came out today. Sure. So the shipping campaign, as I mentioned before, is going to focus first on the cruise line companies. This is an industry that uses some of the worst fuel really in the world. Some of the fuel that they use, marker fuel, isn't even liquid at room temperature. It is sort of the bottom of the barrel, literally, of what comes out of refineries. Huge emissions. Some of what we looked at that we talked about in the report, the shipping sector has such outsized emissions. It sort of bottles the mind. If you were to take a cruise, for example, you will have the same amount of impact, climate-wise, as if a thousand cars being yours drove the same amount of distance that you go on your cruise. So these engines in these huge cruise lines, same thing with the shipping containers. Those ships are, in some cases, five or six stories high. Almost zero emission controls, very little advance around efficiency or emissions reductions over the last many years. So it's what happens when an industry gets to treat our atmosphere as an ashtray. So they have taken zero care, zero effort to curb their bad habits. And we're going to help change that. We think that there's a real potential to go beyond cruise lines. Many of the same technology, same engines, same scrubbers, a lot of the solutions that we're proposing apply equally to cruise lines as well as to shipping lines, container ships. And the amazing thing about the shipping sectors, they've done so little for so long that even doing simple things like slowing down and making sure they polish the propellers so that they are free of particles and other debris, they can cut 20 to 30% of their emissions just by doing that. There's not a sector in the world really that has done so little that they can reduce their emissions by such large amounts by doing really cost-effective changes. So we feel like there's a lot of possibility. This is one of those areas where they have been intransigent. In fact, the International Maritime Organization met a month ago and in the face of a climate crisis decided they need to gather more data. And we're going to change that. Great. We're going to call on Bill B. next. Bill, let me see if we can open your line. Let's see if we can hear you. Hi, Bill Buckholtz here with the Sierra Club, the Forest Certification Committee. What's the status on the Stop SFI campaign? Great, great question. Nice to hear your voice, Bill. We continue to work on that effort. Our primary effort has been sort of two-fold. One is to continue to stop them from becoming sort of a household name. We've been able to pull them off of 37 major corporate brands. So they were on, for example, a Hewlett Packard copy paper, one of the biggest brands of copy paper in the world. And they were on there as a sort of green endorsement. The SFI is an industry-funded, industry-founded and industry-governed attempt to look like an eco-label. And so we've been able to stop them from becoming a major brand. We have 37 companies that dropped the use of that fake eco-label. The other effort, the network continues and has been strong in this last year. The other area of focus is on trying to make sure that the Green Building Council, the organization behind the LEED Green Building Standard, keeps SFI out of that standard. And, you know, in the last several months, a pilot credit for SFI has been proposed. It was done without a vote by the members. It was completely against democratic principles, and we believe it was illegal. And so we are pursuing getting that pilot credit removed, and they can start that process over and do a real vote. And like the last two votes, I think they'll lose. So we continue to push on both those areas around SFI, a lesser well-known but very important forest issue. Okay, thanks. We have a question from Sarah. She was thinking that maybe the last question answered a little bit, Bill's question. So I'm going to modify it a little bit to say for folks on the line who aren't as aware of this, how well is the actually good sustainable forestry certification going as opposed to SFI? How are the people who are actually doing good work doing with that label? This is my kind of crowd, two SFI questions in one session. So for folks who don't know, so SFI, as I was talking about, is the industry Spain's sponsored, funded, fake eco-level label for forest products. They were created just a little bit after the Forest Stewardship Council, which is an imperfect but the best indicator of whether a piece of wood or paper is sustainable. And that program continues against all odds. I mean, they're a fraction of the size of SFI in the U.S. And against all odds, they continue to expand their market. They've had some really important initiatives with companies like Home Depot. We have helped push some of the biggest brands in the world to adopt the FSC, in addition to getting many companies to drop the SFI, because the FSC is real. It's a real system that takes environment and economy and human health and well-being into account. And it's hard, and they make mistakes at times, but it's a real system with real rigor, and they continue to gain traction. SFI is the biggest threat, because if you get SFI certified, you don't have to change practically anything. So it's very inexpensive. Meanwhile, FSC, and we work directly with big brands who have gotten FSC certified. You know, sometimes you have to leave 10 or 20 or more percent of the forest standing. Stay away from streams, especially fish-bearing streams. It's real work and real commitment and sacrifice to be sustainable, and that's why FSC, I think, continues, despite being outspent in the U.S. to grow. Let me just add that for people that don't follow this as closely as some of, and I say with love, some of the geeks in forest ethics that love this stuff, essentially we have decided as a society that we want greener wood and paper. Well, who decides what is green? That's what's at issue here. Who actually gets to say, yes, this is better. So it's again, other industries going through the same thing, but of course forest being close to our heart. Is green marketing just as green-wash? Is it fake when you buy your toilet paper with your ecological line, or is it real? And so the struggle to actually make that real is a super important struggle that will affect large land bases all over the globe. Okay, great. A little bit more shyness. This is Anne. But how about a talk a little bit more about the oil train campaigns and how the successes, the recent successes, are affecting the work in 2017? Erin, do you want to take that? No, you go. This has actually been one of the most important campaigns we've ever run. It is not an overstatement at all to say that it has changed who we are. It's helped change our name. Working in urban communities, fence line communities, under our previous name, which we changed this spring, we were forest ethics for 15 years, and forest ethics kept sounding more and more last century, and a lot of people we were working with against these oil trains and the pipelines. It just was not a name that represented the work we were really doing anymore, and it was feeling past prime. So the oil train campaign is one of the things that led us to change our name, and we became stand just in the past spring. The oil train work has been so exciting and fun and interesting. We started three years ago with 13 people in a room down in Seattle who were interested in beginning to address this issue. And today our oil train group is 250 organizations strong, and what I think makes us most proud of this effort is not only do we want, and that's one of the things at stand that is key, is we really try to get campaigns where we can make a difference, where we can win and prevent the expansion of oil trains as a new way of transporting oil in massive quantities, and we've really stood the way of that expansion. But this oil trains group is everything from people working at kitchen tables in communities that are under threat from a new oil train terminal to groups like the NRDC and Sierra Club and others. So it has been incredibly powerful, very effective, far more diverse coalition effort than anything we've ever taken on really. And I think it's four of all those reasons. It's one of the most powerful things we've done. And beating at one point we had three oil train terminals get defeated. We've worked on them for several years, but they were all defeated within a couple of weeks period. Another oil train, and those were all West Coast also in Baltimore, a major oil train terminal defeated there by our allies. And the first health intact study of oil trains moving forward in Baltimore. So this is about environmental justice. This is about climate change. And it's really about, I think, people coming together to push back against corporations and governments making decisions that we're bad for them. As to how that looks in 2017, I think that work continues. Pipelines and oil trains are two sides at the same point. So I think the work that Karen's focused on on Kinder Morgan, if they can't move their oil by pipeline, they're going to try and move by oil train. They can't move by oil train, they're going to try and move by pipeline. We need to beat them in both places. So we are out of questions on the question board. Maybe we'll just invite Karen and Todd to just say some closing remarks. Karen, go ahead. I think there we go. Can you hear me now? We lost you for just a second. Karen, do you mind starting at the beginning? No, not at all. Sorry about that. I was just saying thank you to everyone who took the time to dial in today. It's really great to be able to just have the chance to have something of a conversation, albeit slightly one-way, not moderated by media with their own intentions and their own outcomes in mind. So thank you so much for that. I would say it's been a hard year between climate change and Trump. It has been a hard year, but I think it's really focusing. There's no illusion anymore. There's no room for complacency. We know exactly what we need to do, and we are more focused than ever, and we are determined to do with every breath in our body. And so it's so great that we have supporters and allies like folks on the phone. And 2017 is going to be pivotal, and we're going to have fun doing it because this is how we spend our lives. So we're going to win, and we're going to bring some more love and joy to the work in the world as we do so. Great. Thanks, Karen. And Anne sounds like we have another question. We do. And Jody, I'm going to bring you in. Let's see if we can hear you. Hello. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. Thanks for doing this webinar. It's great to hear from people on the top working so hard to fight against all this stuff. So yeah, I'm definitely very passionate about sustainability and environmental protection, all that. I live in Prince George, D.C., so Central British Columbia. Seeing the Great Bear Rainforest Victory is just awesome. And I can't believe, like, 15 years it took to actually do that. It's great to see that this prolonged effort actually pay off. And so hopefully that sticks. And yeah, so great to see that. And everything else you guys are fighting for. So thank you very much for your efforts. And then, yeah, just to question, a lot of stuff comes up, and you guys probably heard this before. But like I think, first of all, it's important to have solutions. So it's not really good just to protest things and say, oh, we can't do this, we can't do that. In fact, the environment, obviously, we all know that. I mean, not everyone knows that. But yeah, so a lot of people say, oh, you're protesting this thing, you're losing jobs, and the economy will suffer. So kind of what solutions, alternative solutions, can we kind of explain to people like, I know we need to transition to a green economy, but a lot of people don't really even understand what that would look like. And what are the options? Like I know for producing electricity, we have options, wind power, and small hydro projects, and solar, and geothermal and stuff like that. But for things like replacing oil, for example, to transition out of the fossil fuel economy into a more green economy, that's going to take a lot of work and a lot of new technology and implementing the technology. Thank you, Judy. Sorry to interrupt you. Just so our folks will have a couple minutes to answer, I'm going to just have you leave it right there. It's a great question. Yeah. Mary, why don't you handle that? Well, it is a great question. And I actually, it's one of the places where I am most hopeful, because I feel like the innovation that we're starting to see now is really taking off. So there are more jobs now in the global solar economy than there are in the global oil economy. That just happened in 2016. So that is really, truly happening. And you're really right, though, that oil for aviation and shipping in particular are some of the last, hardest things to replace. But we are looking at that as well. Believe it or not, the shipping industry is talking about going back to sales, like these hyper-electronic kinds of sales that would be highly efficient. So that work is underway. We do everything we can to kind of bring that work in front of decision makers and in front of industry to show that there are the alternatives. But I think actually we're in a very good place with the alternatives, and there is an unstoppable tidal wave of innovation that is coming. And we just need to get out of its way and do everything we can to stop why infrastructure fights are so important. And I agree, you can't just fight everything. But if we can stop new infrastructure, new fossil fuel projects now, while these things come on board, we'll be in much better shape than if the new innovation comes and is swamped by existing fossil fuel infrastructure. Yeah, absolutely. And in closing, I have to agree 100%. We are at really a perfect time from rooftop solar to electric cars to shipping containers and actually using sales as a way to cut their emissions is happening. Not only that, the first hybrid electric ships were launched in the last month. That can operate both on traditional fuel and can do fully electric for 30 minutes. And that's just the beginning. So I think there's so many solutions coming. I would just say this about 2017. First of all, if you like what you hear and you're already with us, dive in deeper. Join us if you're new to us. This is your first time hearing about our work. We need you. Join us, support us both financially with your time, with your activism. We will see in 2017 how much we can accomplish together. 2016 has been one of our best years ever. Finding some of the biggest industries in the world. We're going to do a lot more of the same in 2017. And I think really corporate change and local change is where it's going to happen in the next four years. And we are ready to go. So come and join us. And thanks so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Thanks, Karen. And we look forward to continuing the conversation. Thanks, everybody.