 Hi everybody, you're in the right place for the climate is local webcast zoning out fossil fuels. I'm Ann Pernick. I'm with stand and all of our presenters are here waiting in the wings eager to talk with you. Thank you all for being here and thanks to the presenters for all the time they've put in to this and getting ready to share this work and hear about your work too. I'm just going to take us through a couple logistics things and then I will do brief bios on our presenters and then then we'll get into it. This webinar is being recorded for posting online. Everyone is in listen only mode to begin except for the presenters and we are really excited to make this very interactive today after the presentations. We're going to have a Q&A and discussion and there are two ways to participate in that. We would love to see and hear you if you're okay being seen and heard today. We can pull up your audio and video so if you have a question and you're okay being seen and heard please put your question in the questions tab. If you'd rather ask it anonymously drop it in the chat and we will try to get to those two and if we are running short on time we may combine questions or just give I may offer the questions on your behalf if we have too many questions to get to otherwise and in the unlikely event that we lose our connection something goes wrong with our system. We do have a conference line system that we can move to that's only in the event of an emergency if you get bumped off check your own connection or your own phone line first just try to come back in that usually solves it but if there's a big problem we have we do have that conference line system and these numbers are in the email that went out to everybody about an hour ago so you don't have to don't have to worry about writing that down. Just going to take you through this one more time I'm Ann I'm with stand out earth you're in the right place for the climate is local zoning out fossil fuels webcast this webinar is being recorded for posting online everyone is in listen only mode to begin please use the Q&A tab to ask questions if you're okay being seen and heard today if you'd rather be anonymous drop your question in the chat we'll call on everybody we can but if we have to combine questions to save time or if I need to ask questions to save time we'll do that and in the unlikely case we lose our connection we do have a conference line to go to but check and see if it's a problem with your own connection first that usually solves it and so with that I'm going to introduce our presenters and then turn it over to Matt Krogh who will take us through facilitating this webcast so Matt Krogh is our extreme oil campaign director at stand out earth Matt has been working with stand since 2013 to direct a campaign targeting tar sands and other extreme oil on the west coast of north america under matt's leaderships and has formed and grown a crude awakening network just composed of two more than 250 organizations operating nationally to delay or halt new oil infrastructure projects before joining stand matt co-founded the powerpass coal coalition and spent over three years fighting the gateway pacific and other proposed coal terminals in washington and oregon and matt thank you so much for being on our team today we are also we are also very pleased to have barry bucannon he's chair of the wakum county council and in august of last year barry introduced an emergency moratorium to temporarily block applications for any projects that could enable unrefined fossil fuel export from cherry point and since that time barry has led the way to develop permanent policies and land use rules to protect both jobs and the environment and barry thank you so much for being with us today and we have dash any wife weisham from the center for sustainable economy daphne lead cse's climate justice program a founder and director of the of the sustainable energy and economy network in 1996 daphne has worked for several decades on research and advocacy at the intersection of climate change human rights fossil fuels international finance finance carbon markets and sustainable economies for pathbreaking research and advocacy has resulted in shifts in public policy and investment at the national and international level daphne thank you so much for being with us and we also are so pleased to have nick calib from the center for sustainable economy he's on the team with daphne there nick is staff attorney there providing legal counsel for the climate justice program nick is active locally in portland oregon shout out to portland we have a lot of portland folks today portland oregon policy making with a particular focus on environmental justice sustainable cities and issues around the commons nick graduated with an llm from tilburg university in the netherlands after receiving a jd from the university of oregon school of law so thank you again to all of our presenters what a great team and thank you to our audience members and um with that i am going to turn it over to matt and matt gave me a second to um pull up your slides and uh we can really get going or actually i think you're going to share your own slides if that works but i've got them definitely we need them okay okay let's see there we go and hold this up awesome um howdy everybody uh thanks so much for joining us today my name is matt croak i'm the extreme oil campaign director um at stand dot earth where we work on forests corporate responsibility uh and climate and on the climate front we've worked hard to prevent the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure including things like oil training facilities and pipelines both in the us and canada and part of that work has been growing what and called the crude awakening network to over 200 groups almost 300 now to share best practices around fighting fossil fuel infrastructure today we're going to talk a little bit about what we mean by climate is local and dive deep into a couple examples of how that really plays out um you know it's a little more than a half year into the trump administration and it's not unusual to despair about the ability to get real action on climate uh but the truth is that for years we've seen many failed attempts to get federal action at a really meaningful scale across the us well simultaneously seeing real success and we take action uh from a local perspective and on an important note uh what we're talking about today these land use port menses they're not preempted by federal powers these are local decisions made with local powers and they can stick um okay the next slide uh in this picture what we see are members of the lomi indian nation uh they're shown taking a successful stand against north america's largest proposed coal terminal but their example is really a rare one where federal decision actually stopped the project and at the state level there are some examples also rare like georgia where a newly passed eminent domain law uh effectively prevented the construction of a gas pipeline but many of the successful opposition efforts we've seen um have come to local jurisdictions held permanent power and chose to reject a land use permit for a project uh there's an excellent article by zara hergy of inside climate news uh that names many of the fossil fuel infrastructure projects that were stopped um and from mid 2016 and earlier uh largely by citizen action now working with our elected representatives to employ the land use powers held by municipalities that's where citizens acting locally can get laws passed that will prevent the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure um the examples of stopping permits for project proposals that's what happens when citizens and governments work with laws that are already on the books what we're talking about today in the climate is local concept is enacting new laws uh citizens working with city or county councils these new laws that prevent new fossil fuel projects for being considered for land use permits uh in the first place so this is actually one of my favorite pictures it's thousands and thousands of petitions and signatures being uh delivered to berry Buchanan so you're going to hear from that um on that uh but this map want to draw your attention is 2015 week of action that we coordinate here at stan it's communities across the country where people are concerned in particular about oil trains but other fossil fuel infrastructure as well and well those actions that they took in the week of action took a bunch different forms uh they partly resulted in a couple hundred different municipal actions that you see here in a map this map we put together with a group called rack tracker and it shows over 200 municipal resolutions uh put forward by community members and councils who were worried about the impact of growing fossil fuel infrastructure and their communities these are folks who are also working on uh intersecting issues like uh immigrant rights environmental justice and race and if through our active networking all these folks working together that we've been able to connect and share on these issues and learn from each other how to fight back a lot of these local fights don't have no isolation um but the thing to remember about this particular map these are resolutions a resolution is more of an opinion or a policy statement by one of these county or city councils we're talking about passing binding laws through ordinances that uh it could be the risk bonding that Daphne's talking about it could be land use and if implemented broadly all these municipal land use ordinances together can prevent the growth of the whole fossil fuel economy and be a critical element in fighting global warming um so today we're going to dive deep into walking county Washington where there's enough fossil fuel export proposals on the books to more than double the state of Washington's carbon footprint uh and Portland, Oregon where there's an ongoing effort to zone out both storage of fossil fuels but there's really a whole lot more going on out there i'm going to give you some examples uh in Tacoma to protect Tacoma tideflats as a coalition as part of the standup to oil campaign that's working to pass interim regulations that prohibit new and expanded fossil fuel infrastructure in the Tacoma tideflats that's the industry on port area downtown um and you'll hear with the walking county council the constant pressure from new proposals in a lot of these places means that two steps are needed the first one an interim step to prevent new permits from being considered um and second long term land use code changes they can be implemented through a number of processes in Tacoma it's a sub area planning process that then leads to more formal land use code changes um no walking uh the board of harbor commissioners and the public works both of which work under the city of Milwaukee amended at least to not allow us oil to receive i'm going to quote here receive handle store ship or otherwise process or distribute crude oil at the port now ports are established differently in each state um and worth a webinar of their own but in this case is the city powers over the land uses that made the change possible and then cougar washington just across the river from portland uh it's the site of north america's largest oil train proposal there the city council passed an ordinance preventing the siting of new both fossil fuel projects and what that doesn't directly impact the existing fight against the tesoro savage also called by cougar energy terminal doesn't keep it from moving forward once that project has stopped and we think it will be the ordinance can prevent new proposals from coming forward in the future uh in philadelphia we see contracting requirements coming to the city uh that regulate new development of the southport areas and industrial zone and that introduces series what they call gates that affect the credit new large-scale fossil fuel projects for being cited there and finally final example for right now on fault more the successful defeat of one oil train terminal there has led to efforts to ban anxiety of new oil train terminals in the city and that's been closely connected to land use requirements for fair development that allow the community to direct land development including industrial lands um and make sure those developments reflect their values so that's uh you know it's a partial list there's a lot going on um but there's a lot of powerful municipal municipal action underway so if you're on the call and already working on these issues where you live uh we'd love to have you speak up in the q and a uh take a minute to let us know what you're up to and how it's going uh sharing best practices what happens in our communities i think it's one of the best ways we can network together identify other overlapping and intersecting issues what we can support uh and ultimately take strong local action on client in the meantime though i'm looking forward to hearing from barry began on the walk in county work and then turning it over to daphne wisham and nick kaleb to discuss portland usable winding and some of the other places that they're seeing real action so i'm going to stop now and stop sharing my screen and turn it over to barry well hi everybody uh welcome to the webinar this morning i'm glad you all could make it i'm going to talk a little bit about what we've done here in walk in county our our uh kind of furious activism really started with the coal terminal years and years ago where uh we knew this was coming the proposal had been filed and the community took action and came to their elected leaders to to find an answer how we could could prevent that from happening and and also future fossil fuel exports out of cherry point uh walk in county has a lot of big bad threats uh that potentially we could come across we have over 200 million tons of capacity for exports out of out of cherry point here in walk in county we have oil trains pipelines we had the proposed coal terminal we have two uh large refineries we have lpg refinery and we have a marine export facility that still has a lot of capacity it's it's the only west court port deep water pouring port excuse me but that little tangle there uh that has capacity left in it so when when uh in 2013 the election basically revolved around the coal terminal and finding leaders that would stand up for our community so uh we ran as a slate we were elected and we took the challenge and when we were developing our our comprehensive plan update last year we introduced policies that would prevent unrefined exports out of cherry point including coal obviously crude oil and propane and natural gas so uh as we were developing those policies uh it became evident we needed a little bit uh longer time a little bit more public process so that that effort got put into the hands of our walk in county planning commission who took an in-depth look at it and had a lot more public uh public hearings public input and but we felt that it was important to be able to stop the uh any more applications from being vested so we introduced an interim ordinance or excuse me an emergency ordinance back in august and it was a it was quite a night it was a lot of folks there uh i remember reading the entire ordinance into the record i've never said the word whereas that many times in my life and i never want to again um but we passed that uh and we were often running on a moratorium for uh fossil fuel exports out of cherry point and that is really only a stopgap measure that allows us to be able to look at permanent legislation that will do the same thing we have initiated a uh a legal study to find out just what tools we do have we're using land use and in our in our uh prevalent uh reasons our public health and safety environmental concerns and the protection of jobs uh that would be lost if there was if cherry point became an export terminal of crude oil so the legal study we it is underway we have selected a firm um we haven't gotten very far with them yet as we only signed the contract i believe last month um but we need to know what we can do and what we can't do so um any challenges to come our way we're ready to deal with um my role as council chair has been to make sure that we uh obviously update this because we're on our third update of the interim moratorium ordinance now we consider that next Tuesday on the 26th um we expect to have a great crowd out supporting us which is so important um it is just so important to have that community behind this it's what got this effort started years ago and it's it's important that we have that momentum with our community as we move forward and i think i couldn't i couldn't emphasize that much how how important it is for the community to come out and support their local leaders because these decisions not only are they tough to do at the time but they they take a lot of perseverance to be able to sustain it because we have to renew it every six months so um a lot of pressure from the industry when we would have public hearings for these renewals but we had we had uh our activists out uh cheering us on and and helping us fight the fight to to make sure that we're doing what we can here in lakaw county to affect climate change and uh other and public safety and health i mean it's very important oil trains through our community is not what we want uh we were it started out with coal trains but you know the lamination helped us get through that and uh i think uh as far as the industry goes there it was a lot of lobbying with council members there's been a lot of uh threats for legal action but there has been no legal action taken as of yet um one of the big concerns that the industry had was that we were doing a legal study on to see to see what tools we did have so that that's kind of an indicator to me that we are on the right track um i think a few things that uh that you should tell your your communities that want to come out and help help you as leaders to implement these kinds of policies is make sure they have make sure they have one idea and that they can get behind and also make sure that they have that perseverance to go the distance because it's not it's not a short process it's something that takes a lot of time takes a lot of commitment and uh i just i think it's just so important that we get the word out that that these kind of things can be done in local communities because we're not getting the support we need out of the federal government so um i applaud uh stand for holding this webinar i think it's important to educate uh everyone everyone that's involved all across this nation uh in in these items of of fighting climate change and protecting our environment so that's all i have back to you matt matt just one second this is and i i muted your line while we were hearing from you yeah thanks thanks so much very uh really it's been inspired leadership and really appreciate that paul that you've been doing on this um and now daphne do we have you up next uh or nick awesome i'll turn it over to nick kilb uh and we'll wait for a second i think we're going to see your screen and get that share yeah i'm going to talk for about a minute and then i'll share the screen um so before we talk um as cse we want to mention that we almost always work in coalition with partners and so it's important for us to recognize people that we've been working with for the last three years almost on these projects so especially physicians for social social responsibility in portland 350 px the climate action coalition clumbier river keeper cragg law center and all the neighborhood groups that we've been working with um in portland this has been a fight that we couldn't have waged without all that support um and you know for people who aren't in portland it kind of looks like portland you know of course portland is being portland is sort of the attitude of of what's going on but for us here it's only in the last couple years that the grass roots really has had a voice in city politics it may not seem that way from the outside because we've done some climate stuff but it's usually kind of like top level non-binding bureaucratic stuff and so getting a community to actually say something like no to new fossil fuel infrastructure is a different step and um it's been hard fought and again we can't do it without so i'm going to try to share my screen here we'll see how that goes how's that that's good okay all righty so our story starts in 2014 and um it basically surrounds a uh a canadian fossil fuel company called Pemina big major investment tar sands coming into our community and proposing a 500 million dollar terminal uh propane export terminal that would have brought about 1.6 million gallons of propane per day in by rail um and initially our our port and our mayor welcomed this investment with open arms um it was something that didn't really have a process associated with it because of how the port of Portland works um activists and community members started to get a grasp on what this project was its scale and we began to sort of organize an opposition not really finding that we had much to do because again there was no public process for us but somebody overlooked the fact that you're not allowed to pipe hazardous materials across sensitive riparian zones and this opened up a process where the city was going to have to amend its code in order to allow propane to get piped from the port of Portland to the ships that would carry it overseas we use that public process as a referendum on the entire project organized very very quickly started turning out hundreds of people to public um public fora and um the planning and sustainability commission is a body that had to sort of certify these land use changes we actually lost there the first time um by one vote that changed at the very end in dramatic fashion and instead of of kind of giving up and going home um we decided that we were going to fight this battle you know as long as we possibly could and so the politics for us were that we had the mayor who was very strongly supportive of this propane export terminal saying you know maybe it's a bridge fuel maybe there's some equity behind it and a lot of greenwashing to it um we heard that he wasn't going to change his mind we didn't believe that and so we started it was right around earth day luckily for us so we started doing a lot of earth day related actions um we started posturing around town uh my mayor's called charlie hails so we started putting up posters it said fossil fuel charlie all over town the media thought it was really funny and so they started reporting on this um we were um we interrupted a council session the press was recovering this all over the place we put in thousands and thousands of calls into the city and ultimately after not that long the mayor decided to change his mind and he pulled his support for the frack gas project as you can see in the slide here it got international news because it was such a big deal um theoretically another commissioner could have picked up the project and made it their own but we were so organized and we had so much effect that nobody wanted to touch it and they sort of just let the project die um so from then we moved on to saying we don't want to have to fight this defensive battle all the time because what other project could come into that spot at the port of portland so we began to organize um in an affirmative way to try to get a law passed and just because of time constraints here i won't be able to talk about it all but there's a white paper called making a difference that that pretty much details all that we did there um so over the course of a year of action we finally got to the point of passing a resolution and so the language in this resolution says the city council will actively oppose the expansion of infrastructure whose primary purpose is transporting or storing fossil fuels in or through portland or adjacent waterways um at this point we still didn't have a great idea of what this meant um from the from the position of advocates we've been working with the city about what they what we believe that they could actually do to impact the storage and transfer of fossil fuels through our city and our um recommendation which is still the same as it is today was that they should amend the code to prevent new fossil fuel infrastructure the zoning code they should impose fossil fuel risk bonds what staff means going to talk about later and they should add enhanced environmental and seismic review to any of these large-scale facilities ultimately the city opted to go with option number one alone to to do the zoning changes so after a year of development many stakeholder meetings um many many many many many many stakeholder meetings um we finally passed a ordinance um to ban new fossil fuel infrastructure large-scale fossil fuel infrastructure so this is in yellow what the code says um we created a land use called bulk fossil fuel terminals which means um either it's got marine railroad pipeline transport access and storage capacity of two million gallons or more uh or transloading ability which means to move from like rail to ship so that became a regulated use that was banned so nothing that fit that category was allowed in the city and then we also um prevented the expansion of existing fossil fuel infrastructure because we were worried that some of the existing terminals would just expand their footprint and kind of like make up for that capacity anyway um initially the city was going to allow a 10 or 15 percent expansion of existing storage terminals but the fossil fuel industry told the city that they and it was to incentivize seismic upgrades but the fossil fuel industry said that they weren't going to do seismic infrastructure upgrades regardless and so the city got rid of the the expansion into some more capital where it's at so very very significant um first of its kind um a lot of design went into making sure that we weren't running a file of commerce clause type issues and we we thought about this in advance but nevertheless we recently got a bad decision out of a land use board of appeals and um so and this is pretty much reported is that a court has reviewed Oregon's or Portland's fossil fuel infrastructure terminal zoning amendments and said no to it um there are a lot of caveats and we wanted to to let people know who are around the the region who might be thinking about doing this that you should pay close attention to the dormant commerce clause but also pay attention to this appeal that's currently going on where we're going to the Oregon court of appeals because it's very likely that the the land use board decision is going to get overruled um our opinion as appellants both the city and us and some of our partners are appealing this case is that this is a really poor understanding of the dormant commerce clause from the land use board of appeals um the an is going to send out some briefs that our attorneys and the city's attorneys in the league of Oregon cities have put a amicus brief in the in this case so that you can see in more detail but basically we come into this in a situation where um and the land use board of appeals is an administrative sort of a hearings court it's not a it's not a constitutional court I guess you could say um so they do land use specialty and so it's already weird because they're making pretty big rulings on a constitutional issue and not just rent land use issues and then another sort of oddity of this case is that we have three land use uh board hearing officers and two of those three officers recused themselves because they had some kind of a personal stake so one of the three made this decision so um anyway dormant commerce clause for folks that are not super familiar basically just means that you're not allowed to when you regulate you're not allowed to say that local interests have some kind of bias some kind of benefit that out of state interest can't have or you can't just burden out of state interests and protect local interests in our case that didn't happen so it's it's odd that the commerce the dormant commerce clause applied in our case um and there's a great amount of precedent to suggest that as long as your regulations are neutral and they affect all entities similarly such a den situated entities in the same way that you should survive challenge and one one benefit that we didn't get here locally um is that the the cities and the states are supposed to get um they're going to supposed to get a lot of the benefit of that out here the burden of proof is supposed to be on the challengers and in our case for some reason the the hearings officer gave a lot of that sort of benefit to the to the the challengers instead so it's it's kind of a complicated area here and I know that the commerce clauses served as a barrier for a lot of people as they think about going forward here but we want to say to anybody who's thinking about putting in land use regulations or risk bonds or advanced environmental review take a very close look at this and we think that the closer you get to it what looks like a pretty strong barrier actually turns into something that's very manageable and again we expect that on appeal that we're going to get a much better decision out of our our formal courts in the Orton Court of Appeals um so I think that's my time and I've you know got lots to say but I'll wait for questions to answer what you all want to hear about hey thanks so much Nick that's uh really fantastic and an amazing work from all of you there in uh Portman uh I think the dormant commerce clause issue is going to be an interesting one one we juxtapose of with uh all the land use powers that municipalities have um we're having some great questions come in and for those of you who are posting questions to the q and a screen we see you uh and we see those questions and we're going to address them at the end um after Daphne so Daphne Wysham take it away thanks Matt and thanks to the folks that stand for hosting this webinar um just to re-emphasize a couple of things that Nick just touched on when we first moved forward with our uh opposition to the Pemona propane terminal we did have a suite of three issues which included uh the ordinance that we did succeed in passing risk bonds which i'm going to be talking about as well as enhanced environmental review and we think that that suite of three options is really something that other cities looking to duplicate what we've tried to do here in portland should consider and moving forward we think it's sort of like a triple insurance policy for local activists so i'm going to be focusing in on a way that local folks can make polluters pay locally for the risks and the costs that they are currently externally externalizing on all of us locally and globally um all you need to do is look at the headlines today to see the cost of climate change some are suggesting that hurricanes Irma and Hugo alone the costs from those those two hurricanes will be over 200 billion now that doesn't include the cost from Puerto Rico that has now been uh hit by Hurricane Maria um and who will pay well the question uh was asked by NRDC in a study that they did a few years ago they found that in 2012 uh climate related weather related property claims uh came to about 110 billion dollars and of that private insurers only picked up 25 of the tab leaving the other 75 percent for us taxpayers to cover um as they wrote in their report um climate change doesn't show up as a line item in the budget but you could say that uh there is a climate disruption budget that's relatively uh invisible but it's equal to one out of every six dollars spent on non-defense discretionary programs making it the number one item in that part of the federal budget so if our climate disruption budget in 2012 was bigger than what we spent on things like transportation or education imagine what it's going to be like in 2017 where we have damages from these hurricanes exceeding 200 billion um but there are other costs that are of course associated with fossil fuels that we all know about um that also get picked up by the public sector the costs of fossil fuel extraction storage refining transport and combustion whether it's the costs of abandoned infrastructure and mines that need to be cleaned up or the costs of explosions at fossil fuel refineries or storage tanks we're all being exposed to these risks and costs that are not being adequately covered by existing insurance and financial assurance mechanisms which means ultimately that the costs are then falling back on us the taxpayer so um just to give you one example um you may recall this major disaster that occurred in lackmig antique in in canada where an oil train derailed and exploded and vaporized the town killing 47 people the cost there was roughly two billion dollars but the company declared bankruptcy and left the canadian government to pick up the tab so what we're trying to do at csc is to work to put the onus for all of these risks and costs back on the polluter not the taxpayer um we're working with elected officials throughout the u.s and canada interested in pledging to take on the health and safety risks of existing fossil fuel infrastructure together with the climate risks that fossil fuels opposed to all of us with this concept that we call fossil fuel risk bonds we're excited that the mayor of portland oregon ted wheeler has expressed interest in moving forward with us at csc in pursuing this option as a way of further safeguarding our city from the hazards of the fossil fuel industry we're also in touch with other elected officials who are eager to work with us on this and we will be sending out to everybody who has rsvp for this call a draft model resolution that we help prepare for the city of san louisa vispo elected officials there have expressed interest in putting in place a fossil fuel risk bond to address the concerns that they have over oil trains that are coming through their town so just to sort of discuss the fossil fuel risk bond program there are broad two broad categories one is you could sort of think of it as a point source risk and the other would be the non point source risk so climate change and fracking related earthquakes that damage homes those could be considered non point source risks sort of more generalized risks that are associated with fossil fuel extraction and combustion whereas potential explosions of large storage tanks or other local hazards would fall into the category of what you could call point source risks covered under the fossil fuel risk bonding program so the way we envision the fossil fuel risk bond program being put in place it could work in tandem with other market-based solutions like a carbon tax for internalizing the social costs of carbon however unlike these other approaches the fossil fuel risk bond program would directly be targeted at public financial risks we've written a report which is up on our website and i think anna's going to share a link to that report with all of you our website is sustainable-economy.org we know that portland is overdue for a 9.0 earthquake and we can't afford to keep adding more explosive infrastructure and hazards to an already dangerous earthquake subduction zone as i mentioned other cities want to perhaps take on gas pipelines or oil trains or other proposed fossil fuel infrastructure where they are afraid that they're going to be left holding the bag when there's a major explosion so what we want to do is build a bottom up a strong network of local communities saying no to not only new fossil fuel infrastructure but continued pilfering of our public funds for these outrageous and growing costs that the fossil fuel industry is externalizing on all of us and say yes to a healthier resilient future so if you want to learn more and get involved in this network we have another website which is known new ffi.org if you go up there you can see a tab where you can sign up as either an elected official or an individual or an organization or a business and we will add you to our growing list of folks that are eager to work with us on this approach and if you have specific questions around this our president and senior economist john talberth will be responding in greater detail in the q&a thank you well thanks so much to all three of you and we've got a bunch of great questions coming in super useful stuff and i'll turn it back over to you and we can get people's questions answered terrific thanks matt thank you all the presenters i think i've got everybody unmuted for the q&a and discussion and i want to just point out a couple of the ways to to participate interactively today and one is to just drop into the q&a or the well first of all i should remind everybody this is a public webcast and we may also have some reporters on the on the line which would be great because we want this work to be well known and to spread far and wide but just you know don't give away the store if there's something that you would just want to share activist to activist just keep that a little close to your chest but information that you can share publicly if we would welcome your dropping into the chat or the q&a that where you're working and what you're working on how how what you're doing day to day relates to to this topic today and and then of course questions that you have for the presenters or insights that you want to share also very welcome if you are okay with us seeing and hearing you today put that in to the q&a and we'll try to bring up your audio and video and if you want to ask your question or make the note anonymously go ahead and use the chat for that and we do have some really great questions the presenters have probably been taking a look at them too but i just was going to kind of start from the top of the q&a pile and matt wave your hands around violently or other presenters if you had a different idea but there are there's a there's one anonymous question let me kick us off with this and then i'll go ahead and unmute charles who could be our next question i'll give charles a heads up and while i get charles set up let me ask this question is quote unquote local standing at risk legally i volunteer nick i'm not entirely sure what the questionnaire is asking about local standing on this and what is it is if it's referring to like if we take depths locally so maybe the anonymous commenter could clarify a little bit and so this this came in when i was talking so so i think it may be addressing the question of local powers regarding land use regulation and zoning and i would say that if in fact that's the questions about that's not at risk we have a national system where these all these different zoning decisions and permitting decisions about local land use are implemented by thousands of municipalities in theory i guess it could be at risk someday but it's certainly nobody that i know is going after it now okay and along that i would add that the supreme court has said repeatedly that when municipalities are regulating for health and safety that their powers are actually at their strongest so when when you act on regulating for health and safety you're acting in a very protected zone and law is very fluid and political and you know it can change but that's how it is right now yeah and if i might add one thing that that's the purpose of our legal study that we that we're embarking on is to look at just that just what you know where do local powers begin and end and i would agree that health and safety is of your public is is probably the number one priority terrific we're going to bring in charles audio and for those who um are just on by phone charles is wearing a really great shirt today he's wearing his stop oil trains now shirt welcome charles and um and share your question um okay so um i'm down here in San Luis Obispo and um we are really active on infrastructure we were really fortunate to stop the philip 66 oil train terminal proposal and um now we're got an initiative that we're getting together for the ballot to stop and fracking and stop new oil oil development here and my question is and and really want to express appreciation to stand for helping us in that effort it was a coalition effort down here to stop philips and that's really kind of what my question um is in general to you folks that play this on a lot higher level than i do how do you see yourselves helping us locals how can you be most helpful to us in supporting us in the work we're doing here in the grass roots and how is there some way to start putting together our defenses um when you know the fossil lobbies coming after us after we win politically they come back and are showing us in the courts um and how do we start coordinating our defensive efforts on these similar issues across so many of our communities i mean economy of scale here for defense that was kind of long winded thank you so much for this is a great learning experience for me well yeah i'll jump in thanks charles for all your activism and as i mentioned in my comments we are actually in touch with your city council they are possibly interested in pursuing the fossil fuel risk bonding approach that i was discussing and i will be you will be getting a copy of the model resolution that we prepared for the city council um it would of course there's only so much that we can do up here in portland oregon to make sure that that happens that's where you come in if you are eager to if you see this as an option that you might want to include in the in the suite of issues that you're working on to discourage the expansion of the fossil fuel industry in san luisadispo then we'd love to work with you on strategy on that um i think as i was saying earlier you know and somebody asked for a repetition of the three things um that i touched on one is you know the the the resolution that becomes a binding ordinance that's that's that's option number one the other is the fossil fuel risk bonding we feel like that's sort of a an insurance policy of sorts and it's also more appropriate for communities like san luisadispo where you're not necessarily a port city um so it's not necessarily a question of new fossil fuel infrastructure but you just want to deal with the hazards that are coming through your community on a daily basis and you want to make sure that those risks and the costs of those risks are borne by the polluter by the by the oil industry and not by the community um and then the third thing is the enhanced environmental protection which you know that john i'm sorry nick can speak more to that but um one other thing just before i forget i don't i'm not sure we thank portland autobahn who was uh also part of our coalition i just wanted to do a shout out to them since they were really great um in in working with us and can i jump in real quick um we've um been really lucky in portland to have pro bono representation as interveners in our own case here and we have in oregon quite a few public interest law firms that have so i think as you begin to organize around whatever it is you do like checking in with public interest for law firms that are in your city or in your region early on is really important just even if the first time you talk to them they're kind of like okay i don't really get it what's going on like getting it on their radar so that you can repeatedly kind of like give them updates and even asking them to testify and maybe ask them for some things like some of those groups will get involved um and they have an interest to get involved as well so public interest c3 type law firms have to fundraise as well and you know here the in portland our ordinance was like a national item and so you know they they also they want to win but they also care about the profile associated with it so there are a lot of ways that you can pitch this to attorneys in your area and then with regard to national groups i know that 350 and food and water watch and some other groups are really thinking about this stuff at a national level as well um c r club is i think they're doing more of like the renewable stuff but those groups have resources as well and so we should be kind of like knocking on their doors quite a bit to say like hey if you're going to be looking into doing this work nationally like be ready to help us prepare those legal defenses because we need to actually win and set precedent if we're going to be successful and have this stuff complete the nation also one more thing just to throw out there which is that the youth and the elders were absolutely critical in our successes the raging grannies were very vocal they were sort of our secret weapon and the young people that testified at city hall they just riveted um city counselors with their testimony and we've now worked with them to help set up a youth climate commission where they will actually have a formal role in advising the city council on climate matters i mean after all it's their future that we're talking about and yet they don't have a voice so i think that can be done in san louis abispo and and other cities all over the place sorry now so yeah if i could add two things those are all great um i think one of the things that you touched on charles is the common uh issues that we're all facing uh one of the reasons uh that's one of the reasons we created the crude awakening network that we mentioned earlier uh anybody who's on this call just interested in joining we have a monthly call uh usually lasts about an hour and a half and we have people calling from all over the country uh and share what tactics they're taking what experiences they're having where their setbacks um what kind of best practices is really what we're trying to get at how we can share those things with each other um i think next absolutely right we should be reaching out for national groups for resources uh on some of these legal fronts but uh at a lower level by sharing together i think we can really actually amplify our voices and what we're doing um associated with that as well uh for folks who are interested we are hosting a national conference with about 15 other groups uh november 17 to 20 in pittsburgh pennsylvania not california uh and that will be focused on folks who are fighting fossil fuel infrastructure uh and we invite you to to reach out to us through am for this webinar both to get added to the crude awakening network mailing list for the next call and also to get information about that conference those are great notes matt and we will um we will put the once we have the recording from today posted i'll send it around to everybody who's rsvp and we'll put other goodies in there several people um are asking and and dafney is uh is letting folks know that the documents um that were used in portland we're going to send those around so that you can check them out and um uh so you'll have those in your inbox as soon as we get uh get the webcast posted and um if you're interested in these things you can also let us know now you can drop a note in the chat or in the q&a say i'm interested in the crude awakening network or i want more information about the conference and uh and we will we'll try to remember to put all that in also um and um i have um a question that i want to bring up um from minda so i'm going to go ahead and uh promote you to a panelist is what it's called in the webcast system and hopefully we'll be able to see and hear you in just a moment oh great hey minda hey can you hear me okay mr can great um my question was really simple i was particularly interested in the zoning discussion from earlier and i i just um not very familiar with it at all and i'm curious about what the first steps are are the first steps reaching out to city counselors are the first steps um lawyer i'm just sort of curious about the end result is really neat but sort of how do what is the first thing you should be doing very you want to talk about that sure i know again we started we started out uh you know our efforts with a huge amount of public support a huge amount of ideas that were coming from the public and as we the tools that we use legislatively was was to uh approach the comprehensive plan which that's the goals for the council for the next ten years and uh once we kind of cogealed all our ideas into this you know the moratorium on exporting of of unrefined fuels then we were able to to move forward we had a solid idea but we wouldn't have been able to get started without that support from our community you have to you have to turn to your community you have to trust your community and you really have to inform them as well and i again we just couldn't have done it without the support that we had here it was just tremendous and if i could get a even a little more basic and i think the the answer is it depends uh in part depending on what state you're in and what your city regulations look like um each of the things that we talked about earlier uh was usually associated with a land use plan update um so that these land use plans exist uh that there's there's code on the books they've usually been passed as a as ordinance and created in code by a elected body of some sort um and so one of the things that i'd say is first off you can reach out to us we're happy to help you take first steps um secondly depending on where you are it may be that you're reaching out to a city council member and perhaps on it represents you directly uh or the one that seems friendliest and ask them what are the opportunities to influence uh land use coding or zoning who can i talk to one of the next steps for public engagement um that sort of thing yeah would definitely say that attorneys can be really useful here um because attorneys are always useful um just kidding but um land use is a is a is a tough area of law i don't practice land use specifically so we have to rely on sort of like outside counsel and expertise when we really want to get into details so sometimes you get lucky and there are people who are really like knowledgeable in that area who live in your community or similar your line so if you do have those people having them early on can be really really useful because if you run into a city that kind of wants to give you the run around and maybe like tell you they can't do it for whatever reason and you've got support to help you sort of like identify why those are false claims and you can maybe move through that a little bit better and and cities generally uh whether it's fair or not they they listen to people that have lawyers a lot more than they do with that it's just one of those facts um and uh similarly we can also provide some support our funding for me is to to support people who are doing this work and so if they're kind of like basic questions that you need answered the recent tasks and stuff a lot of times I can take those on or at least search through my Rolodex or ask our partners until we find somebody that's doing that type of work that you might great I'm going to bring in a question from Helen and then a question from Ethan right let's see if we can bring up Helen let's see I'm having a little trouble getting maybe you could read out the questions yeah I think I should okay Helen I'm sorry about that here we go Helen is with a non-profit watchdog in Ventura County citizens for responsible oil and gas in Ventura County fighting permits at the county level and working with our state representatives who are all supportive currently we have two suits against the industry pending in Superior Court how best to get the local elected officials to take our CEQA arguments seriously um and maybe somebody can yeah make sure that we spell out what that is again they don't and they don't take them seriously and we have numerous examples of errors on the planning staff all set to benefit the industry and Matt you're muted uh yeah this is a critical question I think it plays uh or connects really well to uh Barry's comment that having lots of public participation is a thing that's going to actually make your local elected officials pay attention there may not be a process in place of those permits right now where they're actively seeking public input which is usually one of the best places to participate but if they're not seeking input right now that doesn't mean you can't give it and so I'd encourage you that there's any number of things you can do you can hold a town hall or a forum to talk about the issues to represent why you're concerned I don't know the status of your local groups there or whatnot but uh that's something that we can help with if you wish um but anything that shows that there's actual public attention being paid to this issue where the the voting public uh is concerned about the same issues that you're identifying with the California Environmental Quality Act CEQA um that's that's I would say my go-to effort to get officials to pay attention but I see Barry's unmuted and perhaps he has some thoughts as well I just wanted to throw in I mentioned it before of having one idea if I get 10 people uh that meet with me and I have 10 different ideas it's a lot harder to get behind than if there's been some organization taking place uh prior to to meeting with elected officials that 10 people are bringing the same idea or close to it that way it doesn't get fragmented so I think it's important that when you move forward you move forward with a with a strong voice and a unified voice and this is Anne I'm going to bring in Ethan um who until recently was with Standout Earth doing great oil train work hey Ethan and um while I make sure that we can see and hear you um uh I have a follow-up actually from Minda's question um for the host for the presenters to think about um and we'll go to it after Ethan's question which is um uh Barry noted you know he knew that he had all of this support um how do you find out if you're in a community that there are other people who um feel similarly to you if there isn't already a group formed around this so let me just let you all think about that for a minute and let me um make it so we can hear Ethan can you hear me oh we can okay good right on great everyone this has been really really interesting you know doing amazing work um I'm curious if like folks um on the various like legal policy teams looking at local ordinances have looked at whether or not there's anything that could be done with regards to pipelines oil and gas pipelines that are federally regulated if there are any like local hooks that could potentially prevent uh or restrict pipeline development specifically that's my question yeah I'll uh I'll take a shot at that one that's our that's our next step is we we have a proposed pipeline that that uh it's a Canadian pipeline that uh the Canadians uh up in British Columbia are refusing to allow it to run through their neighborhoods so Williams or it's not Williams is it kinder Morgan kinder Morgan sorry they they want to now run this pipeline across the Canadian border through the state of Washington and then under the straight of Georgia back to a Canadian territory over on Vancouver Island so um while we had the moratorium in place at Cherry Point which is the original destination point in the US for that before it left to go back into Canada they are now proposing a little wiggle and to put it up oh there's just a few miles to the north in a different urban growth area so we are now considering what we're going to do to be able to do a broader countywide initiative to to help block that pipeline from coming through our our county they're also considering doing imminent domain along the way for those unwilling property owners that don't want to give easements so it's it's a big deal right now where it's kind of scrambling to figure out how we're going to approach this but uh I guess the jury's out but we'll get back to you on on what we end up successfully being able to implement yeah and I would also add that there there is a lot of state authority with regard to pipelines especially when pipelines are crossing waterways the state retains all states retain Clean Water Act authority and a lot of pipelines that are being defeated around the country are being defeated under provisions that allow states to take a close look at that so that's that's one thing but if you don't live in a state that's particularly like working with you on that um you know one of the reasons why we are just working with risk bonds is that we think this might be a tool that can be useful for pipelines as well we probably can't within that say no in the same way that we could with storage facilities and transfer facilities for fossil fuels but we may be able to put a very high cost um for sort of like the worst-case catastrophe that would serve as a disincentive to building a pipeline in your community thanks okay great did anyone else want to jump in on that question um I just wanted to add you know just seconding what nit was saying and also um that especially for conservative rural areas when you begin talking about you know why should you be paying the costs and the risks associated with this pipeline coming through your community and have your land taken away from you with eminent domain um you you can begin to shift perhaps where a blanket no uh for for new fossil fuel infrastructure may not work where you can shift the costs uh back on the on the uh the industry I think you you I mean we're going to be trying this out we have yet to prove it because this is something we're going to be trying out in Oregon where we have pipeline coming through okay great um thank you Ethan and so let me give the panelists a moment to talk about that question of if you're we've heard a little bit about step one procedurally what about finding your allies and we did have one question about working with faith communities and I wonder if any of you are organizing with faith communities other places that you found supporters and suggestions for people who are not necessarily plugged into activist groups or there aren't activist groups yet forming around these issues and and what they can do and I know that we are at time so I think we're going to have our panelists answer this one and then um if they have a little time after the webcast I might see if we can hit one or two more questions that came in that we haven't gotten to but we'll we'll let most of most of us go um but yeah go ahead and on this question about finding your allies I'll jump in um I I would say that actually the faith community is a good place to to start locally um depending on your community um a lot of the uh the churches in the pacific northwest I don't know where you're calling from um have begun to mobilize and organize around the climate crisis and they have uh for example the unitarians we're very engaged in our local climate action coalition um they have a community for earth coalition that has been very engaged in opposing new fossil fuel infrastructure so I think the faith community is the place to start um and you know beginning beginning your own uh group perhaps on facebook is another suggestion I'm not sure if that would work in your community but I'll let others chime in another thing I was thinking of is find a find a kind of a common an organization that's common you know coast to coast like like a Sierra club that would have a chapter in your in your vicinity that could help you organize and they they would certainly I'm sure be supportive of your cause yeah and Judd just sat on that as well um I'd invite you to join the crew to make a crew awakening network that I mentioned earlier um we can get messages out there to see if there are folks in your area who are working on these issues um letters the editor have actually been used to start groups and look out or try to find people just talk about your concerns and invite people to reach out to you um and then you reach out to groups like us or earthworks or or the Center for Sustainable Economy uh very mentioned you know the national groups but there's a whole lot of different groups out there who might be able to connect to you as folks in your community um and help get you moving that way yeah and to follow up on on what Matt is talking about you could um speak at it sort of traditional public for like a lot of city councils and county commissions have public testimony time and so even just kind of like asking some questions in that public force sometimes they're televised you know you can you can get that um schools tend to be good places to think about this so anybody who has children use usually are concerned about risks and so that can be like trying to figure out teachers are aware of this kind of stuff teachers unions the PTA is a good place um neighborhood association meetings is another good place to kind of see if there are people there and then I also like the idea of letters for the editors so just kind of like think about what are the traditional public for uh where people communicate in your community and just sort of like put it out in those spaces hey everybody I I think one of our this is the interactivity it's the other side of it we had somebody bring their um they're trying to connect I think uh Helen that you're accidentally sharing your screen with us so I'm trying to figure out how to shut that down um uh but I'm having a little trouble doing that here I'm going to try to bring up next slides here for a second okay um so we did have if we can squeeze in one more question from Roberta who has been waiting patiently I'm going to try to uh bring in Roberta and give me just a second to do that and then um and then we'll go ahead and wind it down for today all right we'll see if we can get Roberta's video and hi is that Roberta hello hey Roberta great hi thank you so much I just have a quick question I was wondering if um if the ordinance that the zoning ordinance that was passed in Portland if there is um language that can be shared uh and potentially you know can be replicated across the nation um so that's question number one and then the other question that I had was for Mark I was wondering if he was aware of any possible um new um fossil fuel infrastructure um that um is planned to be in build in the Bay Area California so let me just jump in to say that the documents will be sent around so you'll be able to take a look at what was used in Portland and so just because we're low on time maybe um if Matt wanted to weigh in on things that you might know of in the Bay Area anybody else knows things that might get a a real run on infrastructure applications in the in the near term and several of you are muted so um panelists let me uh there we go we can hear you Daphne and yeah go ahead uh yeah on the Bay Area question right now one of the big uh upcoming issues it's already started moving forward and and what they call the scoping process for the environmental impact report is um the Philip 66 has proposed a new marine terminal um the purpose of this marine terminal would be to bring in I think it's around 60 or 70 more ships a year um that would be filled with Tartan's crew from uh Canada which uh both presents spill risk as well as emissions risks that impact the communities there um so other things that are on the books right now that Philip 66 project in the Bay Area is probably the number one concern associated with it it's not exactly extreme oil per se but the Bay Area Air Quality Management District is also considering caps on emissions from all the refineries in the area that's going to be a fight that we're engaging in for months to come um and so if you reach out to us at stand um or to the folks at communities for a better environment um or age of Pacific Environmental Network we can plug you in whoever you feel like you fit best in order to to work on those issues thank you okay great with that um I just want to invite any closing thoughts from our panelists and uh and thank them again for um for all the prep and and all of their work and thank the audience for being here today but I want to invite um any closing thoughts from panelists I just like to thank everybody for for viewing this today and realizing how important it is that we get the word out that we can do things locally that can affect climate change and affect our environment in a very positive way so I just encourage everyone to use all the tools they have in their toolbox to uh to do the things that are right for you know for our environment so thank you all for having me as well yeah there's a lot of us fighting this now um sometimes it doesn't seem like it but we get an indication of how many people are involved in this struggle from time to time um the Vancouver oil terminal has a process that's ongoing and something like 270,000 people submitted comments or something like that uh in of opposition at one point and so it's like sometimes you see how many people there so there are a lot of us and we are trying to find these solutions now we don't have all the answers and the political groundwork is always shifting but I mean we're I think we're in a really good position um we're starting to develop the resources groups like STAND and CSE and others are like figuring out how to share those resources and we really want to help so like let us know how we can help and the more and more places that we put this these types of regulations in place the better off we're gonna be and we can get that renewable energy economy that we all want yeah I would just add the antidote to despair is activism and it's also where you meet the best people so you know once you get engaged in these struggles you'll find you're surrounded by amazing human beings that care a lot about your community and about the future of the planet and um as much as it seems that uh things are going crazy at the federal level we really can work with our elected officials locally and have an impact and that ultimately trickles up to uh to national and global impacts so hope we can get everybody on this call engaged we need all of you and for and that's wonderful Daphne and and that ties into my final comment is actually I want to answer a question from Emily Ferguson um she asks how do you convince members of your local community to get involved and give them the confidence that there's a possibility of success um and my answer that is we've got a bunch of examples of success um I can point you to the article I mentioned earlier from Zari Herji but um come join us on the crude awakening network calls um for years two or three years now we've usually let a call with a recent success somebody's had um and then around the country there's 20 some oil train terminals that have been stopped there are pipelines that have been stopped um there are other facilities and uh proof concept is out there you know work where people organize and work together in communities and work with their local elected officials we can win on this stuff um so reach out and let's talk terrific everybody with that I'm going to ask our panelists to um stay put for just a minute because we do have a couple questions that we'll try to get to um and they'll be part of the recording though not part of the live event um and so um I see our audience members um uh closing down their links so thank you all so much and I will go ahead and close down your link um if you haven't gotten through it first and uh thank you all so much for being here today so let me just see if there are any questions that we didn't get to there are a couple we didn't get to that we want to chat about now we had um uh somebody asked if the um for nick if the white paper could be used as the basis for a national referendum I'm just going to run these by you and you and we can see which ones we want to ask um let's see um there's a question uh during our fight against the coal terminal the proponents hired a political land use black ops company named saint consulting their goal was to create oh and barry you're on mute I just noticed their goal was to create full support our council was basically told not to study research to talk about the project by the county attorney will the new study look at that issue because other councils have talked specifically about projects like this um so there's a question about dealing with black ops and um and uh council people getting told that they can't discuss um there's the question about using the white paper for a national represent referendum let me just see if anybody want to jump in on either of those well I can jump in on the the can't discuss portion but not the black ops part of that but uh we were we were bound by uh when we were running in 2013 we were bound by uh kind of the appearance of fairness act uh in that we would have ended up the council would have ended up being uh quasi judicial in the decision whether or not the coal terminal could go in uh and we were we were told that you know we we can't talk about that at all because you are now entering into that ex parte communication with either the pro side or the cons side so we were stuck for a long time for until 2016 when we got into our cop plan and and once the the Lummi nation had gotten the favorable ruling from the army core of engineers we felt we were able to talk about it and we proceeded you know last summer to start being able to publicly discuss but that was very frustrating for us always being told by our our county attorney that we can't discuss it so we just had to wait it out until there the situation and the and the circumstances presented themselves that we could move forward without risk of being uh uh in contradiction with that fairness act just one thing to add on about the appearance of fairness doctrine that Barry's referring to is a Washington state law and every state will have some different version of that in this case the legal advice it was offered to our county council uh was deeply flawed um in particular from the analysis of my dad the lawyer in my family who helped create the appearance of fairness doctrine uh 40 some years ago um so it uh this is one of the games they play and there's unquestionably communication from the other side to council to the council and in part through groups like st consulting the Calvert street group there's others out there who are working to direct the lobbyists creating the appearance of local support um trying to restrict turnout at different community meetings uh actively for physically providing people from going to community beings in a couple of towns here um so if that stuff happens uh by all means reach out to your your national groups and your next you know favorite lawyer like nick um and we'll work to see what we can uh do to deal with those folks yeah um with shenanigans I mean they're gonna happen all the time it's just because there's so much money on the line that people are gonna play with whatever boundaries they can and you just work through it and when you identify those tactics you you know combat them however you can so I'm not sure I have a ton of advice there um the um um question about the national referendum again can we use the white paper as a basis for a national referendum um so I'm I'm not exactly sure what's meant by that in a formal sense we can't do referendums on a national level um we don't have the initiative process in the federal government like some states do too bad um might be fun but that um 350 contracted with me to write that so that they could share it they they want people to see that and they want people to sort of see that there are ways in which their communities wherever they are can take some of the lessons that we have and try to apply them in their communities so as an author I'm perfectly fine with people like taking the lessons and trying to communicate them elsewhere um and maybe if they're like more specific questions or clarifications about what a national referendum means actually that um p.m. Thomas could like email me or something like that and tell me in greater detail what he means