 Next up on the agenda, we were going to hear about decision related to Portland land use. This is the case we've been following for a while and we're excited and then disappointed, and I think we can be excited again now. Nick Cale, Center for Sustainable Economy, are you on the line? Right here. Great. Can you tell us the latest? For folks who may not have been following it as closely, can you give us just a little background on Portland's land use policy and sort of how we got here? Absolutely. So the briefest sort of background I can give, and if people want a little bit more, feel free to ask questions in a minute. But in Portland, we had a lot of organizations and advocates who had been working in fossil fuel terminal resistance and transport resistance. We didn't have anything in Portland for a long time and then in 2014, gas terminal was proposed, the propane gas terminal was proposed, large investment, folks mobilized. We ended up feeding it basically because of a land use technicality. And in the wake of that mobilization, we're able to convince our city to first pass a resolution opposing new fossil fuel infrastructure and then later land use code restricting fossil fuel infrastructure. So our knowledge is the first example of that happening anywhere in the country, at least in the comprehensive way that it happened in Portland. And so just to give you a little bit of an understanding of what that was, we created a new land use category called bulk fossil fuel terminals, which is characterized by either marine railroad or pipeline transport access and storage capacity of over two million gallons equivalent of gas and oil or you have transloading facilities. So if you're moving from your fossil fuel substance from rail to ship or likewise. So we also prevented the expansion of existing fossil fuel infrastructure. So there's quite a bit in Portland in the Northwest industrial area. So we restricted that. There would be no expansion to that. So it's a big deal. We were really excited about it. We got sued months after it was implemented by the Portland Business Alliance, which is a local chamber of commerce, the Western States Trolline Association and the Columbia Pacific buildings trades. And a group called Working Waterfront intervened. We got sued in land use courts, the Land Use Board of Appeals in Oregon. And the arguments against the code were that it violated several land use laws, state land use laws, but also the big one was that it violated the U.S. Constitution through the Dharma Commerce Clause. And so we had kind of a strange decision out of the Land Use Board of Appeals where we lost only one of three hearings officers participated in that ruling, the other two recused themselves. It's very strange. And we ended up losing on a couple of land use issues. And then the paper was a constitutional issue, which, you know, we've been working at CSE and some of our partners have been working to try to work with our partners around the country to start experimenting with these codes. And so that put a lot of, that's the cold water on that effort. And both said, well, you know, what's the point of engaging in this? Of course, we're going to actually just overturn our local regulations on the basis of the U.S. Constitution. And so the city of Portland voted to peel that decision. And then the Center for Sustainable Economy, where I work, along with Columbia River Keeper and Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Oregon Chapter and Portland Audubon, we intervened in the appeal as well, and Craig Law Center represented us. So in a pretty quick turnaround, the case of files in August, our appeal of August, we got our decision in January. And the constitutional ruling at the headlubo was overturned. So our Court of Appeals issued a very clear decision saying, look, the Dormant Commerce Clause does not mean what Luba thought it meant. And the city of Portland is not, they're not forbidden by the U.S. Constitution from establishing these codes. And I'll give you a little bit of an overview of what the Dormant Commerce Clause is like here. So as it stands, we're in a position where, so we found out this morning that the fossil fuel industry is going to petition the Oregon Court of Appeals for reconsideration of its decision. Craig, our attorneys, don't think it has much merit. So we'll see what the appeal process looks like. Theoretically, if you go to the Supreme Court, the Oregon Supreme Court, and then be appealed beyond that. So for the time being, restrictions of the kinds of fossil fuel infrastructure that Portland passed do not violate the Dormant Commerce Clause. So I wanted to just touch briefly on what the Dormant Commerce Clause is, so that folks that are kind of in this area of being in local communities where new infrastructure is coming through and they're thinking about restriction but are kind of hearing a little bit of pushback. We don't want to get sued and lose. I'll give you a little bit of an idea what it is. So the Dormant Commerce Clause is kind of the flip side of the normal Commerce Clause and Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, that gives Congress the power to regulate commerce. So the Dormant Commerce Clause says that states are not allowed to discriminate against different forms of commerce. And discrimination here means that they can't bias their rules to protect in-state or local commerce at the expense of out-of-state commerce. So it's the way of sort of having uniformity of commerce rules to allow economics to go and impede it. So the argument against our restrictions was that basically, I mean it was not a great argument in our opinion, but basically that, look, there's obviously a back-in-state commerce because they're saying no new terminals and that's going to slow the growth of this industry and so that just blatantly violates the Dormant Commerce Clause. We thought those four arguments, the Oregon Court of Appeals agreed. They said, nope, you're expanding the definition of what is contained in this area of law. We're restricting it just to this question of are you discriminating against in-state interest out-of-state interest? Portland doesn't really have in-state fossil fuel interest, so how could there be discrimination? And then the second piece of the opinion that to the extent that there is any kind of incidental effect on inter-state commerce, the city's reasons for establishing the code outweigh those effects. And so when the city of Portland passed its code, it relied on the harms of the fossil, protecting residents from the harms of the fossil fuel industry. So those are the facts that large fossil fuel terminals leak and explode and we in the Pacific Northwest live in an area where we're expecting an earthquake, a big earthquake at any time and this would massively increase the risk of these dangers of its industry and so we wanted to put a cap on that risk, basically. So that was considered a legitimate interest. The court also said that the public health problems associated with certain fossil fuels, so for example coal as heavy metals that are linked to cancer and birth defects and other things, they said that regulating that was a piece of a legitimate interest. And then the court also especially noted that the city of Portland's reliance on the Mosier disaster, the Mosier oil spill as sort of our wake-up call and reason for wanting to do that was also part of a legitimate interest. So they said, look, when we take all these things together, Portland has adequate reason to establish this code. So anyway, really, really good decision for us locally. As soon as we get the appeal situation figured out and sort out what's the business alliance and the fossil fuel industry are doing as far as the fields go, the city of Portland will start to start a process to reimplement the ban. They've got to cure a couple of land-use issues. They've got to make some more findings of facts, but basically we've heard from the mayor and also the city attorney that they're really committed to reinstating the code. So in the next month ahead, we'll be returning back to the city of Portland to make sure that that ban is up and running. In the meantime, other communities that have taken a look at Portland's ban have been furious about that. We think that this should give you a little bit more confidence about exploring it more deeply. Of course, you've got to pay attention to your local code and your zoning code and your state laws and there are pramsions that exist in different states, but in terms of that big constitutional question, this is the first time that a court, a proper court, not a land use court, has ruled on this constitutional question and so far so good. So it's a good signal to other folks around the country.