 of the carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions that are building up in the atmosphere, hence the term carbon majors. So these cases, and I'm about to show you a chart, which is a little hard to read, but you can have it for future reference. These cases are tort cases for the most part. They're not the usual environmental cases, seeking compliance with regulatory standards, permit requirements, and so forth. Nor are they constitutional cases. We've got examples of those kinds of cases as well with the famous Giuliana case, which is still sort of lurching along. I guess I'd characterize right now back before Judge Aiken in the Oregon Federal District Court with an argument tomorrow on whether that case should remain viable or be dismissed entirely. But we're not talking about constitutional claims either, although there are lots of those in various stages of litigation around the world. We're zeroing in on tort cases and specifically state law-based tort cases. So state common law is the basis for all of these, well, state common law, and in some cases, state statutes, we should amend to say, which I'll show you on this chart. So let's see if we can pull this up and you can take a look. So it's a little bit hard to read and you don't have to try to read it word for word, but it gives you kind of a sense of the, you know, sort of the tremendous scope of all the cases that we're talking about. And then I'll circle back to the Baltimore case more specifically. So you can see here that these are cases filed by cities, by counties, and by states. We don't yet have any tribal cases, but I can predict that we will be seeing that before too long. And as I mentioned, they're tort cases. So you're going to be familiar with a lot of the tort theories that are being brought in these cases. The early cases focused a lot on nuisance and particularly public nuisance, but also as you see there, trespass, negligence, strict liability, defective design of the product. And of course the products we're talking about here are oil and gas products, you know, the oil we burn in our furnaces or the gas we burn in our cars, unless we have electric vehicles. And by the way, I'll put in a plug for Hyundai's Kona, which we just bought, it's a fabulous car, check it out. And lots of great benefits and discounts to buy one these days, even for struggling law students. So design defect, failure to warn, and then there's a whole category of consumer protection-based cases, which you can see here. And those consumer-based cases are not seeking the same kinds of damages that some of the other tort cases, the nuisance and trespass and failure to warn cases are seeking. These are based on state consumer laws, which typically are codified in statute. And as you see here, they're being brought by the attorneys general. These are obviously blue state attorneys general. We don't know of any red state, Republican state, attorneys general that have brought any of these cases. In fact, the Republican attorneys general can intervene in opposition to these cases and in defense of the oil industry or file amicus briefs and so forth. So, you know, this just kind of gives you a sense that, you know, we're talking about a return really to basic common law doctrines. And if you remember towards, you remember that that involves a question of duty. You know, what duty do these companies owe to the public, to their customers, their shareholders and so forth, and then breach of whatever that duty is, and then damages from the breach. So, the framework of these climate liability cases, you know, although they're dealing with the global phenomenon of climate disruption and all of its manifestations, the legal framework for the cases is the same as it would be in other tort cases, whether you're talking about the tobacco cases, the MBTE cases, which involve the gasoline additive that has contaminated a lot of public water supplies. More recently, we're seeing a wave of litigation against PFOS and PFOA, the forever chemicals, you know, celebrated in the movie Dark Waters, which some of you have seen. And on and on, you know, Monsanto's Roundup, Glyphosate has now resulted in four multi-million dollar judgments. All of these tort cases are based on that same basic formula, duty, breach, damage. And the same is true of these climate cases, although as we'll see, the climate cases do present a lot of novel questions, not only of law, but of proof and evidence and burden of proof and allocation of responsibility. So, the next thing to note in this chart is, you know, where do these cases stand at the moment? You know, all sort of in the framework of, do these cases actually have a chance of succeeding? In other words, will one of these cases actually result in a jury verdict, which would be, you know, measured in the billions, multi-billions of dollars, or not? Or will they fizzle out and disappear like so many of the climate cases so far? And so, a quick rundown is that all of these cases were brought in state court and under the federal rules of civil procedure, they can be removed to federal court. The oil industry has attempted to remove all of these cases to federal court. So far, none of those efforts to remove cases filed in state court to federal court have succeeded. All of the cases were actually remanded back to state court. And with one exception, that's the New York City case, but that case was actually filed in federal court, so it was not removed from state court. I'll talk a little bit more about the New York City case time permitting as we go, but stay focused on these cases that were filed in state court, removed to federal court, and then remanded back to state court. And you can look for yourself on the right hand here for the procedural status of each one of these cases. Time just doesn't permit to go through every single case. So let's talk about Baltimore and how it affects the progress of these cases on this chart. Baltimore, you know, brought its case in Maryland district, Maryland state court, and it was removed to federal court and then remanded back to state court. Then the industry appealed to the Fourth Circuit, Court of Appeals, and in the appeals to the Fourth Circuit, the oil companies focused quite a bit on the doctrine of federal officer participation. And their theory was that because oil companies almost everything they do in one way or another involves the federal government, either through leasing or contracting or regulation, the federal involvement in oil and gas development is of course pretty extensive. So the industry was trying to make the argument that in some cases they were actually acting at the direction, as they put it, of various federal officers. I mean, in one case, for example, the federal government was buying oil and gas and putting it in the National Petroleum Reserve for obviously emergency use. And, you know, the industry was arguing that kind of federal directive or federal involvement triggers federal jurisdiction. They had seven other possible grounds for federal court jurisdiction in addition to the federal officer involvement. And so when the Fourth Circuit took up the appeal of the remand of the Baltimore case back to state court, it focused solely on the federal officer question, not the other seven grounds that the industry was arguing. And it's a convoluted argument based on the text of federal law, federal civil procedure, which I'm not gonna spend any time on because it really doesn't matter at this point. What the Supreme Court said is the Fourth Circuit was wrong to just focus on that sole ground of federal officer involvement. The Fourth Circuit should have considered every conceivable basis that the industry was arguing for why the court, why the cases belong in federal court, not withstanding that the cases, the pleadings in the cases, the complaints in the cases make out solely claims based on state law. There's no reference whatsoever to federal law in the complaints that have been filed in these cases. They're strictly state common law based claims. And the reason for that is twofold. One, the Supreme Court has ruled in another case called AEP, American Electric Power, versus Connecticut, that there is no federal common law basis for claims for either injunctive relief or damages against the oil companies. No federal common law basis for those cases. So there've been several cases brought based on the idea that there was federal common law. They've all been dismissed and no one argues any longer that there's any basis for these cases in federal common law. Second, nor is there any basis in the Clean Air Act for these cases. These are damage cases. These are cases seeking money for the damage that climate change is causing, not injunctions. These are not cases seeking to enforce any regulatory requirements of federal law at all. So the Supreme Court didn't reach any of those specific questions in the Baltimore case. It didn't reach the merits. Justice Gorsuch wrote the opinion. His very first paragraph in the opinion said flat out, this case has nothing to do with the merits of the claims that have been brought, which of course was a big sigh of relief to the plaintiffs in these cases because there was some concern that the Supreme Court, even if it didn't explicitly rule, which was unlikely on the merits of the cases, it might say something fairly negative about these cases, but it didn't. It stayed completely away from the merits of the cases. So the upshot of the Baltimore case is that not only was the Baltimore case sent back to the Fourth Circuit to consider these other possible grounds for first federal jurisdiction, but several of the other cases that are on this chart were also sent back, including the Boulder case. The city and county of Boulder have brought actions against the oil companies for, among other things, the drought and the interference with water supply and snowpack and so forth that's occurring in the West. The same thing for Rhode Island. That case was sent back to the First Circuit for further proceedings. And the Ninth Circuit cases involving San Francisco and Oakland, San Mateo. So four different circuits had cases pending, appeals pending on this question of federal jurisdiction. And as a result of the Baltimore case, it's clear now that we're gonna see another period of time pass while each of these circuit courts deals with these remands. And there may be further appeals of some of these other cases as we go forward. And the rule now is gonna be whatever bases the oil companies are arguing for federal court jurisdiction, those have to be adjudicated through the appeals process in the federal courts. My prediction on this is that these are not stoppers. I've looked at every single opinion that's been written in these cases. And with one exception, they have all rejected every one of the grounds on which the oil companies are claiming federal court jurisdiction. If there's questions about that, you can ask me at the end. But my read of the cases so far and the law sort of in general, is that there is no basis in federal court for these cases to be removed from state court. And therefore, after this period of time, while we sort out some of these jurisdictional arguments my prediction is these cases are gonna wind up back in state court. Now, one thing to keep in mind is that even though the cases are being litigated in state court, that doesn't prevent the oil companies from making arguments like federal law does preempt some of these state common law cases. And one of the arguments that the oil companies is making is that the Clean Air Act preempts any of these state common law cases. The problem they're gonna face in that argument is that the Clean Air Act, like the Clean Water Act, contains a specific savings provision which was specifically designed to preserve state common law claims against entities regulated under the Clean Air Act. And we have quite a bit of precedent for that point. What we haven't seen, of course, is a case quite like this which is against the producers of the products not the power plants that are emitting or the other industrial sources that are emitting the greenhouse gases. So there is an interesting legal question of does the Clean Air Act apply at all in these cases? The industry, of course, is gonna argue, and it's true, that the basis for the state claims for damages is based on the emissions. It's not based on the process of extracting and transporting the oil and gas. It's based on end-use consumption of oil and gas and the emissions that result from that. So that's one of the novel questions presented in these cases, and that is how should the Clean Air Act be interpreted in the context of these cases? And more specifically, how should the savings provision be interpreted? If the Clean Air Act applies, then the savings provision does apply and it must save something. It can't be a dead letter. It can't be a null set. And so we'll have to wait for further developments on that front, but just put a pin in that preemption question, because it's clearly one that ultimately is gonna have to be resolved by the US Supreme Court. The question there is when the industry was actually hoping that the Supreme Court in the Baltimore case might say something about that and it might even go even further and sort of cut through everything and just say, rule by fiat almost, oh, all of these cases are preempted, but it didn't do that. It was very careful not to do that. So now we're gonna have to wait and see how the industry seeks to inject this federal preemption argument into the case and whether it can get that argument back in front of the Supreme Court before one of these cases actually gets to a jury, gets to trial. So that's something to keep an eye on. So that's enough for now on sort of the procedural status. Again, people can ask questions before we're done on any of that. It is convoluted and it's multi-layered. So if there's a little bit of uncertainty and confusion, that's not your fault. Let's go to the broader question for a moment. What kinds of damages are these cases seeking? What are they alleging? And what are they gonna have to prove by a preponderance of the evidence before a state court jury? These are all jury cases so far. Maybe some of the consumer protection cases might be bench trials, but let's stick with jury trials for the moment since that's the big game. That's the major focus of these cases. And so the first point is what kinds of damages and the early cases, the California were the earliest cases and those were almost all based on a combination of sea level rise, coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion. They didn't actually at the time, the cases were filed bring in the wildfire, the catastrophic wildfire damages that are occurring. It would not surprise me to see those come into these cases at some point. Same thing with the Boulder case. It was primarily about water supply and the interruption of sort of the regular pattern of both precipitation and runoff and the need to build bigger reservoirs to capture more of the runoff and so forth. In some cases, Baltimore being one flooding with intense downpours and rainfall that's creating these enormous sinkholes. If you go online and Google Baltimore sinkhole, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. I'm sure it'll be an exhibit in the case and an entire roadway in Baltimore collapsed with all the cars that were on it falling into a 30-foot hole in the ground and so forth. And we know that sea level rise and the associated impacts of flooding is being exacerbated by climate change. Flooding happens without climate change. Sea level rise to some extent, not much happens without it. Drought happens of course, wildfires happen of course, but as you must know by now, what human-caused climate global warming is doing is it's exacerbating, amplifying all of those effects. It's weather on steroids is the way that the climate scientists explain it. So one piece of these cases is gonna lay the scientific foundation for the damage that the cities and states are claiming is actually either the result of climate change, global warming, or is made much worse. And this introduces the whole concept of attribution science. And there are two ways to think about the question of attribution. One is how much of the damage that we see from sea level rise, drought, wildfire, so forth, attributable to temperature increases, global temperature increases and the related effects of those temperature increases like increased precipitation in the atmosphere and so forth. So that's one question. How much of the damage you see in these extreme events can you attribute to climate change? And then the second question and the most important question for these cases is how much of that damage that's being caused by climate change be attributed to these individual defendants, these individual oil companies? So that's called attribution. You might also think of it as allocation of responsibility for a tort. This is a mass tort kind of context we're talking about. And you have to figure out how to allocate responsibility when you have an indivisible problem which climate change is because all of these gases, greenhouse gases, mix very well in the atmosphere. So these are indivisible harms in the context of tort law, which means that parties that are found liable are jointly and severally liable for the damage. And that means that any one of them can be tagged with the entire cost of the damage being caused. If you think about Superfund and the cleanup of hazardous waste sites, that's the most outstanding example we have in environmental law of joint and several liability. And so that concept is embedded in these climate cases. So keep that in mind. So one question is gonna be, you know, what can science tell us about the percentage of damage that's occurring from these events that we're witnessing that can be attributed to climate change? An example of this, by the way, would be Hurricane Harvey, which hit Houston and the Texas Gulf Coast in 2017, post-mortem and then dumped 50 inches of rain on Houston in two days. Post-mortem analysis of that event said that at least 40% of the damage caused by Harvey would not have been caused but for global warming, climate change. So that's an example of what I mean by attributing some percentage of the damage from these individual events or effects to climate change. When it comes to attributing responsibility to individual companies for this damage, there's another body of science that was pioneered by a man named Richard Hede, H-E-E-D-E, and now many others. And these scientists have done very sophisticated modeling and calculations that can actually tease out how much of the emissions that are in the atmosphere are actually attributable to individual oil companies. So that will be another major piece of expert testimony. And of course, if you think about evidence law, you know that in a jury case, the judge is the gatekeeper for the evidence that the jury is allowed to consider and the judge will have to determine what of the scientific evidence that'll be induced in these cases, which is very cutting edge science, how much of that is gonna get to the jury and a vaudeer of individual experts under the do-bearer doctrine is gonna be at the center, I would predict, of these cases as they move closer to trial. But the plaintiff's lawyers are of course, well aware of all of these challenges and are working day and night in preparation for bringing this kind of evidence into court and getting it to the jury and then getting the kind of jury instructions that allows the jury to apply this complex scientific evidence to the claims that are made in the cases. So let me now throw one other kind of central, I think, concept in these cases into the mix. And that is, which of these various theories, tort theories offers the best prospect for success. And I don't think it's nuisance. I think nuisance law, it's not only complicated, it's very uncertain. I mean, nuisance law has been used in these other tort cases. It's been used in tobacco. It was used against the paint companies for lead paint contamination of residential dwellings. It's been used in the PFOA cases and others. So it's not like the nuisance claims don't have some legs, they do. But I think the claims that have the best chance are the ones that are based on failure to warn. And these really are garden variety or plain vanilla tort claims. What the states and cities and counties are alleging, which we've read about now for years, is that these companies knew, going all the way back to the 1970s, that their products were creating emissions that were changing the climate of the earth and warming the globe. It's been documented over and over again in internal corporate documents that the company's own assessments, their own scientists, their own technicians were warning the companies for decades that global warming was real, climate change was real. It was gonna get worse. It was gonna create serious harm. The companies needed to take account of that. And instead of taking account of it and admitting it and disclosing it in securities filings, in promotional materials, in advertisements, instead of acknowledging what they knew, they covered it up. They lied. This is a basic, simple, in concept argument that the tort here, the wrong here is the lying, the deceit, and here's the key for what the plaintiffs are gonna have to prove in court to win. They not only have to prove the company's lied, I don't think they're gonna have any trouble proving that, but they have to prove that the lie caused or contributed to the damage that they're claiming. They have to be able to show that had the companies fessed up, had they been more honest, more transparent, more candid about what they knew, and also had they taken action to address the dangers that they knew were being created and certainly not taken actions to oppose government efforts to address climate change. For example, the Waxman-Markey bill, which died in the Senate in President Obama's first term, the industry organizations were solidly against that legislation and are credited with killing it. So that's the link that the plaintiffs in these cases are gonna have to make, not just that the companies lied, people do lie, companies do lie, but what was the result of the lie? And can they make a strong enough argument to get passed a motion to dismiss or a directed verdict and get the case to the jury on the basis that, but for the lies, we wouldn't be in the situation we're in. We wouldn't be facing the damages that we're having to deal with. We wouldn't be facing the challenge of building seawalls and beach renourishment and bigger reservoirs and moving people out of high hazard areas and floodplains, all of which, by the way, we're facing and so on. That, to me, is the real essence of these climate cases. If they can get a court and a jury to accept that the conduct of the defendants was tortuous and is at least a significant contributor to the damage that's being alleged, they have a chance of winning a verdict. So how would the damages be calculated? That's another tricky part of these cases. In the first instance, states and counties and cities are shelling out money left and right, dealing with all the effects of climate change. Sea level rise, saltwater intrusion, loss of precipitation, heat waves that are hitting major urban areas, causing heat stroke and on and on. So they're gonna have to then get economic testimony that calculates how much money, not only is already being spent to deal with these effects, but going forward, how much money can be anticipated that will be required to adapt to the extent possible to what's coming. We've just seen another UN, it's actually an IPCC report that's even more discouraging and scary than all the others. It's still in draft form, but it'll be out by early next year. So these impacts are bad, they're gonna get a lot worse and they're gonna cost a lot of money. We know that extreme weather events are already resulting in multi-billion dollar loss and damage, particularly in the United States because we have such high value real estate, but all over the world. So that's another piece of these cases is, how should the damages be calculated? How should they be apportioned among the defendants? And on apportionment, the theory is gonna be market share. That was the same theory that's been used in all of these other tort cases, tobacco, lead paint, glyphosate, PFOA, all of these cases come down to individual defendants share of the market. What percentage of the oil and gas is Shell and BP and Exxon and so forth responsible for? And as I say, the emissions that result from the production and promotion of those products, all of that gets thrown into the mixer in these cases and out spits numbers, which will have to be vetted and tested in court. And then finally, the jury will be charged with coming up with a figure to award by way of damages. And as I said, even if these cases get all the way to avert it, this overarching question of preemption will remain. And I'm almost positive that that's got to be resolved by the US Supreme Court. The arguments in favor of preemption are pretty straightforward. The industry is saying, not just preemption, but frankly, a defense to liability in general is number one, we're making products that people want. It's ultimately us, the consumers that are responsible for these problems, if we wouldn't be buying all this gasoline and burning it in our cars, we wouldn't be causing these problems. That's a little clever, but that's one of their arguments. Another one is, this is a global phenomenon. And it can only be dealt with in the legislative, in the political process. It can only be dealt with by the other branches of government, the courts have no business assigning blame and responsibility. That's not really going to in the end solve the problem. And to a certain extent, they're right. Awarding damages doesn't reduce emissions. In fact, the premise of these cases is that emissions are gonna continue and that's the problem. Even if they gradually get reduced or even if they are dramatically reduced, there's still gonna be residual damage. That's the theory of these cases. So these cases are not about solving the climate problem at all, they're about compensating the victims, if you will, or those that are affected by climate change. And then finally, the companies are gonna appeal to the Supreme Court and say, even if the Clean Air Act itself can't be read to preempt all these cases, the court should adopt the doctrine of absolute preemption. This is mostly a conceptual doctrine. It's only been applied in a couple of cases that have little to do with environmental law or climate change. And it's usually where Congress has taken an action that the Supreme Court has deemed to be completely occupying some field. And that's really not the case with the Clean Air Act or any other environmental law, for that matter. But the industry is intent on trying to convince the Supreme Court it should fashion sort of a new rule of jurisprudence, which is there are some problems, some issues for which the resolution does not lie in court, any court, not just not in the federal courts, but not in the state courts either. And that only the Congress and the president, the executive branch can deal effectively with a global problem like climate change. So at some point, I expect to see in the US Supreme Court those kinds of arguments being laid before the court. And as I say, we'll have to wait and see how that works out. So with a couple of minutes to go before I stop, let me bring the shell case into the mix here a little bit because it is an important development. Some of you probably have heard about, read about, studied the Urgenda case, which is the Dutch Supreme Court decision, which is so far the most significant judicial decision on the question of climate mitigation in the world. And the Dutch Supreme Court actually ordered the Dutch government to immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020. And the Dutch government complied and adopted a whole bunch of policies and shut down some coal plants. And rather than fight the decision of the Supreme Court, it decided to accept it and actually enact policies and actions to achieve it. And the Urgenda case was based on primarily the European Convention on Human Rights and two provisions of that convention. But it was also based on Dutch tort law, Dutch constitutional law, and clearly the Dutch courts are more open to judicial intervention in cases where the courts are convinced that that intervention is justified with due regard for separation of powers. The, you know, the Urgenda decision goes in great detail in explaining why climate change presents the kind of existential threat that requires judicial intervention, particularly where constitutional human rights are involved. So that's the background to the Shell decision is the Dutch Supreme Court decision in Urgenda. And then the same organizations that brought the Urgenda case followed up by suing Shell, Royal Dutch Shell, again, under constitutional and human rights arguments. And in this case, it's the district court in the Hague of the Netherlands that issued this really remarkable decision within the last month ordering Shell to reduce its emissions by 45% based on 2019 levels by 2030. Obviously a very rapid drawdown of emissions. The most amazing thing about the court's decision is that it wasn't just talking about the emissions from Shell's own operations. It was talking about what we call scope three scope two and three emissions, which means Shell's entire supply chain for delivering oil and gas to customers and end use by the customers themselves. Those are so-called scope three emissions. Now, if you read the decision carefully, you'll see the court distinguished between the duty to immediately reduce those emissions that Shell actually controls. That was a hard 45% reduction by 2030, no excuses kind of ruling. When it came to the consumer uses the scope three emissions, the court said that Shell must use something like all practical measures to reduce those emissions, because you see those obviously involve individual actions of millions of people and intermediaries. So those are the most difficult obviously to get a handle on and the court recognized that. The interesting thing is, this is the first time a court has ever ordered a private company to take action like this. The court did leave it open to Shell to decide how to do it. It mentioned things like offsets through planting trees, carbon capture and sequestration, promotion of alternative means of meeting demand for these fuels through like hydrogen. Shell has actually invested quite a bit in hydrogen technologies. It is beginning to invest in renewables as a percentage of its forward-looking business plan. So the Shell decision is one to take note of. Certainly the financial markets around the world are taking note of it. Other companies are certainly taking note of it, but it will be appealed to the court of appeals in the Netherlands, and that will then probably go to the Dutch Supreme Court and that will take no doubt several years. It took several years for the agenda decision to finally get resolved. But it's one to look at and it's part of this larger point that I'll close on, which is that so much is happening right now in the energy space, not just energy transportation and others as well, that it's clear that things are changing, that we've reached some kind of inflection point in the world on energy policy and climate change and investments in new technologies. It's not fast enough. It's not at the scale needed, but things are happening. And these decisions that are emphasizing the risk, this is in this case the financial risk of continued reliance on fossil fuels, that understanding is penetrating the markets, the major banks, the brokerage firms like BlackRock, these are all indications that things are changing. And I'll close by saying they need to change a lot faster and at a much larger scale. And now I'll stop and take some questions. Great, thank you so much, Professor Parento. Intimidatingly knowledgeable, as always. So to our audience, we do have time for some questions. And as a reminder, if you're watching on the live stream, you can click on the icon at the bottom of the video and that'll bring up the chat box where you can log in and add your question. Or if you're watching on Facebook, add your question to the comment box below and we'll try to get through as many questions as possible. First question is, you talked about how climate change is of a scope that really isn't within the judicial branch's jurisdiction. It's really a problem for the legislature. And yet, the reason that we haven't really been able to see any action is it seems like it keeps getting bounced around between different branches of government. And so what's a person to do if the legislative branch won't do anything and they're looking for remedies in the judicial branch? So what's your reflection on that? You said that the legislature's best, but they're not doing it. Yeah, I mean, I agree with that. And I think the judicial branch failed in the Giuliana case by not recognizing that even though ultimate solutions reside in Congress, there were still constitutional issues that deserve to be answered. For example, do we as Americans have a right to, as Judge Aiken put it, a climate system capable of sustaining human life? That strikes me as a rather important question to answer. If our constitution does not guarantee, in colloquial terms, a livable planet, then my goodness, where does that leave us? I mean, the constitution protects lots of rights that aren't written into the constitution. And the Supreme Court has found many rights which we highly value, not in the language or text of the constitution, but in sort of an understanding that what rights people really should have. So the idea that we need Congress and the executive branch to do more, adopt more laws and policies, fund more infrastructure development and so forth, you know, to me, that doesn't change the responsibility of the courts to answer questions about constitutional law or in this case, common law. I mean, that's, in these tort cases, we're talking about judge made law. That's what tort law is. And it fills gaps when the legislation itself doesn't provide a remedy for damage that's occurring from people that are responsible for the damage, then that's the precise point at which the court should step in and provide the process by testing the evidence and determining rights and responsibilities and compensating people that deserve compensation. And it has to be done in a fair way, in a due process way, but you know, the fact that this is a big problem shouldn't change to my way of thinking the responsibility of the courts to deal with it. In fact, if anything, the fact that it is a big problem demands even more scrutiny by the courts and involvement by the courts with due respect for the limits of what courts can do. You know, the courts have lots of tools. They have injunctions, declaratory judgments, penalties, mediation, all kinds of possible remedies. They don't have to take over, you know, the United States government, which is what some people claim they're doing, but they can certainly articulate duties and responsibilities that aren't being met that are creating an existential threat to the wellbeing of citizens. That's what we're talking about. You mentioned the Giuliana case, you know, that was a case that was filed in 2015 when Obama was president. You know, one of the reasons why advocates like our Children's Trust and the youth in that case have gone to the judicial branches that of the three, it seems like the one that's supposed to be the most apolitical. And so often we hope it will be a reprieve from some of the partisan politics around issues like climate change. But the federal government really fought, some would say kind of dirty in that case in their procedural attempts to avoid having to say anything substantive in the case, you know, you know, applying for cert on every little procedural stay. Do you anticipate any changes in that type of approach to litigation on these cases under President Biden? I was hoping that President Biden and the new Department of Justice leadership would heed Judge Aiken's plea most recently when she sent the parties to mediation before magistrate judges retired now coffin. I was hoping that somewhere within the Biden administration, somewhere within the White House, someone would say, this is an opportunity for us to show good faith and recognize that what these youth plaintiffs are claiming is true, that the federal government is not only failing to act, but it's deliberately taking actions that are making the situation worse. And that's unfortunately even true of Biden. Biden's doing a lot of really good things, talking about doing a lot of really good things, but he's also, you know, part of a system that is continuing to develop new sources of oil and gas. He just declined to, you know, review and cancel leases in the Arctic National Petroleum Reserve. He is agreeing to review and potentially cancel leases that were issued in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but that little vignette kind of shows you the balance that even Biden feels he has to strike in these instances where he can't take the position that there will be no further oil and gas development. I mean, there are legal reasons why in some respects he can't do that. So, you know, but back to your question, Jenny, it doesn't look like the Biden administration is gonna take advantage or the opportunity to reach some kind of an agreement in the Juliana case that would solidify some of the commitments he's made in the executive orders, for example, that he's issued. He has to do it carefully. You know, he's gotta be careful not to set himself up to be sued. Of course, he's being sued every day by committing to take actions before he's complied with the procedures of the Administrative Procedure Act, for example, and other legal requirements. So it is a tricky thing for Biden to settle a case and commit to doing certain things, but a refusal to do anything in that direction would be a missed opportunity in my mind and an unfortunate signal to send to these youth plaintiffs who were looking, you know, justly for some sign that we're on the way to addressing these problems in a more meaningful way. Thank you. I like that caveat on Biden's doing lots of good things, asterisk, talking about doing lots of good things. I recommend that as a revised title for your talk today. Yeah. All the branches are talking about trying to do good things. Okay. Well, we are out of time. That was super interesting as always. Thank you, Professor Parento. And thanks to everybody who joined us today. Our next talk will take place here on June 29th at noon Eastern time. And we hope to see you then. Thanks everyone. Have a good day.