November 2023
Each month, we invite you to learn about the people, the progress, the precedent, and the history-making protection of children’s right to a safe climate powered by Our Children’s Trust.
PEOPLE-POWERED JUSTICE
Meet Mat dos Santos! Mat, General Counsel & Managing Attorney, joined our team in 2020, bringing their experience at organizations like ACLU of Oregon and the Transgender Law Center to our groundbreaking legal efforts.
1. What do you do here at Our Children’s Trust?
As General Counsel and Managing Attorney, I have the best job. Not only do I have the pleasure of leading the legal team with some of the smartest lawyers and advocates I’ve ever met, but I get to work with younger attorneys and our legal staff as they develop their careers. Mentorship is my professional love language.
2. How did you get involved in climate law/action?
I first got involved in environmental law and climate action back in the late 90s when I was an undergraduate at the University of California, Irvine. At the time, I was studying biology and spent my summers as an intern testing groundwater and soil samples. After graduating, I went to work for an environmental consulting firm where I did all sorts of regulatory work to protect natural resources from linear and power projects. One of the coolest projects I worked on early in my career was delineating wetlands in an area of the Colorado desert where a company was trying to build a massive natural gas pipeline. I was able to work with a small team of biologists that was identifying a then-somewhat-unstudied desert wetland that was only inundated with water for part of the year. We worked hard to get state and federal regulators to recognize the ecological importance of these areas to protect biodiversity in the desert ecosystem. I learned then that using the best available science is a powerful tool for change.
Photo by Robin Loznak
3. What has been one of your favorite memories or experiences since you joined the team?
Going to trial in Montana this past summer was a lifetime career highlight. I’ll never forget walking to court on day one with the 16 young Montanans who dared take on the State of Montana and demand that they protect their state, health and livelihoods. I still get teary-eyed when I think of the whole team walking these courageous young people to court for what would turn out to be a legal victory for the history books.
4. What gives you hope?
Young people who stand up for what they know is right even when the adults tell them it isn’t practical or possible. Their sense of justice is what keeps me going when we work long hours or when I feel scared about all the suffering I see in the world around me today.
5. What is one thing you’d want everyone to know about Our Children’s Trust?
Our Children’s Trust is, at its core, a family. We support each other through hard times and dance together during the good times. We are unified in our dedication to doing what is right for today’s young people and for future generations yet to come. I don’t know what tomorrow brings, but I know that Our Children’s Trust has my back, and yours.
Youth-Powered Justice
This is Grace, one of the 16 youth plaintiffs in Held v. State of Montana, celebrating historic victory in their case! Grace shares her thoughts on how young people around the world can take systemic climate action.
Click the image below to watch:
This video was part of a live event where Grace spoke to thousands of young people around the world who were watching a livestream of OVERHEATED, a climate event in London hosted by Billie Eilish!
As a sixth-generation Montanan, Grace has grown up with a deep love for Montana’s beauty and natural spaces. Her first concrete memory of learning about climate change was when she watched a documentary in middle school.
During her senior year of high school, Grace served as president of an environmental group called Students Against Violating the Environment (“SAVE”). They ran recycling/composting programs, managed a garden, built a greenhouse, and worked towards eliminating single-use plastic utensils in the school cafeteria. Outside of school, Grace worked on a project called BYO (“Bring Your Own”) that aimed to decrease plastic waste at restaurants in Missoula. She even worked with parents and teachers to implement climate change curricula in the local school district.
In her spare time, Grace loves to spend time with her friends and family in the outdoors. She has fond memories of going to Yellowstone National Park every year for her birthday and enjoys hiking, biking, camping, and learning to kayak. In high school, she played soccer and remembers the many times that games and practice were rescheduled or canceled due to smoke from wildfires. Grace feels that she is living with the consequences that result from her state government’s ongoing promotion of fossil fuels, and it deeply saddens her to know her government isn’t taking the climate crisis seriously.
“I feel an overpowering obligation to do everything I can to prevent climate change.”
READ PROMINENT MEDIA COVERAGE ON Grace Gibson-Snyder:
The Guardian (Nigeria): August 26, 2023 Grace Gibson Snyder: Creating change through youth activism, active participation
Cosmopolitan: August 18, 2023 How 5 Young Women in Montana Scored a Landmark Climate Victory
The Weeds: June 7, 2023 The kids suing their state for climate change
A New Angle Podcast: April 20, 2023 Montana’s Clean & Healthful Environment Goes to Court
Outside: April 19, 2023 Is a Clean Environment A Constitutional Right? This Lawsuit in Montana May Set a Precedent
Rolling Stone: April 7, 2023 Sixteen Kids Are Fighting the Climate Crisis in Court
Science-Powered Evidence
According to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, the summer of 2023 was our planet’s hottest since we began keeping global records in 1880. And it’s only going to get hotter the longer we continue to burn fossil fuels and emit greenhouse gases into our atmosphere! But we will change that by bringing the power of scientific knowledge into courtrooms to hold government to account.
Finally, on December 15th, join members of our staff for Powering Youth Climate Justice --- an intimate review of 2023, our latest news, and how we will power forward in 2024.
Explore the climate science that our informs our youth-led constitutional climate litigation
Rights-powered trust
Julia Olson, Executive Director and Chief Legal Counsel, discusses why our win in Held v. State of Montana is so important for the future of climate litigation – and pivotal to protecting children’s legal and human rights to a safe climate.
“The decision is binding on Montana. It is the constitutional law of the land in the state of Montana, but in other jurisdictions it can be used as what's called persuasive authority. Courts around the world and around the United States are looking to each other for analysis.”
Click the image below to watch:
Check out some of the recent national and global media coverage about our historic win in Montana:
“Judge Rules in Favor of Montana Youths in a Landmark Climate Case,” The New York Times (front page), August 14, 2023
“Judge sides with young activists in climate change trial in Montana,” NPR Morning Edition, August 15, 2023
“Youths sued Montana over climate change and won. Here’s why it matters,” The Washington Post, August 16, 2023
“With TikTok and Lawsuits, Gen Z Takes on Climate Change,” The New York Times, August 19, 2023
“Montana’s landmark climate ruling: three key takeaways,” The Guardian, August 20, 2023
“Julia Olson Interview with Ayman Mohyeldin,” MSNBC, August 23, 2023
Democracy-powered trust
Fighting climate change depends upon people across the world leading all sorts of actions – from protest to legislation to litigation. Our Children’s Trust is powered by hundreds of communities and global partners across the climate movement.
Isabel Shaida with Sunrise Gallatin Valley is one of over 25 partners in Montana who amplified our trial and helped turn people out from across the state to cheer on and support the youth in Helena.
1. How does Sunrise Gallatin Valley take climate action in Montana?
Sunrise Gallatin Valley is part of a nationwide network of youth climate activists working to ensure a livable future and create good-paying jobs in the process. Here in Bozeman, Sunrise members focus on cultivating strong relationships, developing organizing skills and building people power in order to influence change on a local and state level. We host trainings; protest outside our utility NorthWestern Energy; make public comment at Public Service Commission meetings or legislative hearings; partner with other climate focused groups across the state. Whatever action we are working on, we meet every week and share a meal together. We envision and work towards a future with healthy and connected communities, resilient in the face of extreme weather and safe from pollution, with good jobs and localized, clean energy systems that work for all.
Isabel led a crowd of supporters in song on the last day of trial in Helena this June. Click the image above to watch - and join the chorus! (Video by Robin Loznak)
2. How and why do you partner with Our Children’s Trust and the young people we represent?
In Sunrise, we often speak about imagining forward. A big part of organizing is speaking with others, listening to their concerns and envisioning a future we can live in. Maybe, this is a future where electricity and power are delivered through a public service utility, owned by all Montanans… Maybe it’s a future where social and economic wellbeing is prioritized over the consolidation of wealth. We ask what would it look like to provide a society that did not produce scarcity? What would it look like to nurture a stable climate relationship to the planet?
Our Children's Trust (OCT) and the young people suing their governments are asking that we act now so that we can have this future that we deserve, that we need to survive. Sunrise Gallatin Valley partners with OCT because we need to be doing this work on all levels in our government buildings, our courts, our community centers, our schools, our workplaces, our homes. We need to tell the stories of the devastating impacts we face, both now and upcoming. We also need to tell the stories of opportunity ahead if we put the health of our communities and our climate first. As cheesy as it is, we are stronger together and we believe there is a future worth fighting for. And most importantly, like OCT and the youth plaintiffs, we know that we, as a people, are capable of making this future happen.
3. What inspires you to take climate action?
As a hub, we are currently building a new campaign strategy for 2024. As part of this process, we all reflected upon and shared our answers to two questions: What excites you in our organizing work? What demotivates you? Overwhelmingly, we heard from each other that this work is hardest when we feel alone. We feel most capable and motivated when we are in community. Not only that, but we feel powerful when we are building community, strengthening our own skills and sharing knowledge with others. This is the work of our hub. This is what makes us hopeful that change can happen and is coming. We are not just focused on how to impact policy; we are cultivating the very thing that makes us feel empowered -- a community where folks show up and participate with a mindset, a presumption of value, that there is always something we can do. We invest in relationships, and we value interdependence. We find inspiration from linking arms with one another.
