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Time to Escalate? First-Ever Rights of Nature Lawsuit Dismissed

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By Will Falk

Our first-in-the-nation lawsuit seeking personhood for the Colorado River was dismissed. After the Colorado Attorney General filed a motion to dismiss and threatened sanctions against attorney Jason Flores-Williams for the unforgivable act of requesting rights for nature, Flores-Williams withdrew our case.

When I agreed to serve as a next friend, or guardian, of the Colorado River, I saw the opportunity as a win-win. Either, we would win the lawsuit and the Colorado River would gain a powerful new legal tool to protect herself. Or, the lawsuit would be defeated proving that the American legal system privileges corporate rights to destroy the natural world over the natural world’s right to exist.

I knew it was highly unlikely that corporations, the courts, and the Colorado Attorney General would let rights of nature gain traction in American law. I wanted to be there, when the case failed, to remind everyone who invested hope in our cause that lawsuits are not the only way change is made.

I do not want this essay to come off like I am saying “I told you so.” I am heartbroken. A small part of me clung to the hope that Flores-Williams could resist the threats, that the Colorado Attorney General would, at least, litigate the case on the merits, and that the legal system would do the right thing. This hope, of course, was misguided.   [Read more…]

A Look at Climate Change Effects On San Diego County

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By Cynthia Wootton and Angela Deegan / SanDiego350

A  recent presentation by Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan of UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography on climate change held locally (at the San Diego City Council Environment Committee meeting), made us wonder what climate change might look like here in San Diego County.

Typically, weather events will conform to two characteristics of climate change: more extreme and, generally, more frequent weather events.   [Read more…]

Tom Goldtooth: Carbon Trading is “Fraudulent” Scheme to Privatize Air & Forests to Permit Pollution | Video Worth Watching

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Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! during the last day of the UN Climate Summit in Bonn, Germany—COP23—interviews Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, and Isabella Zizi of Idle No More. The discussion includes a critique of Jerry Brown’s implementation of Cap & Trade in California, explaining its negative impact on communities, with Richmond, California as an example.   [Read more…]

San Diego’s Community Choice Energy Technical Study Stands Up Under Scrutiny

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Conservative Assumptions Camouflage this New Energy Option’s Benefits

By Tyson Siegele / San Diego 350

San Diego struggles under the yoke of the highest electricity prices in the state. Meanwhile, thousands of cities across the United States have executed a plan to reduce their electricity prices, called Community Choice Energy. City officials hired an expert to determine if Community Choice would work here too. The technical study, also know as the feasibility study, found that San Diego would benefit from Community Choice, just like thousands of cities before it.

In July, when the City released the technical study, several publications such as the San Diego Union Tribune and the Voice of San Diego highlighted the main finding of the study: “San Diego could provide cheaper, greener energy than SDG&E.” Now, having had several months to digest the findings and compare them to Community Choice Energy programs across the state, additional conclusions can be teased out of the study.   [Read more…]

Two More Knees Need Attention

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Camp Lejeune’s history of poisoned drinking water causing illness, disease, birth defects, and death is one all Americans should hear about

By Nancee Kesinger

This tale of two knees is timely and true.  The first knee is mine, touching down to meet the cool tile floor of a hospital exam room a few weeks ago in mid-September.  Yes, I am the person kneeling, yet the story is not mine.

Far from stadium crowds and television cameras, under fluorescent clinical lights that render no warmth, I tilt forward out of my chair to approximate eye level with my loved one who is lying face down on the low table enduring the physical pain of a bone marrow biopsy and aspiration.  He has the pose of a day-dreaming sunbather with arms raised above his shoulders and hands casually crisscrossed under his head, but this beautiful black man doesn’t need a tan, and his relaxed position betrays some starker truths.

My taking a knee on this day is wholly in support of this glad-hearted and serene Marine—my partner of many years, my significant other, my mate—who is learning on this day the complete details of his alarming, week-old leukemia diagnosis (cancer of the blood and bone marrow).    [Read more…]

‘Pursuit’ – a Time-Lapse Extravaganza of Cloud and Thunderstorm Poetry in Motion | Video Worth Watching

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While the weather here in San Diego hasn’t been as dramatic as depicted in this video, it has definitely taken a more winter-like turn in the last few days. We’re not likely to see the kind of activity captured in this video in the San Diego region, but thankfully storm-chaser Mike Olbinski created a montage of some of these dramatic Plains states events. Near the end (beginning at around 6:18) it features a rare cloud formation—undulatus asperitas—only recently acknowledged by the World Meteorological Organization in its International Cloud Atlas as a distinct category.   [Read more…]

Plastic Ocean Pollution a Driver of Climate Change?

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Though burning fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming, fossil fuels could also be driving climate change via a completely different mechanism involving ocean plastic debris and tiny, bioluminescent fish living hundreds of meters beneath the ocean’s surface.

Lanternfish (aka myctophids) are only a few inches long typically, but so ubiquitous that they account for over half the ocean’s total fish-mass. They are vital to the ocean’s ability to sequester more carbon than all the world’s forests do on land through a daily mass migration playing out in all seven seas.   [Read more…]

A Possible Silver-Lining to Puerto Rico’s Electrical Grid Reconstruction? | Video Worth Watching

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Could the need to rebuild Puerto Rico’s power grid provide the opportunity to construct a community controlled sustainable infrastructure? Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman spoke to Ángel Figueroa Jaramillo, the head of UTIER, the electrical workers’ union in Puerto Rico, about Elon Musk’s proposal to make Puerto Rico the model of sustainable energy. She also visited the Casa Sol Bed and Breakfast in San Juan, which runs entirely on solar power and was able to provide electricity and drinking water to neighbors in advance of the city’s restoration of power.   [Read more…]

Climate Change Lawsuits and Coastal Plans — Where Does San Diego Stand?

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San Francisco, Oakland, San Mateo, Marin and Imperial Beach are suing fossil fuel companies over the sea level rise and expected property damages to homes and businesses. The claims cite increased cost of infrastructure, emergency response, coastal flooding and extreme storms. Danger to health and the obstruction of free use of property and free passage of waterways and parks is included.

Does San Diego have a plan to secure the funds needed to respond to climate change? Other jurisdictions have filed climate change lawsuits against fossil fuel companies to secure such funds.

During a telephone conversation with Mayor Dedina of Imperial Beach, I asked if San Diego should join in filing a climate change lawsuit against fossil fuel companies. He responded:

“San Diego is not in a position to do so because the preliminary work of climate change impact projections and cost estimates has not been done. San Diego would first need to develop a local coastal plan like Imperial Beach and others have done before filing for the lawsuit to be credible.”

  [Read more…]

National Weather Service Puerto Rican Video – Wind Turbines With Blades Snapped Off, Solar Panel Debris Strewn Across Fields | Video Worth Watching

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On Tuesday the National Weather Service posted a video documenting Hurricane Maria damage. Among the scenes of collapsed highways, buildings reduced to rubble and power poles strewn like matchsticks, were views of wind turbines with their blades snapped off and solar farms with shards of demolished panels strewn over the fields. One aspect helping to mitigate the despair engendered by these scenes is Kevin MacLeod’s “Mesmerize” as the soundtrack.   [Read more…]

Lori Saldaña: Remembering the October 2007 Wildfires

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As we approach the anniversary of the massive October 2007 wildfires that destroyed hundreds of homes and displaced thousands of San Diegans- I think of Hawaii.

That’s because, on the Sunday the massive wildfires started in San Diego- just a few miles east of the 76th Assembly district I represented- I was flying westward over the Pacific, looking forward to a relaxing week on Maui. It had been windy, dry, and hot in San Diego as the flight departed, so I welcomed the relatively mild tropical island weather and rented a convertible for the drive to town.

Unfortunately, the fires intensified rapidly throughout the day. But I watched a baseball playoff game, not the news, when I got to Lahaina and remained unaware of what was happening. After the game, I went out and bought a week’s worth of groceries from a supermarket, then went to bed.
  [Read more…]

The Rights of Nature and the Power of Law

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In the war for social and environmental justice, even the best lawyers rarely serve as anything more than battlefield medics.

They do what they can to stop the bleeding for the people, places, and causes suffering on the front lines, but they do not possess the weapons to return fire in any serious way. Lawyers lack effective weapons because American law functions to protect those in power from the rest of us; effective legal weapons are, quite literally, outlawed.

Nonetheless, understanding the limits of the law to affect change through my experiences as a public defender, I recently helped the Colorado River sue the State of Colorado in a first-in-the-nation lawsuit — Colorado River v. Colorado — requesting that the United States District Court in Denver recognize the river’s rights of nature. These rights include the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, and naturally evolve. To enforce these rights, the Colorado River also requests that the court grant the river “personhood” and standing to sue in American courts.   [Read more…]

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