This special edition of Ecotones is a daily audio digest for June 19, 2023, Day 6 of the historic Held v State of Montana. It was the second week of the trial, which began on June 12, 2023 in the Lewis & Clark County District Court in Helena, MT – Judge Kathy Seeley presiding. Attorneys for The 16 youth plaintiffs rested their case on Friday, June 16th.
Today, The State of Montana’s Defense attorney, Lee McKenna of the Montana Dept. of Environmental Quality, called Christopher Dorrington, the Director of the Department of Environmental Quality to the stand. After answering her questions, he was cross examined by plaintiff attorney, Melissa Hornbein, senior attorney with Western Environmental Law Center (WELC). Director Christopher Norrington, was appointed to his position by Governor Gianforte in 2021.
The defense then called Sonja Nowakowski, Administrator for the Air, Energy, and Mining Division at Montana DEQ. In this edition we hear her testimony. But Due to broadcast time limitations, the cross examination of Ms Nowakowski by plaintiff attorney, Barbara Chillcott, senior attorney with WELC, will be in the next edition of Ecotones’ Daily Audio Diary.
As you will hear, Judge Seeley was called upon to make far more rulings on objections than during the first week.
We continue our coverage on this fourth day of the historicHeld v State of Montanaproceedings, sharing this audio daily digest from June 15, 2023.
In this edition, we feature the testimony of Peter Erickson, a climate change policy researcher for the Stockholm Environment Institute in Seattle, Washington.
He provided expert testimony on Montana’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions – via fossil fuel consumption, extraction, and infrastructure that the state of Montana permits – and how these emissions are both nationally and globally significant. “We are at a decision point about taking action on climate change,” Mr. Erickson said. “The world community has decided we must. Montana continues to issue fossil fuel permits.”
We have been recording and producing daily audio digests of the historic Held v State of Montana trial, brought by 16 youth plaintiffs asserting that their constitutional rights are being violated by the State of Montana, which began on June 12, 2023, in the Lewis and Clarke County District Court in Helena, MT, Judge Cathy Seeley presiding.
Dr. Mark Jacobson is cross-examined by Defense Attorney, Mark Stermitz as Judge Seeley presides.
We share this testimony from the morning of June 16, 2023 by Dr. Mark Jacobson, director of the Atmosphere/Energy program at Stanford University. Dr. Jacobson described the technological and economical feasibility to transition Montana off of fossil fuels by 2050 and supply its energy needs via water, wind, and solar (WWS). http://kgvm.org/show/held-v-state-of-montana-mark-jacobson-testimony-6-16-23/
We have been recording and producing daily audio digests of the historic Held v State of Montana trial, brought by 16 youth plaintiffs asserting that their constitutional rights are being violated by the State of Montana, which began on June 12, 2023, in the Lewis and Clarke County District Court in Helena, MT, Judge Cathy Seeley presiding.
We share the testimony of the final two witnesses for the plaintiffs, Dr. Lise Van Susteren, an internationally recognized psychiatrist and expert on how climate change affects the physical and mental health of youth differently and more drastically than adults. http://kgvm.org/show/held-v-state-of-montana-lise-van-susteren-testimony-6-16-23/
We will continue to record and produce these daily audio digests of the Held v State of Montanatrial as it continues on July 19, 2023 as the Defense presents their case with witnesses Terry Anderson, Christopher Dorrington and Sonja Nowakowski.
Welcome to this special edition of Ecotones. We continue our coverage on this fourth day of the historic Held v State of Montana proceedings, sharing this audio daily digest from June 15, 2023. In this edition, we feature three witnesses, but not in the order in which they actually testified on Thursday June 15th. Testifying first was youth plaintiff, Kian Tanner, followed by Montana Environmental Information Center Director of Policy and Legislative Affairs, Anne Hedges, and then youth plaintiff, Claire Vlases.
Claire Vlases testifies on 6-15-23, while Judge Kathy Seeley listens intently
Next is testimony from Anne Hedges, who is the Director of Policy and Legislative Affairs at the Montana Environmental Information Center, including cross examination by Defense Attorney for the State of Montana, Bain Johnson (apology if his name is misspelled). http://kgvm.org/show/held-v-state-of-montana-anne-hedges-testimony-6-15-23/
Due to radio broadcast time restraints, we were not able to include the testimony of the final witness on June 15, 2023, Peter Erickson, a climate change policy researcher for the Stockholm Environment Institute in Seattle, Washington. He provided expert testimony on Montana’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions – via fossil fuel consumption, extraction, and infrastructure that the state of Montana permits – and how these emissions are both nationally and globally significant. “We are at a decision point about taking action on climate change,” Mr. Erickson said. “The world community has decided we must. Montana continues to issue fossil fuel permits.”http://kgvm.org/show/held-v-state-of-montana-peter-erickson-testimony-6-15-23/
We will include audio of his testimony, as well as those of others we could not previously share, in later programs.
We continue our coverage of the historicHeld v State of Montana proceedings with this audio daily digest of the hearing from June 14, 2023. Dr. Lori Byron continued her testimony from June 13th, discussing Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and human generated catastrophic climate change. http://kgvm.org/show/held-v-state-of-montana-dr-lori-byron-testimony-6-13-23/
After cross examination of Dr. Byron by Defense Attorney for the State of Montana, Mark Stermitz, attorneys for the plaintiffs called Dr. Shane Doyle to the witness stand, testifying on behalf of his daughters, two of the youth plaintiffs, Ruby and Lillian Doyle. http://kgvm.org/show/held-v-state-of-montana-shane-doyle-testimony-6-14-23/
Brendan Ballou is a federal prosecutor, who served as Special Counsel for Private Equity in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. Previously, he worked in private practice, and before that, in the National Security Division of the Justice Department, where he advised the White House on counter-terrorism and other policies.
His book, PLUNDER: PRIVATE EQUITY’S PLAN TO PILLAGE AMERICA, is published by Public Affairs Books. He is clear in stating that “The views expressed in this book do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Department of Justice.”
He pulls no punches in characterizing what private equity firms are doing as PLUNDER and a PLAN TO PILLAGE AMERICA.
We spoke with Brendan Ballou via Skype on June 2, 2023 from his office in Washington, D.C.
From Oscar-winning filmmakers Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, WILD LIFE follows conservationist Kris Tompkins on an epic, decades-spanning love story as wild as the landscapes she dedicated her life to protecting. After falling in love in mid-life, Kris and the outdoorsman and entrepreneur, Doug Tompkins, left behind the world of the massively successful outdoor brands they’d helped pioneer like Patagonia, The North Face, and Esprit, and turned their attention to a visionary effort to create National Parks throughout Chile and Argentina. WILD LIFE chronicles the highs and lows of their journey to effect the largest private land donation in history.
WILD LIFE will screen at the Mendocino Film Festival on Friday, June 2nd at 10:00 a.m. in the Festival Tent, as well as Sunday, June 4th at 10:20 a.m. at Coast Cinemas.
Screen shot from WILD LIFE showing five national parks created by Kris and Doug Tompkins in Chile and Argentina.
Katherine S. Newman became the Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs of the University of California in January of 2023. She was simultaneously appointed as the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at U. C. Berkeley. Dr. Newman is the author of fifteen books on topics ranging from technical education and apprenticeship, to the sociological study of the working poor in America’s urban centers, middle class economic insecurity under the brunt of recession, and school violence on a mass scale. She has written extensively on the consequences of globalization for youth, on the impact of regressive taxation on the poor, and on the history of American political opinion on the role of government intervention.
Her latest, co-authored with Elizabeth S. Jacobs, a senior fellow in the Center on Labor, Human Services and Population at the Urban Institute, is MOVING THE NEEDLE: WHAT TIGHT LABOR MARKETS DO FOR THE POOR, published this month by the University of California Press. We spoke with Dr. Newman on April 24, 2023.
We end this edition of Forthright Radio with audio from the last floor speech that Montana’s first transwoman elected to Montana’s State Legislature, Zooey Zephyr, before she was censured by the necessary 2/3 vote of House on April 26, 2023. Her offense? Calling out that the gender affirming health care they were outlawing would result in deaths, and used the phrase, “blood on their hands.”
Articles pertinent to this edition of Forthright Radio:
You may recall the horrifying news that hit the airwaves on March 26, 2018 about a van that had driven off the 100 foot cliff on HWY 1 just south of Juan Creek between Rockport and Westport on the north coast of Mendocino County, CA. Bad as the initial reports were, as more was learned about what had actually happened and what led up to it, the horror only grew.
CA Highway Patrol
Texas based journalist, Roxanna Asgarian, began investigating the tragedy within a day. Her investigations since have resulted in her book, WE WERE ONCE A FAMILY: A STORY OF LOVE, DEATH, AND CHILD REMOVAL IN AMERICA, published in March, 2023 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction for books published in 2023.
She writes it as the true crime story that it certainly is, but her primary goal was to uncover the untold stories of the birth families of the six Black children taken from their families, who did NOT want to give them up, and who were making efforts to keep them, when the deeply flawed child welfare system thrust them first into the foster care system, and then fast tracked them into out of state adoptions.
Roxanna Asgarian reports about courts and the law for the Texas Tribune. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, New York Magazine and Texas Monthly, as well as other publications. She received the 2022 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for WE WERE ONCE A FAMILY: A STORY OF LOVE, DEATH, AND CHILD REMOVAL IN AMERICA. It goes well beyond the earlier, sensationalist reportage by the mainstream press and delves into the systems and history that allowed this murder/suicide to happen. We spoke with her via Skype on April 10, 2023.
Devonte Hart, seen in 2014 hugging a police officer at a Black Lives Matter protest. (Johnny Huu Nguyen/AP)
Tragic as this story of innocent children taken from their birth families by a Child Protection Service system which purports to protect children, it is but one aspect of our society that does NOT protect innocent children.
Once again, another mass shooting at a school ended in the murder and traumatizing of children, this one at the Covenant School in Nashville, TN, which led to protests at the State Legislature, the expulsion of two young black representatives, their unanimous reinstatement to represent their districts, and more diverse voices calling out the politicians only too happy to maintain the status quo.
One mourns the loss of the Hart children, particularly Devonte Hart, whose famous “hug heard around the world” – showing Devonte’s tear streaked face at the age of 14 hugging a white police officer during a tense demonstration protesting the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. He, with his “Free Hugs” sign, would have been 20 years old now. What might he have become, had his life not been cut short, his body never found?
The broadcast ended with Cheryl Wheeler’s song, “If It Were Up to Me,” which you can hear using this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op7agdIFOGY. It is sadly even more relevant than when she first recorded it in 1997.
