Held v. State of Montana – Plaintiffs & Attorneys Discuss 8-3-21 Ruling Against the State

On March 13, 2020, 16 young Montanans filed their constitutional climate lawsuit against the state of Montana, asserting that, by supporting a fossil fuel-driven energy system, which is contributing to the climate crisis, Montana is violating their constitutional rights to a clean and healthful environment; to seek safety, health, and happiness; and to individual dignity and equal protection of the law. The youth plaintiffs also argue that the state’s fossil fuel energy system is degrading and depleting Montana’s constitutionally protected public trust resources, including the atmosphere, rivers and lakes, fish and wildlife.

The 16 plaintiffs who are suing Montana are: row one: Rikki, Lander, Lilian, Ruby; row two: Georgi, Badge, Eva, Kian; row three: Taleah, Olivia, Jeff, Nate; row four: Mica, Claire, Grace, Sariel Photograph: Courtesy of Our Children’s Trust

On August 3, 2021, these 16 young plaintiffs secured a critical victory when Judge Kathy Seeley denied the state’s attempt to prevent their case, Held v. State of Montana, from proceeding to trial.

Now, the Montana court has joined others, including courts in Washington, Texas, Oregon, and Colorado, in exercising the court’s role to declare the constitutional boundaries of what governments must and must not do when it comes to climate change.
This is a watershed moment for all the science-based youth climate lawsuits supported by the non-profit law firm, Our Children’s Trust, including Juliana v. United States, La Rose v. Her Majesty the Queen, Sagoonick v. Alaska and many more.

Ricki Held, lead plaintiff in Held v. MT

In this zoom briefing recorded on August 13, 2021, attorneys Roger Sullivan of Kallispell with Melissa Hornbein and Nate Bellinger of Our Children’s Trust are joined by youth plaintiffs Ricki Held of Broaddus and Grace Gibson-Snyder of Missoula in discussing the significance to their case, Held v. Montana. Erin Barnhart moderates.

Grace Gibson-Snyder, co-plaintiff in Held v. MT

You can find out more here:

https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/montana

In Montana, It’s Youth vs. the State in a Landmark Climate Case https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/24/climate/montana-youth-climate-lawsuit.html

European Human Rights Court Hears Historic Climate Case Brought by Elderly Swiss Women https://www.commondreams.org/news/climate-lawsuit

Guest Column: Two Minutes by James C. Nelson, former MT Supreme Court Justice https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/opinions/guest_columnists/guest-column-two-minutes/article_988809e6-b239-11ed-be88-d72df0767818.html

In Montana, young activists take fight against climate change to court https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/12/16/climate-change-montana-court

Fossil fuels v our future: young Montanans wage historic climate fight https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/13/young-people-montana-fossil-fuels-climate-crisis

Teen climate activist subjected to sexist and racist abuse amid federal court climate case https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/apr/12/teen-climate-activist-subjected-to-sexist-and-racist-abuse-amid-federal-court-climate-case

Trial set in climate change lawsuit brought by Montana youths https://helenair.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/trial-set-in-climate-change-lawsuit-brought-by-montana-youths/article_2a59c86e-d71c-5053-9499-6d4631d2d806.html#tracking-source=home-top-story

Judge rules in favor of Montana youth plaintiffs, affirms case can proceed to trial https://westernlaw.org/judge-rules-favor-montana-youth-plaintiffs-affirms-case-can-proceed-trial/

MONTANA: Judge Sides With Youth Plaintiffs in Climate Case https://ens-newswire.com/montana-judge-sides-with-youth-plaintiffs-in-climate-case/

Young people go to European court to stop treaty that aids fossil fuel investors https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/21/young-people-go-to-european-court-to-stop-treaty-that-aids-fossil-fuel-investors

COP 26: The teenagers suing 33 countries https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-59776108

‘This Is Not Over’: Alaska Supreme Court Rejects Youth Climate Case https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/01/28/not-over-alaska-supreme-court-rejects-youth-climate-case

This Scientist Says Climate Activists Need to Get Real https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/25/magazine/vaclav-smil-interview.html

Alexander Hinton IT CAN HAPPEN HERE: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US

Alexander Hinton is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, and UNESCO Chair on Genocide Prevention at Rutgers University.

He is the author of over a dozen books including the award-winning Why did they Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide; Man or Monster? The Trial of a Khmer Rouge Torturer; and The Justice Facade: Trials of Transition in Cambodia. His new book is It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US published by NYU Press.

He was an expert witness in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia Genocide Trial. Khmer Rouge Brother Number Two, Nuon Chea, was ultimately convicted of charges of genocide. He died in prison on August 4, 2019 at the age of 93.

At the end of the interview, we quoted Ulysses S. Grant:

“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.”

Articles pertinent to this interview:

Is Russia committing genocide in Ukraine? A human rights expert looks at the warning signs https://theconversation.com/is-russia-committing-genocide-in-ukraine-a-human-rights-expert-looks-at-the-warning-signs-180017

A Voice of Hate in America’s Heartland https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/us/ohio-hovater-white-nationalist.html?searchResultPosition=1

The South Must Teach Its Children the Truth https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/opinion/South-slavery-Confederacy-curriculum.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Opinion

A Fight Over Zoning Tests Charlottesville’s Progress on Race https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/01/us/charlottesville-va-zoning-affordable-housing.html

Fourth Police Officer Who Responded to Jan. 6 Attack Dies By Suicide https://www.huffpost.com/entry/officer-kyle-defreytag_n_61089f3de4b038cedb36e4ae

Tucker Carlson TO Speak at Hungarian Far-Right Conference https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tucker-carlson-orban-hungary-far-right_n_6108bbd1e4b038cedb36fa71

Want to Make Jim Jordan Sing About the Capitol Attack? Ask Jefferson Davis https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/02/want-to-make-jim-jordan-sing-about-the-capitol-attack-ask-jefferson-davis

Malignant normality: The psychological theory that explains naked emperors, narcissists and Nazis https://www.salon.com/2021/08/12/malignant-normality-the-psychological-theory-that-explains-naked-emperors-narcissists-and-nazis/

Jan-Werner Müller – DEMOCRACY RULES: Liberty, Equality, Uncertainty

Jan-Werner Müller is a German political philosopher and historian of political ideas at Princeton University, where he has taught political theory and the history of political ideas since 2005.

His books, which have been translated into numerous languages, include What Is Populism? (2016), Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth Century Europe (2011), Constitutional Patriotism (2007) and others.

His latest book is Democracy Rules: Liberty, Equality, Uncertainly, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2021.

In addition, he writes opinion pieces for The Guardian, New York Times, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Le Monde, The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, as well as others.

This edition of Forthright Radio concludes with a poem by Dan Roberts, “Holy Card for Greta Number 3.” You can find out more about Dan’s work including The Shortwave Report, Rhythm Running River, and the award winning Youth Speaks Out, as well as his photography and paintings here: http://outfarpress.com/

Articles pertinent to this interview include:

America’s famed ‘checks-and-balances’ governance system is failing https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/16/checks-balances-failing-trump-supreme-court

Is barring Trump from office undemocratic? Let’s assess point by point https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/21/is-barring-trump-from-office-undemocratic

President Biden finally is sounding the alarm about democracy. Good https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/10/president-biden-finally-is-sounding-the-alarm-about-democracy-good

The American right is whitewashing Hungary’s nasty, autocratic regime https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/24/the-american-right-is-whitewashing-hungarys-nasty-autocratic-regime

Madison Cawthorn backed the Capitol attack. Will he be barred from office? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/07/madison-cawthorn-backed-the-capitol-attack-will-he-be-barred-from-office

Populism and the People https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n10/jan-werner-mueller/populism-and-the-people

‘It’s chilling what is happening’: a rightwing backlash to Biden takes root in Republican states https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/19/joe-biden-republicans-polarization-us-politics-texas

They Rejected Democracy. They Lied. And They Spent July Fourth Calling Themselves Patriots. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/republicans-overturn-presidential-election-capitol-riot-july-4_n_60e4793ee4b0e01b6b233fc3

Abolishing the filibuster won’t lead to a ‘tyranny of the majority’. It’s quite the opposite https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/22/filibuster-senate-joe-manchin

Enchaining democracy: The now-transnational project of the US corporate libertarian right https://mcusercontent.com/cca23739793ff131bae0a457f/files/7855428a-b505-762c-0032-c336e7bb5222/MacLean_The_Now_Transnational_Project.pdf

Guest column: Eroding public schools’ role as the great equalizer https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/opinions/guest_columnists/guest-column-eroding-public-schools-role-as-the-great-equalizer/article_aeff6b67-daef-5cd9-a797-fa93b0aff737.html

Athens: The Truth About Democracy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPnUK176AR0

Tamim Ansary GAMES WITHOUT RULES: The Often Interrupted History of Afghanistan

This edition of Forthright Radio from February 6, 2013, features an interview with Afghan-American author, Tamim Ansary, discussing his book, GAMES WITHOUT RULES: THE OFTEN INTERRUPTED HISTORY OF AFGHANISTAN, published by Public Affairs. As the United States and allies withdraw troops after 20 years of occupation and warfare in Afghanistan, it is well worth hearing again, because it speaks to the evolving situation there.

Tamim Ansary was born in Afghanistan in 1948, as a very young boy, he fell in love with history, and when Arnold Toynbee came through his hometown of Lashkargah, someone told him of a history loving 9 year old little bookworm, and he invited Tamim to tea. The rest, as they say, is history.

Tamim Ansary moved to the United States in 1964. He worked on textbooks for the Texas school system, out of which experience came his book, DESTINY DISRUPTED: A HISTORY OF THE WORLD THROUGH ISLAMIC EYES. Among his other books are WEST OF KABUL, EAST OF NEW YORK, as well as numerous books for children of different ages and reading levels. He has written a monthly column in Encarta. com, and has published essays in the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Alternet, TomPain.com, Edutopia, Parade, and the LA Times.

The Guardian published a piece by him on July 12, 2021 headlined:

History shows us that outsiders can never bring peace to Afghanistan https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/12/afghanistan-us-british-withdrawal-biden

In numbers: Life in Afghanistan after America leaves https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57767067

Armed Afghan women take to streets in show of defiance against Taliban https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/07/armed-afghan-women-take-to-streets-in-show-of-defiance-against-taliban

Mike Rothschild THE STORM UPON US: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult & Conspiracy Theory of Everything

Mike Rothschild is a journalist, researcher, and debunker of conspiracy theories.

His first print book, The World’s Worst Conspiracies, was published in January 2020 by Arcturus Publishing, London.

His work is cited in The New York Times, Snopes, Politifact, Salon, Vice, NPR, among many others. His latest book, THE STORM IS UPON US: HOW QANON BECAME A MOVEMENT, CULT, AND CONSPIRACY THEORY OF EVERYTHING, published by Melville House.
We spoke with Mike Rothschild on July 2, 2021.

Articles pertinent to the interview:

‘Q’ Has Been Quiet, but QAnon Lives On https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/20/technology/qanon-conspiracy-movement.html

French Child Kidnapping Plot Shows Global Sway Of QAnon Style https://www.huffpost.com/entry/french-child-kidnapping-plot-qanon_n_6163862ce4b024dc528228ff

I’m a Parkland Shooting Survivor. QAnon Convinced My Dad It Was All a Hoax. https://www.vice.com/en/article/epnq84/im-a-parkland-shooting-survivor-qanon-convinced-my-dad-it-was-all-a-hoax?utm_source=vicenewstwitter

Why do conspiracy theories flourish? Because the truth is too hard to handle https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/01/edward-snowdon-conspiracy-theories-belief-powerlessness

INSIDE THE CAPITOL RIOT https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/30/us/jan-6-capitol-attack-takeaways.html

What drives ‘J-Anon’, QAnon’s Japanese counterpart? https://globalvoices.org/2021/01/13/what-drives-j-anon-qanons-japanese-counterpart/

Confronting the Threat of QAnon https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/29/books/review/mia-bloom-sophie-moskalenko-pastels-and-pedophiles.html

Man Kills His Two Young Children Over QAnon, “Serpent DNA” Conspiracy Theories, FBI Says https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/08/matthew-coleman-qanon-serpent-dna-kills-children.html

Andy Norman MENTAL IMMUNITY: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think

Andy Norman, Ph.D., directs the Humanism Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University and is the founder of CIRCE, the Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative. His book, Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think, just published by HarperCollins, lays out the conceptual foundations of cognitive immunology—the emerging science of mental immune health.

We spoke with Andy Norman on June 14, 2021.

No one wanted to read’ his book on pandemic psychology – then Covid hit https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/19/book-psychology-pandemics-steven-taylor

John Judis – The Politics of Our Time: Populism, Nationalism, Socialism

Currently an editor at large at Talking Points Memo, John Judis has a long history as a senior writer at the National Journal and former senior editor at The New Republic. As you will hear in this interview from May 28, 2021, his ideas have evolved from his activist days in the 1960s as a founding editor of Socialist Revolution, renamed Socialist Review and then Radical Society. In the 1970s he was a founding editor of the East Bay Voice. In 1976, he became foreign editor of In These Times, the democratic socialist newsweekly. He quit in 2014, along with other editors in protest of the owner’s firing of an editor and plan to turn the magazine into a profit making enterprise.

His books include William F. Buckley: Patron Saint of the Conservatives from 1988, The Paradox of American Democracy: Elites, Special Interests, and the Betrayal of the Public Trust; and The Folly of Empire : What George W. Bush Could Learn from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

His tenth book, The Politics of Our Time: Populism, Nationalism, Socialism, was just published by Columbia Global Reports. It is a compendium of revised editions of three of his previous books: The Populist Explosion, The Nationalist Revival, and The Socialist Awakening.

Corporate Subsidy Quietly Dies in Texas — Topping Off Bad Week for Big Oil https://theintercept.com/2021/06/01/texas-subsidies-oil-companies/

Exxon Board to Get a Third Activist Pushing Cleaner Energy https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/business/exxon-board-clean-energy.html

Supreme Court Rules on Tribal Police & Immigrants’ Testimony https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/us/supreme-court-tribal-police-immigration.html?action=click&module=In%20Other%20News&pgtype=Homepage

White male minority rule pervades politics across the US, research shows https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/26/white-male-minority-rule-us-politics-research

The Banality of Democratic Collapse https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/opinion/republicans-donald-trump-loyalty.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Progressives Won Chile’s Election. And They Won Big https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/19/chile-election-constitution.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

An ‘Army of 15-Year-Olds’ Takes on the Democrats https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/19/us/teens-massachusetts-elections.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

The Numbers are grim. Republicans are winning at normalizing voter suppression https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/19/republicans-are-winning-at-normalizing-voter-suppression

Jessica Watkins SPECIALish

Jessica Watkins is a stand-up comedian, actress and producer, whose documentary, SPECIALish, is being released on May 11, 2021 through Random Media. Combining her love of standup and adventure, SPECIALish follows Jessica’s 2014 walk across America. She spent over 8 months on a solo walking comedy tour beginning at Lewes, Delaware and ending in Oceanside, California. She performed standup in a dozen states along the way, pushing a running stroller full of gear and living off the kindness of strangers. She filmed over 300 hours of footage chronicling her experience, recorded a comedy special upon return to tell her story, and combined the two to create the award winning documentary, SPECIALish, which was the winner of Best Film at The Broad Humor Festival and Best Film at New Filmmakers Festival NYC .

You can find out more about Jessica Watkins and SPECIALish by going to her website:

jessicawatkinscomedy.com or via instagram @ ajessicawtkins.

Suzanne Simard FINDING THE MOTHER TREE: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

University of British Columbia Professor of Forest Ecology, Dr. Suzanne Simard, is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence. Her decades of in-the-field-experimental research have revolutionized our scientific understanding of forests, elucidating how trees, living side by side for hundreds of years, have evolved, how they perceive one another, learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors and remember the past; how they have agency about the future; elicit warnings and mount defenses, compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication, characteristics ascribed to human intelligence, traits that are the essence of civil societies–and at the center of it all, the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them.

Suzanne Simard’s book, FINDING THE MOTHER TREE: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, was published by Knopf on May 4, 2021.
We spoke together on April 27th.

We end the program with a recent piece commissioned by the Intermountain Opera Company composed by Eric Funk, Requiem for a Forest, Op. 168. It is performed by Roots in the Sky. A video adaptation by Thomas Thomas is available on https://bozemanarts-live.com/event/requiem-for-a-forest/

Requiem for a Forest

In summer heat
And warming world
Storms whip up,
Lightening rolls,
Sparks run to earth.
The wind turns
Through the mountains,
Forests burn.

Fire ends,
Yet fire begins.
As mountains die,
Cones open.
Mors stupebit
et natura
Cum resurgent
Creatura.

Now we must learn
How to live here,
Where fire season
Burns all year.
Blackened earth
With green renew,
May the fires
wake us too.

Fungi Fear http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/fungi-fear

Friendly fungi help forests fight climate changehttps://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61787248

This Is What It Sounds Like When Plants Cry https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/science/plant-sounds-stress.html

USING SCIENCE & CELTIC WISDOM TO SAVE TREES (and SOULS) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/climate/celtic-wisdom-trees-climate.html

Magic mushrooms: how scientists discovered fungi are the secret ingredient for restoring the world’s forests https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/15/biology-mycorrhizal-fungi-map-restoring-world-forests

Plants Feel Pain & Might Even See https://nautil.us/issue/104/harmony/plants-feel-pain-and-might-even-see?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Biden’s Climate Chops Face A Big Test On Old-Growth Forests https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-climate-old-growth-forests_n_60a41b78e4b03e1dd38fc528

‘Forests are not renewable’: the felling of Sweden’s ancient trees https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2021/apr/16/forests-felling-swedens-ancient-trees-biodiversity-sami-environment

USDA May Allow Genetically Modified Trees to Be Released Into the Wild https://truthout.org/articles/usda-may-allow-genetically-modified-trees-to-be-released-into-the-wild/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=da19aa22-8134-413f-a72f-01b72dfd5bb1

‘War in the woods’: activists blockade Vancouver Island in bid to save ancient trees https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/09/canada-logging-old-growth-trees-vancouver-island

Pacheedaht First Nation chiefs in Canada tell anti-logging protesters to leave their lands https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/14/canada-logging-blockade-first-nations-pacheedaht

It’s only natural: the push to give rivers, mountains and forests legal rights https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/apr/01/its-only-natural-the-push-to-give-rivers-mountains-and-forests-legal-rights

How Fungi Move Among Us https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/science/climate-mycorrhizal-fungus-networks.html