Episode 80: Young people are suing for a livable future

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome to Everybody in the Pool, the podcast where we dive deep into the innovative solutions and the brilliant minds who are tackling the climate crisis head-on. I'm Molly Wood.

This week, well this may surprise you, but I’m taking a break from tech to talk about a different kind of climate innovation using the LAW.

Specifically, a legal strategy that’s using the justice system to give voice to the generation that’s already living in the mess that we are creating. 

Mat Dos Santos

My name is Mat Dos Santos. I'm the co-executive director at Our Children's Trust, which is the only organization in the world that brings cases exclusively on behalf of young people for climate action in their communities. 

Molly Wood: Tell us more about how that works and how you got into it. 

Mat Dos Santos

Some people may know about our work most recently in Montana, where we had this massive win with the Supreme Court of Montana.

establishing the constitutional right to a livable, like a clean and healthful environment, but really a livable future for young people. We also had a really big win in Hawaii recently with a landmark settlement where we got the state of Hawaii to agree to decarbonize the transportation sector, not net zero, but actual zero emissions by 2045 or sooner. We're actually on an accelerated timeframe. And

My work with Our Children's Trust is really about organizational strategy. So where do we bring these lawsuits? How do we support them? How do we support young people in having a right-sized voice in this democracy that we see in the United States and in other constitutional democracies around the world? Because what we have seen is that the law and

for better or for worse society often leaves children's voices out of the equation when considering the impacts of climate change. And we know they're the ones who are going to have to inherit this from us. So we're trying to get them to the table both legally through public education campaigns, through grassroots activism. And that's sort of the nutshell of my work. It kind of come to this from a background in civil rights.

Before I was at our children's trust, I was at the ACLU where I was the legal director in Oregon and worked on LGBT cases, immigration cases, a lot about criminal justice reform as well. And before then I'd really been working closely with ACLU and other LGBT organizations while I was a lawyer in private practice. And the thing that I like to share about myself too is that this bridge

Mat Dos Santos 

from past Mat to current Mat, which is that before I went to law school, I was a biologist and I worked on endangered species issues and spent time surveying habitat out in the Colorado desert and doing wetland surveys. So things that I really cared a lot about and then decided to go to law school and for deeply personal reasons worked a lot on LGBT and

immigration issues and also had in the back of my mind, how am I going to bridge this gap between my science brain and my legal brain? After about 15 years out in the world, Our Children's Trust found me, and it's been history ever since.

Molly Wood 

So talk to me more about, this is amazing. And I am one of those who first became aware of our children's trust when the Montana case was being litigated and then eventually won because that's my home state. it had particular resonance because I'm from there, but also because it was a state constitution that had actually enshrined the idea of livable land and air and water.

which I gather is not universal across state constitutions, but allowed a way in to this case, right?

Mat Dos Santos 

That's right. So there are six states that have explicit protections like Montana does. surprise, you'll probably see us pretty active in a lot of those states here in the near future. Hawaii was one of them too. And it was a really clear nexus for us when we saw Montana, which was a state that was actively excluding.

climate considerations. So they had a law in the books that said, we aren't even considering greenhouse gas emissions when we cite a power plant, which should make people's heads explode, right? Like how can you in 2020, when we brought this case, think about, you know, citing a power plant in a community and not even consider the kinds of toxins you're putting in the air, you know,

not even thinking about the long-term global effects of the greenhouse gas emissions that of course trap heat and increase the global average temperature and cause climate catastrophe. But so they weren't even looking at these localized impacts. then they had this great constitutional provision. And for folks who aren't Montana constitutional history buffs,

Molly Wood 

He

Mat Dos Santos

that Montana's constitution was rewritten in the early 1970s. And what that meant was that Mae Nan Ellingson, who is one of the founding mothers of the constitution of Montana, was still alive and well, and we could put her on the stand. She wrote the provision for the clean and healthful environment, and she could testify about what it meant. So even in a conservative,

state which has that kind conservative jurisprudence around originalism or textualism. We're not debating what George Washington thought. We have the author of the Constitutional Provision and she was amazing. And for folks who would like to see that, can go to our website and you can go to the Montana website, which is basically

[heldvmontana.ourchildrenstrust.org](http://heldvmontana.ourchildrenstrust.org/) and watch Mae Nann Ellingson testify about what she meant and how she expected that the day would come where we would be litigating this before the Supreme Court of Montana because what folks should remember is she was writing this in the time of, you know, where...

the United States was going through its first kind of environmental awakening, right? In the 1970s. And you have paper mills in Montana that were polluting Montana, making air unbreathable, making water undrinkable. And a lot of Montanans really cared about that. And they said, wait a second, we love Montana. Montana's history is one of outdoorsmanship, of...

sport fishing and hunting and like really being, know, communing with nature, like being outside. That's why people love Montana. these industries are ruining it for us. So even though she had a different industry that she was trying to tackle, she very much was thinking about how industrial priorities were taking place over

Mat Dos Santos 

the priorities of Montanans. And so with that in mind, they drafted this constitutional provision, which lo and behold, 50 years later was front and center in this great case that she really predicted. 

And also thematically cool is that she was the youngest constitutional delegate. She just barely made it the age requirement. Like her birthday was like a month before the age cut off.

Molly Wood

Wow.

Mat Dos Santos

The youngest constitutional delegate 50 years ago, so in her early 20s, said, I care deeply about Montana's environment and wrote this and got it put into Montana's constitution. So if we needed any other proof that young people really are the people that we should be turning to for solutions, here's May doing an intergenerational bridge for us so we can look back and see how young people's voices really need to be at the table.

Molly Wood

Yeah.

Molly Wood 

That is, I have a little bit of goosebumps about that. That's actually phenomenal. And that leads perfectly to my next question, which is like, is, you this touches on so many things that are happening right now. The conversation about our government being a gerontocracy, the question of who has standing, who, you know, from a legal perspective and also a moral perspective. So tell me a little more about the strategy behind and the importance of youth led legal pressure and activism.

Mat Dos Santos 

Yeah, so we really think that, as I said, sort of like at the outset, young people need to have a right-sized voice at the table. And it probably won't surprise your listeners at all to know or hear that in many places in the law, young people's voices are silenced either intentionally or unintentionally by, for example,

you know, we have this other suit against the EPA where the EPA is doing something that sounds very reasonable, which is a cost benefit analysis. But during their cost benefit analysis, they discount children's lives. they unintentionally, but we actually think they know what's happening. So how can it be unintentional? They are discriminating against children because they value the children's lives or the impacts of climate change on children.

less than they value adults who are alive today. So there's all these legal mechanisms that make children's voices less of a consideration when we're making these policies. And what we know to be true and why it's so important to put children into climate litigation is that children will be living with the consequences of our decisions far longer than we will. And their consequences are outsized. So

I always say there's two different ways to look at this. There's just like the simple math. You know, I'm 45. Maybe I have another 45 years on this planet if I'm lucky. Somebody who's born today has twice as long to live with my decisions. So there's that's one piece. But then there's also that young people and this is sort of emerging, but I think most people are familiar with this idea now that young people's brains and bodies really don't stop forming.

until they're about 26, right? Your brain doesn't fully mature until you're 26. And during that maturation process, so your lungs, your cardiovascular system, your neurology is all forming. There's just mountains of evidence that show that extreme heat, air pollution, mean, lead and water, we know this, right? Birth defects. There are these ways that pollutants in their environment impact

Mat Dos Santos 

between the ages of zero and 26 much, much harder than they would impact someone like me at 45. My body can deal with the toxins in a way that their bodies can't and their bodies often incorporate, you know, could see things, everything from, you know, the climate anxiety that we hear about in the news to actual neurological conditions that come from being exposed to extreme heat over and over and over again that can lead to...

know, poor test results, doing less well in school, having social anxiety, things that are really like very, very meaningful life impacts. And so we center that, right? We center young people, we center the outsized consequences on young people and how...

Molly Wood

Right.

Mat Dos Santos

their voices are often overlooked in all of these conversations. They don't have the ability to vote, right? They're under 18, they can't vote. So how do they even express their harms? And this is, it's so patronizing, but we've had the state of Montana and other states be like, well, you just have to talk to your parents or your teachers and then your teachers have to go talk to politicians. they're like, and you can imagine how young people receive that. Like, are you kidding me?

Molly Wood 

my god.

Molly Wood

Yeah. Yeah.

Mat Dos Santos 

So you're telling me that I'm a full-fledged participant in this democracy, but I actually can't have my voice heard unless it's filtered through the voices of my parents or my teachers, adults in my life. So the strategy was really to capture that extraordinary harm to children and properly place it within

Molly Wood 

Mm-hmm.

Mat Dos Santos 

our constitutional framework, like the discrimination that happens, the injuries to life, dignity. And when I say life, mean the injuries to life of living people, right? Either your life is shortened, your life is made worse by sickness, not the kind of myopic really strange right to life that we hear about percolating through the awful cases like daubs, et cetera.

Molly Wood 

Right. Or even the really kind of vague pursuit of happiness, right? That's in the US Constitution. You're talking about literal quality of life, quality and length and duration. So then, and the plaintiffs themselves, I have had the pleasure of meeting one, are fairly, like how do you empower them to be activists within this process?

Mat Dos Santos

Exactly.

Mat Dos Santos

Yeah, so we are working with plaintiffs from day one to make sure that they're comfortable with the role that they are going to play. We it is a huge deal. Yeah, and and and there is an a documentary on Netflix called Youth V. Gov, which is not about our Montana case, but about the Juliana case, which is our big federal case. And, you know, Jaden and that that.

Molly Wood 

Cause it's a big deal, right? Like I'm sure they're getting yelled at, especially in Montana or anywhere.

Mat Dos Santos 

that documentary talks about, like, Jayden grew up in Louisiana in environmental justice communities where there's lots of oil extraction and all of that in that of, that golf area. she, like her friends, parents told them to stop talking to her once they found out that she was involved in one of these lawsuits. So we are very, there's lots of things that we do, but we are very, very transparent with young people about.

like what this could mean for them. We have a program that I'm incredibly proud of, which is we work with this amazing consultant out of Colorado named Jules Alvarado. She is a leading trauma consultant and we've developed a program for the plaintiffs to create support networks for each other. And obviously Jules is available to them too for how to be trauma informed in

And so our goal is to empower them to tell their stories in front of government institutions, be it in court or if they're testifying in front of the legislature in ways that are both truthful and accurate, but also don't just put them in a retraumatization place, right? So we also support them through extensive comms training. we're communications training where

teaching them about how to talk to the media, how they can answer questions that they wanna answer and they can decline to answer questions that they don't wanna answer. And I mean, it sounds so simple, when you are, there's someone shoves a microphone in your face and you just don't know, you may feel like you have to say everything. And so we just spend a lot of time trying to kind of

teach them to hear their own voice and then share their own voice with the public and to just be authentic and truthful the whole time.

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Time for a quick break. When we come back we’ll talk about the lawsuit against the federal government which in my humble opinion OUGHT to be in the business of providing a clean and healthful environment for us lowly citizens but turns out it ain’t in the Constitution. So now what?

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool we’re talking with Mat dos Santos of Our Children’s Trust.

Molly Wood 

So you brought up Julianna versus United States, is one of your most high profile cases. Tell us about the premise behind the case and kind of where it is now.

Mat Dos Santos 

Yeah, so I'm super happy to talk about Juliana in particular because the US Constitution does not have the same provision that the Montana Constitution, right? And so people are like, well, maybe that means we don't have a right to a stable climate in the US Constitution. And what I would love everyone to take away from this, they take nothing else away from this podcast, is that,

Molly Wood

Yeah.

Mat Dos Santos 

We all have a right to a livable climate. That is a basic fundamental right, and none of our constitutions or foundational documents make any sense. How can you have, you talked about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. How do you have the preamble to the constitution if you can't leave your house because of wildfire smoke impinging on your ability to breathe, if you can't drink the water because it's so polluted?

or just our land is uninhabitable, right?

Molly Wood

and that that has been, and even to clarify that further, that that has been caused, right? It's sort of like, if we just happened to live on a planet that didn't have breathable air or drinkable water, that would be one thing, right?

Mat Dos Santos 

That's right.

Mat Dos Santos 

Right, and it turns out that the founders of the US Constitution really cared about this stuff. And if you go back to the Federalist Papers, so people who are like a little bit legal wonky or listen to legal podcasts will have heard about the Federalist Papers, that John Adams was really behind writing. If you go back to those papers, they talk about the importance of preserving nature and preserving our right role with nature and how our basic

ideals and values as a country could not exist without it. So this idea that we are, for better or for worse, kind of becoming famous for pioneering in the courts and the legal system is truly an idea that's centuries old. It's just sort of disappeared behind what I would call money to interests priorities. so Juliana of the United States is brought by 21 young people 10 years ago now almost.

Here in Oregon, they sued in federal court and said the US government has known now for upwards of 50 years about climate change, has known about the consequences of climate change and has continued to perpetuate fossil fuel reliant system, even though it knows that it is harming our lives and our bodies. And so they brought a similar claim to what was brought in Montana, but under the US constitution,

you know, in their various rights under equal protection and their what are called due process rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. And I think it's a great case because it demonstrates for us in a really tangible way how governments are really at the heart of this issue. As you said, it's not like we

We're on Mars where you can't walk outside and breathe. But if you think about it, no fossil fuel activity happens in the United States without government permission. They have to ask for these pipelines to be sited. They have to get drilling permits. The government plays a, just a,

Mat Dos Santos

lockstep role in what industry they further and what technologies they further. And the sort of flip side of that is you can see that when government reprioritizes renewables like the Biden administration did with the IRA, what a huge consequence it can have on getting new EVs on the road, getting new solar installed. The issue, and I think a lot of people have

understandably been confused by what I think is just a very strategic communications campaign by the fossil fuel industry, but have been confused about the viability of renewables because in fact, there are many, many places where renewables are much more viable and efficient than fossil energy. Now, that doesn't mean it doesn't take a significant investment to transition. I think it still does and we're very aware of that.

Molly Wood 

Right.

Mat Dos Santos

But when the government prioritizes that transition, that transition can happen. And instead, the government has been actively promoting fossil fuel interests. And we can sort of see how it's come full circle. And the Trump administration has really underscored that for us, right? By putting these executive orders in place where they declare an energy emergency and say, have to focus on extracting fossil fuels, which is so wild since the US is currently, you know, is leading.

Molly Wood

Right. We're like a top exporter and extractor. Yeah.

Mat Dos Santos 

as the extractor. the idea that we're not, yeah, the idea that we're not doing enough is lunacy. And you can see.

Molly Wood 

Yeah. And the idea that it is market driven. Like to even put a finer point on everything you're saying, the idea that this is just how things have to go because that is the market driven answer is just the lie is put to that so easily when you see where the heft, the weight of government goes.

Mat Dos Santos 

Exactly.

Mat Dos Santos 

That's right. And I think it was, I was just recently re re reading. What if we get it right? Which is this, you know, visions for climate future book. but I was doing it as an audio book, which I, the audio book is so great because it's all of her interviews with the various experts that she, you know, interviewed for the book.

Molly Wood 

That's Dr.

Mat Dos Santos 

That's right. Mm-hmm. And fabulous book, but really, if you haven't read it yet, I would say start with the audio book, because you hear the interviews as opposed to reading the interviews, which for my brain was just really awesome. And they were talking about how, you know, I think it was in 23, right? Like just two years ago where fossil fuel companies had

some of their largest profits ever, they also saw trillions of dollars in subsidies, right? So it is not a market-driven force. Or if you wanna believe it's a market-driven force, then you also have to take into consideration the huge, huge pressure and weight that government is putting on that market by subsidizing further extraction of fossil fuels around the world.

Molly Wood

Yeah. I want to ask about the strategy of using lawsuits, right? Which is a sort of uniquely American thing to do, but that the power behind lawsuits can really lie in precedent setting, right? Talk about like how you're using the legal framework to hopefully drive change, even if you have to start state by state and then wait 10 years or longer for a government case to make its way through the system.

Mat Dos Santos

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, when we started back in 2010 and we started in every state really well, was 2011 where it was filed in every state. We sort of filed these actions in every state around the country to get this this climate right into all of the regulations. That's actually the Montana case was first, you know, sort of its first iteration was filed in 2011 and.

So we went back to Montana after like, you know, like losing, right? Which is no surprise that you lose some of these big impact cases before you start winning them. But the strategy is pretty simple. And the way I like to think about it is this is an all of the above problem that needs all of the above solutions. So we need people in the legislature who are willing to take courageous

courageous positions to move subsidies from fossil fuels to renewable energies. Our elected officials, we should be thinking about whether they are the people with the courage and the background to have climate as one of their priorities, right? We need organizers on the streets who are working in local communities to make sure that our local governments are doing what they can to

to prioritize climate solutions, because we know that a lot of them will happen on the local level. And by the same token, we need the judiciary involved. We need the judges who are really the arbiters of what the law means in our country to say, yeah, you children do have a right to a livable future. unless we change our course now,

we may be too late, right? And that again, I'm just borrowing everything from this great audio book that I'm listening to, but you it's like that idea of like later is too late, right? Like later is too late. And so we think that these lawsuits are incredibly powerful ways to both highlight the problem, right? That children have an outsized or having an outsized impact by climate change and have a...

Mat Dos Santos 

too small of a voice. They allow us to talk about climate change in local jurisdictions like Montana or Hawaii in the much more nuanced way and how it's impacting Montanans or Hawaiians or the people in those states or countries specifically, as opposed to it being this kind of big global problem. And they also

Molly Wood 

Right.

Mat Dos Santos 

Like we will, I think we'll see this now in 2025 in Montana. They, whether the government, well, I should say we both know the government of Montana is not gonna just get in line, right? Like they're going to fight this, but it is already having consequences because now DEQ in Montana is having to go to the public and think about how do they do rulemaking to incorporate climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.

Molly Wood

Right. Right.

Mat Dos Santos

in all of their rules. So it has immediate impacts, but I think it also has these bigger impacts. Like each case is a vehicle for change through the law, but it's also a vehicle for change through communications, through media attention, and through local organizing.

Molly Wood 

Absolutely. It's stone in a pond. And the ripples just keep, yep.

Mat Dos Santos 

Exactly, and we just need everybody tackling this problem. I mean, think the more, like, I love what you're doing, right? Like this idea that as a communications professional, you can highlight these stories about climate and how, you know, we need that kind of emphasis in our communications. I think that, you know, if you looked at these surveys,

all of the major networks spent like 17 hours total talking about climate change in 2022 or 2023. And it was like all 10 major networks, like Fox, MSNBC, like 17 hours total, right, combined. So.

Molly Wood

combined. Yep. Including the hottest year on record on the planet.

Mat Dos Santos

And so of course people, and this is why, know, people, it's funny, because I think sometimes when you're in this movement, people can get frustrated with how hard it can be to make change. And what I, I always come back to this idea that was very true for me in the civil rights movement, especially in the movement for marriage equality, which I was very involved in, and the movement for the rights of trans people.

Most people just actually aren't thinking about it, right? Like they're thinking about their groceries and picking up their kids from soccer practice. And that doesn't mean they're jerks. I think that just means they're living their lives. And once you have a conversation with them, either through like an engaging podcast or a great TV show or a movie where they learn, they start to think about it. And the more we can have these conversations, both one-on-one and through

the media ecosphere, I think the more people will get engaged. So it really does matter that we are all doing what we can, whether we're software engineers or lawyers or comps professionals.

Molly Wood 

There is just no better place to end it than that. Matt Dos Santos is the executive director of Our Children's Trust. Congratulations on your victory so far and I look forward to many more.

Mat Dos Santos

Thank you so much, Molly.

Molly Wood Voice-Over: That's it for this episode of Everybody in the Pool. Thank you so much for listening. 

Email me your thoughts and suggestions to in at everybody in the pool dot com if you know about efforts like this or unexpected solutions or you have ideas for things you’d like to hear us talk about  I want to hear from you! 

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