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We Are Living in a Climate Emergency. Why Doesn’t Nature Have Legal Rights?

A new documentary covers the Indigenous-led Rights of Nature movement on the front lines of the climate emergency.

Steven Donziger, a lawyer representing Ecuadorean people who spent years fighting Texaco-Chevron for compensation after decades of oil drilling contaminated their homelands and the Amazon rainforest, gestures during a press conference on March 19, 2014, in Quito, Ecuador. In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to write legal rights for nature into its Constitution. Donziger has been relentlessly attacked by oil companies and is currently on house arrest.

Part of the Series

Mike Ludwig speaks with journalists Melissa Troutman and Joshua Pribanic about their new documentary, Invisible Hand, which covers the Indigenous-led Rights of Nature movement on the front lines of the climate emergency.

Music by Dan Mason.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript and has been lightly edited for clarity.

Hello everyone, Mike Ludwig here, this week, dozens of journalists and news publications, myself and Truthout included, signed a statement citing the thousands of scientists who say we are currently living through a climate emergency. Together, we have agreed to use the term “climate emergency” in news stories about climate change, so you will start seeing that term pop up at major news outlets that actually grasp the severity of the crisis. Of course, Truthout has been using the terms “climate crisis” and “climate emergency” for years now, we’ve been trying our best to warn people that it would get this bad. On Thursday, the Senate Budget Committee held a hearing on just how bad it’s getting — and how much the climate emergency will cost taxpayers. Here’s committee chairman Senator Bernie Sanders:

“Let’s talk for a moment about rising sea levels. What the scientists have told us is that unless we reverse costs major portions of New York city, London and Hong Kong are at risk of chronic flooding. By the end of the century, while cities like Miami, new Orleans and Atlantic city could be inundated by severe flooding, much sooner. Let’s talk about extreme heat. Last year was tied for the warmest year on record and all of the 10 warmest years in recorded history have occurred since 2005.”

I kind of feel like Bernie is saying “I told you so.” Now, this podcast is not about politicians, it’s about the people who are doing something about the climate emergency from the ground up. On our last episode, we took a look at the direct action movement, which uses civil disobedience to block construction of oil and gas infrastructure and keep fossil fuels in the ground. We spoke with supporters of one of the longest running arial blockades in US history, which blocked construction of the mountain valley pipeline for some 900 days — if you missed it, I definitely recommend checking that out. This time around we are looking at another current within the grassroots environmental and climate movement, the Rights of Nature Movement. Activists often argue about whether it’s possible to create meaningful change from within the existing legal and political system — but Rights of Nature, which is inspired by Indigenous thinking, has a novel proposal — why not change the system itself, so nature is recognized to have legal, enforceable rights, much like a corporation or a human being? To get to the bottom of this, I spoke with Melissa Troutman and Joshua Pribanic, two journalists who at the nonprofit news outlet Public Herald and directors of Invisible Hand, a documentary about the rights of nature movement. Full disclosure, Invisible Hand was created in partnership with Mark Ruffalo, the actor you may have heard of, and he also sits on Truthout’s Board of Advisors. Without any further ado, here’s the interview.

Mike Ludwig: So, I also encountered the rights of nature movement for the first time, probably about eight or nine years ago. Also reporting on fracking in Ohio and Pennsylvania and wastewater injection, as well as the campaign in Grant Township. And is this, is that kind of where this documentary starts for you to, um, is, is covering. Fracking and then running into, I guess, this, this movement of activists is kind of like philosophy about how to take environmental action.

Josh Pribanic: Well, I think it’s different for, you know, it’s different for Melissa and it’s different for myself when it comes through our involvement with rights of nature. I was involved very early when it began back in like 20 2006 and seven in Ohio, um, on projects where. We were attempting to incorporate rights in nature principles, into restructuring and creating local food economies, um, and also businesses. So I had a publication there, which, you know, attempted to report on the environment, you know, through the means of rights of nature. And, uh, we were working on Agricultural projects that we’re doing the same thing.

So, I was particularly blown away, um, by the fact that Grant Township and these groups were using rights of nature to attack fracking. And I never thought I’d see that, um, that quickly, I thought it would be decades before the conversation about rights of nature really took off because it was such a difficult thing even to bring up in colleges.

You know, I mean, professors would look at you like. You were talking about Sci-Fi. Um, so it’s, it’s great that, you know, now it’s becoming mainstream.

Melissa Troutman: And for me, for me, it very much was like you described Mike, it was reporting on the harms of fracking and seeing again and again, communities and individuals run up against the same issue, which is that they would reach out to the foot, the people in charge.

Um, so to speak of their protection of their environment, of their water and their air and continually having those people not protect them and watching people go through this process where they realize that the environmental protection laws that we have on the books. Aren’t are actually protecting the companies, the fracking companies, the corporations.

And so naturally the question for them and for us as journalists, what is became well faced with this recurring problem? What, what is, what is a possible solution? And for me, seeing. Uh, Grant Township being introduced to Grant Township who did something very fundamental in passing, uh, rights of nature ordinance.

It seems to be the solution. And, and, and by that, I mean that what Grant Township really did was that they shifted power. ’cause right now. Um, if you want to protect your air or your water or your family or the community from industrial harm, you can’t do that unless you have the permission of the people in charge.

So your state or federal regulatory agency, um, derives their power from the legislature who, uh, derives their power from campaign donations. Most of which come from corporations. Right? So. Um, the issue became much more than fracking and the issue became where does power lie? Where does power sit, who holds the power?

And what, when, when I, when I, when I wrote the first article about Grant Township back in 2014, that was the difference. In what they were doing. And that’s the difference in the rights of nature movement. The night, the rights of nature movement takes power out of central governments in a way for an out of corporations and, and routes it in the communities, in the ecosystems where harm occurs.

So, Grant Township passed, um, uh, rights of nature ordinance, but inside of that, inside of that local law, Grant Township, the people who live there are the ones who make the final decision on what happens to them. And that was groundbreaking for me as a journalist, like I said, after watching the same problem happen over and over and over, not just in fracking, but in any industrial harm. Um, so we’re talking CAFOs, you know, the big, um, uh, factory farm operations. Pesticide application. Um, I mean, you name it.

ML: Yeah. Let’s talk about Grant Township. Uh, the specifics of that case, just a little bit to, I remember covering it, but not everyone would remember, but it is kind of a special case where, um, an oil and gas or fossil fuel firm wanted to build a fracking wastewater injection well in a rural community in Pennsylvania. And they took kind of a novel route, the rights of nature route in asserting their, their rights and, and opposing the project. And that’s in Invisible Hand. That’s in the documentary, right?

JP: Yeah. Correct. That the film film features, um, Grant Township as one of, you know, three or four stories that are, that are in there. Um, and it opens with, um, [an Indigenous] prophecy and closes with [an Indigenous] prophecy as well.

ML: Um, and could, could you tell us a little bit about Grant Township and then how that begins to overlap with, uh, some of the indigenous thinking, which, which seems to have a lot of influence in, in the rights of nature movement?

MT: Sure. Well, the rights of nature movement is our, our very Western, uh, colonial capitalist attempt. To insert a very fundamental principle into our legal system. And that fundamental principle is one that indigenous people have never lost, right. As, as, as a, as a whole culture. So, um, that principle is the, the acknowledgement recognition and stewardship of nature as a living entity with finite limits with whom we are all extremely interconnected, our current legal system doesn’t account for that, it doesn’t account for nature. It doesn’t account for, um, the carrying capacity of ecosystems. It’s not. It’s just not something that’s built into our legal system. Our, in our in fact, in our legal system, nature is defined and considered property, not living entity.

So where this begins to overlap with indigenous knowledge is that it is essentially trying to insert indigenous knowledge into our very colonial capitalism. Uh, structure of law and, um, and it’s really, it’s really, really simple. I mean, we are nature. We depend on nature. Nature needs to, I mean, let’s just leave the right to do something out of it for a second, but nature needs to exist and thrive in order for us to exist in thought.

It’s really straightforward when I talked to this, when I talk about this to elementary school students, they’re like, yeah, duh, but when you start talking about it too, um, you know, adults, it’s like, yeah, but do you know if that makes sense? Yeah, that’s true. But we also have all of these other things that we need to do because we created the system that we have. So, right. Some nature is our, is an attempt to, right. Our relationship with nature inside of our Western system of law, where nature is currently defined as property, which when you think about it is kind of dumb.

ML: So, where does this documentary take us? You know, we’re, we’re learning about people. There are people, and there are campaigns that are on the front lines of the climate crisis.They are, uh, directly opposing fossil fuel development and interests, which if we’re going to avoid the worst impacts. Of climate change. We’re going to have to, uh, quickly reduce fossil fuel production extraction and consumption. So there’s people on the front lines of this and who do we meet doing that kind of work in this documentary who are doing that kind of frontline activism?

JP: Yeah. Well, the places that Invisible Hand takes the viewer, um, in the film is one is to, to rethink everything that they’ve been taught. Um, since, you know, we all jumped into schools in the Western world, uh, and that has to do both with capitalism democracy, how we treat the environment who protects the environment, you know, how our government works and everything else, because in the film you get to see in real time that these are all fallacies.

Um, the idea, you know, of the free market, being something that’s going to solve these problems. Of course, you see that playing out in the exact opposite way. In the film, then it also points to this really radical transformation that’s happening with capitalism, where, you know, we talk about this as like a subtext in the film where you see how the invisible hand is shifting from something.

That’s a human construct to something that’s controlled by nature. And I think that that theory about Adam Smith’s invisible hand and human interest and profit and everything else it’s tied to with these utopian ideas. Uh, needs to be seriously challenged by academia with respect to how markets are operating with the limitations that nature is placing on them due to the exploitation that capitalism has.

ML: So you’re talking about like the invisible hand of the market? That is a term or phrase we hear sometimes.

JP: Yes. Yeah. I mean, we hear it here pretty consistently in the economic realm. And then it gets referred to, you know, indirectly, um, in our day-to-day lives. But it’s just this old theory, you know, that came out of Adam Smith’s book, the wealth of nations and talking about how, you know, it’s going to be the best of all possible worlds.

If we let the marketplace handle things, if we let competition run everything. Um, in that human nature, you know, your interest in my interest will align and we will create the best product for everyone. And it’ll be great at the end of the day. And the invisible hand will be there to balance all of that.

And it’s just a total, you know, fantasy it’s, it’s no different than, you know, the utopian ideas that are inside of the communist manifesto from Karl Marx. Um, you know, these are not realistic ideas. Um, they were sold and packaged and given to us as, as something that was sacrosanct. But the fact is, is that, you know, that this is not how it plays out in the real world, in the real world, the POV profit controls, everything.

And when profit controls everything, there’s nothing in nature that can’t be exploited for profit. And you get to see that in the film. So if people are faced with that circumstance, right, they’re faced with the circumstance that. Corporations are going to come in. They’re going to make money. However they want to, uh, despite if it’s going to poison that drinking water, you know, this river, whatever, uh, and they’re inside of an emergency, right?

Standing Rock is an emergency grants and emergency defender. He is an emergency the climate crisis and emergency, uh, and the, at the end of the day in many of these folks are coming to a realization and enlightenment. In the Western culture, uh, and that enlightenment is tied to indigenous knowledge, which is referring to the natural role as relatives and protecting it as a form of our life, as something that’s connected to us.

And that, that is just part of the journey that the film takes you on. You know, it’s like, we’ve seen a lot of documentary films about the environment and what’s happening, but there’s not a lot of really good solutions that exist in there. And there’s certainly not a movement that kind of joins everything under, under one idea. And under one, um, under one possibility, I feel like rights of nature has that power. It has, that has that capability. And you see that in the film and oddly enough, it ends up being uplifting. I mean, I can’t believe that at the end, at the end of this film, that it ended up having like all these wins, you know, Grant Township still stopped the injection. Well, Defend Oh:Yo stopped the fracking wastewater treatment plant, uh, Standing Rock is, you know, in the works of taking out that pipeline. Uh, I mean, there’s just some amazing inspirational successes that, that happened in the film, which I’m not used to doing as a documentary filmmaker when it comes to the environment or when, you know, watching this kind of stuff would be an urgency in campaigns that I’ve never quite seen before.

ML: Um, I’ve also seen wins, or even just the ability of a small group of activists to stall a project for a long period of time, um, in a way that, and I just wonder if that is something to do with the immediacy of the climate crisis and how that drives people to action, the Jew. Did you feel like the people you were interacting with, uh, making this documentary felt that urgency? Did you feel that urgency?

JP: Well, I, I, I mean, Melissa and I certainly felt an urgency to, to capture that energy, um, because we could see that energy, you know, vibrating around the story with Grant Township or with what happened with Standing Rock or, or Triple Divide and Defend Oh:Yo. I mean, what do you think less? I mean, I feel like it was right there on the surface for everything and kind of still is at this point, you know, we’re all kind of on edge.

MT: Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s the energy around this movement in particular is really palpable and exciting and feels a little weird in the sense that it’s new. This is a new strategy, new relative to what we’ve been doing for decades and decades. This is relatively new. And, you know, there are many ways to stall, um, a harmful project from going from going into effect or, or, um, but the, the rights of nature movement is, is not just that it’s, that it’s stopping immediate harm and fixing a fundamental flaw in our system, that perpetuates the hamster wheel. And by that, I mean, keeps creating more and more problems that we have to get out in the streets and stuff, or out in the, you know, the watersheds and stuff. So how do we get off the hamster wheel? Well, in order to do that, we have to shift power out of where it currently is. Which is in the hands of centralized, uh, governments and who have bent the arc of justice towards corporations and get it back into the hands of the people. Well, how do you do that? You have to change the law because the law is what it takes. Rules that we live by. And so, and the privileges that are bestowed upon us or corporations.

And so it’s, it’s a new strategy, which makes it really exciting. But in short, for me, it just, it was the absolute thing that we had to cover because it gets to the fundamental problem that keeps producing more and more problems for us to fight. So if we can fix them and we can criminal, I’m sorry —

If we fix the fundamental flaw in our legal system that perpetuates environmental injustice, ecological destruction. White supremacy, racism. I mean, rights of nature touches all of these things because if you honor nature, if you honor non-human non-humans, then you also of course on are all humans because we are part of nature.

And so by changing the law to criminalize the harm of nature, which includes people. Um, you just it’s, it’s a game changer. It shifts the paradigm. It changes, it just completely changes the game.

JP: One of the other things that just, just to add to Melissa’s story there is that, you know, when, what was captured by Melissa and myself and our team, um, were stories where there was no one else there. No other journalists, you know, no other cameras in most cases. Um, so when the viewer is watching this an invisible hand, um, they’re seeing these things for the first time. And I think that that resonates powerfully, um, to everyone because it’s not kind of like the buzz, you know, that we all get to watch on Twitter, wherever. Um, it’s just, uh, a really unique experience, you know, to, to hear. These stories and watch them this way for the first time.

ML: And these are stories kind of from the front lines of environmental campaigns and from campaigns against the fossil fuel industry.

JP: Yes. Yeah, that’s right at the front lines. I mean, Melissa and I are right there, um, with the leaders of these groups in trying to document, um, you know, as honestly as possible what’s happening.

Uh, you know, and as a result of that, of course, um, because we’re at the forefront of this and we’re getting attacked by the industry PR groups, uh, you know, the, the part in the film where we are, um, threatened with a lawsuit by, uh, JKLM energy. Who’s the owner of the of Buffalo Bills. And one of the biggest billionaires in the shale industry, um, his name’s Terry Pegula.

Uh, and then, you know, we also are threatened with a lawsuit by the people who wanted to build the frack waste water treatment facility. Um, and that is just us individually, the folks who are leading these fights, they’re facing even greater threats. They’re being sued by the industry. Um, they’re having hundreds of thousands of dollars campaigned against their rights of nature bills by for instance, BP, with the Lake Erie Bill of Rights in Ohio, which we capture in the film, um, and they’re being sued individually as well, or attempted to be seared or threatened. And they’re also getting state legislators working against them with, uh, preemption bills, trying to preempt and stop, um, rights of nature from ever getting into the court in the first place.

So while, you know, the attempts are being made by the rights of nature movement, through ecosite and other things to attempt to criminalize acts against the environment. The corporations are right there and they are of course, attempting to criminalize any kind of good faith action to protect the environment.

I think we see that very clearly with what happened with Standing Rock and. Critical infrastructure bills that have come out of that. And then we see it even more clearly with what’s happening to Steve Danzinger. Um, with the Exxon mobile case, who’s been under house arrest for 600 plus days at this point, uh, you know, they want to use the RICO act to attack these people who are organizing to defend nature against oil and gas infrastructure.

And it’s.

ML: Steve does he’s working in the Amazon, right? He, he was, he represented indigenous people who were fighting ExxonMobil for kind of believe for an oil spill. Is that right?

JP: Yeah. I mean, he, he, he is responsible for being part of a lawsuit down in Ecuador that resulted in the largest fine ever issued against the oil and gas company.

Um, I mean, the precedent that they set in those courts. Uh, it was worldwide and it changed the game and Chevron still hasn’t paid a single dime of that. And instead of trying to pay it, what they’re trying to do is attack the main attorney in his character and demonizes person through a jut judge named Kaplan over in New York and the New York Times even published a story about the thing, even though with guy’s been under house arrest for 600 days, you know, they’re relying upon people like. You know, independent journalists that are running organizations like we have, um, you know, Amy Westervelt over at the Drill podcast, did amazing series on Steve and what happened there and, you know, that’s what the oil and gas companies want to do. Then they want to create a precedent to attack anybody.Who’s going to come after their industry, whether it’s through rights of nature, blocking pipelines, um, you know, blocking compressor stations. And if they can get somebody like Steve locked up and put them in jail for doing what he did as a lawyer, uh, they’re just going to use that to package a new bill, whether it’s critical infrastructure or something else, um, to attack people.

So people just need to be very aware because, you know, the industry is spending a lot of time, a lot of resources to, to stop rights in nature actions and other actions against oil and gas.

ML: But we’ve also, you know, there’s other strategies, right. Um, and we’ve just heard about some of them. I mean, a direct action activist will argue that if you set up a tree sit or a blockade and you stop a pipeline or something for a period of time, and that then, you know, you’re succeeding and stopping this project and rights of nature is a little bit different. It’s about changing laws. And I think it’s interesting that, that Joshua, you brought up that there’s been several victories. Several campaigns has seen victories, but at the same time, it’s, it’s been difficult to actually get laws changed, like in Ohio with the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, which was passed, you know, after the, um, the algae blooms in Lake Erie made the water toxins that, you know, it really brought it to people’s attention, but a, a judge ended up, was it a judge or the state legislature ended up overturning that, uh, citizens’ referendum, if I’m, if I’m not mistaken and I’ve, I’ve seen it in other parts of the world where rights of nature has been tried to be implemented, where it just didn’t get too far into the system. I think there would be an argument to be made that the rights of nature approach is too much within the system. Um, although you are talking to them about the fact that we need to change the way that system works, too uh, redistribute the balance of power. So I’m interested to know if, if, if after doing this much, you know, reporting and documenting on the movement, do you think that has you think it can work? Do you think we can change the laws?

JP: Well, you bring up Toledo. And I think that’s an important case because it’s not finished. You know, it’s not the nail isn’t in the coffin on what happened with Toledo. And that case is still ongoing. And there was a ruling by both the courts, which attempted to say that the rights of nature bill was too vague. That’s one of the arguments against it. And of course that the rights of nature, bill attacked the constitutional rights of the industry, which is the other arguments that the industry um, is, are, is filing and courts, the complaints they’re filing. And that’s true in the Grant Township case. Grant Township has a lawsuit against them by the industries right now saying that grants out chips in violation of the first amendment, uh, fifth amendment, 14th amendment, uh, you know, they just go up and down the rights that they have as legal people, um, to say grants violating those rights.

And this is happening in pretty much all rights of nature cases, but you got to look at it as this isn’t a such, this isn’t a tool in the toolbox because people like to call it, a rights of nature is not a tool. Okay. It is a, it is a way, and it’s something that exists as an unalienable thing to the environment. Just like our rights. We have unalienable rights. So does, so does nature. We’re just simply recognizing them.

So I think it’s can work. Absolutely. Because. You know, all it’s doing is getting people to be aware, to be enlightened of that fact and then mobilize around that idea. And that’s what they’re doing. They’re mobilizing around it. And one of the big problems with the, the, the wins with, you know, a pipeline here or a compressor station here is there’s nothing joining them, you know, philosophically other than, you know, the fight to protect nature, the rights of nature does join those movements in a way that I think is powerful enough, um, to bring them all together, unify them and build an alliance that could be worldwide and actually finally take on the systemic, um, destructive ecosystem practices that are happening.

MT: Yeah. I, to, to tag onto what Josh has said, rights of nature. Isn’t a tool in the toolbox. It is. It’s part of rights of nature is a part of an ecosystem of change. Um, it’s a major piece of that ecosystem. So, you know, rights of nature only works in your community. If you have a majority of people who support that love, that kind of change in the community, um, And if you don’t have that majority of people, it makes a lot more sense to get the six people that you have to sit in trees.

Right. Um, we just saw the unfortunate final day of the Yellow Finch tree set in Virginia. Um, over 900 days, activists sat in those trees and prevented that pipeline from going through and, you know, That’s really significant. I think that, you know, for me, whether you’re working in whether you’re using direct action or you’re using kind of, well, actually for me, direct action kind of makes more sense as a tactic than piecemeal policy change.

But whether you’re doing direct action or you’re engaging in piecemeal policy, and by that, I mean, you’re. You’re tweaking policy about a particular part of the, of a problem, um, that has to happen in tandem with a fundamental system change. Otherwise the system perpetuates and you keep having to spend, you keep having ecological destruction that you then have to go and try to stop.

Right. So if you change the game and you have that paradigm shift, which is what rights of nature is. And if you, if you think about, and you know, and like you said, Mike, this is, this is a movement that is constantly facing obstacles as far as legal challenges. Um, not just in the United States, but in other places too, but mostly in the us.

But at the same time, if you think about the, the movement to end slavery or the movement to give women the vote for the civil rights movement, there were a lot of legal challenges in those long, long fights. And there were other tactics too. To prevent harm in the immediate, but if they’re not happening alongside a movement for systemic change, then there’s no real evolution out of perpetual harm.

So I I’m, I think that this can work and the evidence that I use. To come to that conclusion is the Google alerts that I am getting on a, on a daily basis on rights of nature that even three years ago where maybe one every few months, I mean, just today, um, I got an alert from the earth law center, um, which is a great organization.

That works, not just in rights of nature, but earth jurisprudence in earth law in general, but they just today and now that Oaxaca, Mexico recognize nature as a collective entity in a constitutional amendment. So that’s yet another country or I’m sorry, um, province within a country, but it’s happening at the national level to where rights, the rights of nature are being recognized.

And in places where that has been recognized, you know, a decade or more ago, it’s now beginning to be enforced. So Ecuador passed a national constitutional amendment to recognize the rights of nature in what, 2008, Josh. So that was how many years ago? 12, 13. Um, but it took, it took nine years for, for the enforcement of that to actually take place.

So I do think it’s going to work because watching the arc of the movement, um, it’s, it’s accelerating exponentially. Um, and it’s, it’s moved from, um, a value based proclamation or recognition into actual enforcement. And is being tied into an even greater international movement to criminalize ecological destruction and, and shift power back into communities, reinstate indigenous knowledge inside of our societal structures.

So it’s going to take time, but it’s. I mean, we really don’t and we also really don’t have a choice. Do we, we really don’t have a choice. We either do it willingly or nature does it for us.

ML: And I just want to clarify, when you say criminalize, you don’t really mean like criminalizing people. You mean like criminalizing corporate acts against the environment.

JP: Well, there’s two, there’s two versions of that. There’s, there’s both one that’s criminalizing corporate acts against the environment, which would hold of course, corporations accountable. Um, that’s happening through eco side, but there’s also, and that can happen through rights of nature bills, but it’s all, there’s also the, in the eco side structure of things attempting to create criminal prosecution for individuals. So not just. corporations themselves, but CEOs would be held accountable under that kind of law that’s being discussed and proposed, you know, in Europe right now. Um, and it’s in the early stages of it. And we feel like that’s kind of, and you know, it’s a, it’s an evolution of the rights of nature to get to that point where, um, the criminalization of acts against nature becomes a reality. And we’re not necessarily building prisons to lock everybody up to protect capitalism, but we’re more or less. Um, you know, locking people up who are destroying our natural world.

ML: So where can people see invisible hand?

JP: Oh, well, there’s a lot of options on our screening page. If you go to invisible hand, film.com/screenings, uh, there’s a number of screenings happening in, in April. Um, some on some really, you know, cool things that you can get involved with, uh, issues along the Mississippi river. Um, there’s a show happening, I think the 23rd to 25th on that, Melissa.

Isn’t that right? Um, Oh yeah, it’s Tuesday the 25th. Well, there’s a show, um, happening in Alaska as well, then I think around the April 22nd on the gold mining issues and it folks can usually attend these for free. Um, but they’re great to get involved in the show because there’s a Q and A. That happens locally with people. And then you can find out about, you know, what’s, what are the gold mining issues in Alaska that we don’t get to read about? Or, you know, what are the water issues facing the Mississippi river? And who’s involved with that. How do you get in touch with them? And it just, it’s helpful to hear from them. So you can find out, you know, what your role can be in this.

If you’re not, you know, if you don’t have a pipeline in your backyard for fracking industries, not trying to build an injection. Well, you know, next to your house, Uh, there’s other ways that this can happen. Some of that has to do with just being shareholders of Sierra Club, just like people are pushing, uh, shareholders to do the right thing and, um, corporations.

Um, this is true for the environmental movement. If you’re a shareholder of an environmental organization and that organization has no rights of nature platform, um, you could lobby them to start doing that because if you’re part of a national organization, There’s a very good chance that there is no rights of nature platform.

Oddly enough, even though this is happening explosively, uh, in communities all over the world. So yeah, definitely just go to the film. You can become a patron member of public Herald, which supports our work as investigative journalists that you’ve been doing since 2011. Uh, you can get the film for as little as a dollar, uh, and just go to patrion.com/public Harold to do that or go to our main website.I don’t know if Melissa, you have any other suggestions for people.

MT: Nailed it. You, now that I think, and I agree, Josh, I think place is to go to that screenings page and, and join a community screening because the people hosting, those are the people at the front lines. So it’s, it’s always good to. Get that frontline perspective to see the film and talk about the film with the folks that are doing the work.

ML: The film is Invisible Hand. It’s a documentary about rights of nature. And thanks so much for doing that, that documenting reporting and for joining us on climate front lines.

Thank you, Mike. Good to be here. Yeah. Thanks for the work you do.

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