Climate Lecture Series

Fracking wastewater.

Writer and legal theorist Anna Grear will deliver a Bedrock Lecture at noon on Wednesday, May 30.  The lecture can be viewed live online or through social media channels; if you would like to see it together with others as an event, there will be a screening in Bexell Hall, Room 415, on the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis.

Mary Christina Wood is a Philip H. Knight Professor of Law at the University of Oregon and the Faculty Director of the law school's nationally acclaimed Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center. She is an award-winning professor and the co-author of leading textbooks on public trust law and natural resources law. Her most recent book, Nature's Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age, sets forth a new paradigm of ecological responsibility. She originated the legal theory called Atmospheric Trust Litigation, which seeks to hold governments accountable to reduce carbon pollution within their jurisdictions. Professor Wood’s research is being used in cases brought on behalf of youth throughout the world. She is a frequent speaker on climate issues and has received national and international attention for her sovereign trust approach to global climate policy.

This winter and spring, the Spring Creek Project, based at Oregon State University, will focus on the intersection of human rights and climate change with a lecture series and international tribunal. The goal is to deepen our understanding of what is happening around the world and to help imagine how we can build better communities and lives as environmental crises are recognized as human rights crises. 

The Spring Creek Project has been presenting the Bedrock Lectures on Human Rights and Climate Change. This is the last. The weekly, online lectures featured leading writers, scientists, attorneys, community leaders, activists, and artists. Some of the lectures explained the current state of human rights and climate change. Others were forward-looking and invited listeners to imagine a future in which we have made the great turning toward climate justice for all living beings. Other lectures focused on a place. Find a full list of the speakers and learn more here.

The Bedrock Lectures will helped set the stage for the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change, which Spring Creek Project co-organized. The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal is an influential, international forum based in Rome. Since 1979, the Tribunal has conducted 42 high-profile hearings, including on Myanmar, Bhopal, Chernobyl, and other sites around the world, to determine whether human-rights standards were abridged. 

From May 14-18, 2018, the Tribunal focused on human rights, fracking and climate change. And, for the first time ever, the Tribunal was conducted virtually so judges, attorneys, and witnesses from around the world could participate. Learn more in this article on the Tribunal session. The article includes six ways you can get involved with the Tribunal, including submitting testimony, hosting a pre-Tribunal, and hosting a community viewing of the live-streamed proceedings.