The premiere of Spring Creek Project's first documentary film, Bedrock Rights: A New Foundation for Global Action Against Fracking and Climate Change, shows how the lens of human rights can transform the world's view of climate change and fracking.

Climate change is of course a scientific and technological problem, but it is fundamentally a problem of environmental justice, threatening to be the greatest violation of human rights the world has ever seen. How can rights-based arguments empower new global action against fracking and climate change?

The film features:

• Poetry by Deb Marquart, a writer, singer, and teacher who has taught writing workshops in Bakken oil field communities most affected by fracking
• Interviews with Tom Kerns and Kathleen Dean Moore, co-editors of the new book Bearing Witness: The Human Rights Case Against Fracking and Climate Change
• Stories from those on the front lines of fracking
• Comments from environmental justice activists, including Sandra Steingraber and Jacqueline Patterson
• Comments from legal experts and key points from the advisory opinion of the Permanent People's Tribunal Session on Human Rights, Fracking, and Climate Change

Special Guests

After the screening, we’ll host a conversation between prominent thought-leaders who are working to protect human rights and a secure future for all. Special guests will include:

• Sandra Steingraber, biologist, author, and anti-fracking activist who serves as senior scientist for the Science and Environmental Health Network. Steingraber is an expert on the human health impacts of environmental conditions, especially related to fracking. She co-founded New Yorkers Against Fracking and serves as Science Advisor to Americans Against Fracking. She is the author of several books, including Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment.

• Mary Wood, 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 book, Nature's Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age, sets forth a new paradigm of global ecological responsibility. She originated the legal approach called Atmospheric Trust Litigation, now being used in cases brought on behalf of youth throughout the world, seeking to hold governments accountable for carbon pollution.

How We'll Gather on June 2

All those who register for this free event will receive an email from Eventbrite on the evening of June 2 that includes two links: one private link to watch the film and a Zoom link to join the live conversation following the screening.

We'll all watch the film at 6 p.m. PST and gather together on Zoom immediately after.

Host and Co-Sponsors

The Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University is hosting this event. It is co-sponsored by 350 Seattle, 350 Vermont, Alaska Institute for Justice, Beyond Toxics, Center for Humans & Nature, Coalition to Protect New York, the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal, Post Carbon Institute, Protect the Bush Alliance, Rogue Climate, and the School of Law at Queensland University of Technology.