“WHY DO YOU HURT ME SO?” By: A. Clifford Edwards, Esquire THE INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF TRIAL LAWYERS DEAN’S ADDRESS APRIL 7, 2017 SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA A Publication of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers Why Do You Hurt Me So? Good morning Academy! The opinions, express or implied, in this Dean’s Address are solely my own; nothing more, nothing less. President Burbidge; soon-to-be President Noël; fellow officers; my sisters and brothers of our special Academy, guests and my Edwards’ family supporting me here today; Page | 1 Susan – my wife, of such beauty, both of spirit and appearance, my soulmate, as hand-in-hand we experience our lives together; My cherished sons Christopher and John, the proudest achievements of my life; my best friends and only law partners; Their wives, my Daughters-in-law, Kelly and Hollis, who have so enriched and enhanced our Edwards’ family; And, an unexpected bonus that came into my life with her mother Susan over a decade ago when she was just 12, my stepdaughter Alex. Now, we welcome her significant, Patrick Lopach. Then, our little shining family Beacons, – the Edwards’ grandchildren – Ellie Marie, Wright, A.C. and Bella! Now please, you four, sit. Be still! Grandpa’s going to be givin’ a speech. Mother Nature I posit the title of my Dean’s Address – “Why Do You Hurt Me So?” as a troubled query from our wounded Mother of this beautiful and bountiful planet we each absorb every day of our lives. Susan and I share an instilled love for Mother Nature from our Montana upbringings. We cherish and revere her more each year as we travel the globe with you, our brothers and sisters of the Academy. Yet, all of us know that over the last couple hundred years we children of Mother Nature have been relentlessly assaulting her air, water and soil. Our assault on Mother has been toxic. It started in earnest with the Industrial Revolution, which was ostensibly to “make a better life for mankind.” Page | 2 But within the last 75 years or so, it finally dawned on mankind that unless we do something to curb this toxic assault and its ugly messes and clean it up some, irreversible harm will be inflicted on both Mother Earth and all humans she sustains. Countries from around the globe began to come together, particularly in the last few years. Treaties, notably in Paris, were signed to curb our combined global emission of toxins into the air and into the water. Actions were taken; progress was being made. But then, like a sudden summer hailstorm … roaring across the plains of Eastern Montana, a black Tuesday in November hit America – the new 45th President emerged despite failing to even win the majority of the votes of our citizens. Clearly, he set out not to be a Leader to heal, guide, nor inspire the best of our American spirit. From a tower of gold in New York City, with heroic-sized gold block letters proclaiming his name, … Page | 3 he strutted trite phrases, like “draining swamps,” and oxymoronically, “Making America Great Again.” Apposite to presidential reverence enshrined on Mount Rushmore, “The President” went serial with nocturnal “Twitters of Tweets” bleating out a whine of paranoia; self-invented “conspiracies” of and “against,” well, him. But, these incessant, insipid “Twitter Tweets” masked a lurking, fluid stealth assault – and the target of that assault is our Mother’s Earth. Trump has launched, with direction and chilling effectiveness, war on the environment we children of Mother Planet exist within. This war must be recognized as being right here and right now. We must rise and defeat it. I believe the leadership to conduct and win this war of such grave consequence emanates right out of this very room: The International Academy of Trial Lawyers. Perhaps but the one truth has sprung from the first 77 days of Trumpian rule: He has launched a chilling, rapid fire, specific, directed, targeted assault on Mother’s environment. His handpicked Field Generals to muster this war, are clearly his kindred ilk, shackled with environmentally vapid traits that exclude gravitas, judgment and global vision. Page | 4 • From Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt. • From Texas, Rick Perry. They rule our EPA and Energy Departments. Perhaps the Supreme Commander’s attitude and philosophy toward Mother Nature was best “articulated,” if you’ll pardon my pun, by EPA Director Pruitt, just four weeks ago on TV, seen and heard “Round the Globe”: “I think measuring human CO2 activity on the climate has tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so NO, I would NOT agree that it’s a primary contributor to the Global Warming we see.” “President” Trump himself? Billings Gazette, 2 April 2017 Page | 5 “We will rip apart stupid policies on “Climate Change,” he declared March 22nd to the New York Times – “Just last Tuesday the new President issued Executive Order 13783, trashing the “Clean Power Plan,” to limit coal-fired power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions. 13783 also directed Montana’s Ryan Zinke, the new Interior Secretary, to stop factoring climate change into federal projects environmental review! All augmenting the President’s chattering campaign mantra: “Global warming is a hoax.” Apparently made up in, China? – Perhaps at the same place where the silly ties he peddles are made. Page | 6 This truculent trio of turmoil, with a “swiftness of sword” rarely seen has already eviscerated key funding, regulations and missions of the EPA; the EPA ironically signed into law in 1970 by – President Richard Milhous Nixon! Nixon embraced the EPA as the nation’s needed vehicle to “Protect Human Health and the Environment.” Can This Frightening and Lightning-Quick Assault Be Parried; Can It Be Stopped? YES!!! HOW? THE ARMY IS SITTING RIGHT HERE IN THIS ROOM: This Academy is composed of the elite of the elite courtroom lawyers on earth. We have the most potent arsenal of weaponry man has ever devised to defeat Trump’s assault on Mother Nature: The Rule of Law After all, our Academy was founded 63 years ago on a bedrock principle – “Protect, Preserve and Promote” that Rule of Law. The Roots of the Industrial Revolution The Revolution sent a tsunami’s flood of toxic shock of filthy pollution all over Europe in the early 19th Century. The stated purpose was “to advance progress toward an easier, better life for mankind,” which, of course, translated: “A very few people got very rich, while the masses toiled at low wages for them, somehow hoping for an improved lot in life for their families and themselves.” Page | 7 The Industrial Revolution hit the Americas in the late 19th Century and then into the 20th encompassed and circled the globe. Wherever and whenever the revolution expanded, the toxic “progress” was palpable, visible and stunk. Factories belched smoke of arsenic and sulfides into our air, dumping filthy toxic wastes into our waterways. Looking Back: How Did the Real First Americans, the Indians, View Mother Nature? In the 17th Century Chief “Big Thunder” of the Lenape Delaware Indians spoke words that sound as Clarions today: “The Great Spirit is in all things, he is in the air we breathe… the Great Spirit is our Father … but the Earth; it is the Earth that is our Mother.” A hundred and fifty years later Chief Seattle articulated similar reverence for Mother Nature: Page | 8 “She does not belong to us – it is we who belong to the Earth.” Crazy Horse, as he valiantly led the Lakota Plains Indians in a losing effort to resist the White Man thundering through their lands and destroying their way of life, was inspired by a traditional Lakota Prayer: Mitakuye Oyasin “We are all related … in oneness and harmony, all forms of life over the planet … be it people, animals, birds, trees, mountains, rivers or oceans … we are all related.” Montana – Our Past and Present; Inflicting Toxic Ruination on Mother Nature I start with the Edwards’ family love affair with the vast and beautiful State of Montana that began in 1890, the year after statehood. Page | 9 My Grandfather, A.C. Edwards, immigrated to the Judith Basin of Central Montana from Scotland, spending the rest of his 87 summers in Montana. My other three grandparents were immigrants too; from Germany and Ireland. I am grateful that none of the Presidents who served during their immigrations, neither Cleveland, McKinley nor Teddy Roosevelt maintained “Banned Countries Lists.” A.C. was a respected and successful rancher, merchant and banker. He taught his son, and me, that to sustain our needed Montana agricultural economy, we had to sustain and nurture Mother Nature’s resources we use. Grandpa Cunningham was a sodbuster and believed the same thing. Unfortunately, he went broke in two separate countries, the United States Page | 10 and Canada. The depression and the droughts were twin knockout punches to him. My mother and her five siblings, wonderful people and wonderful citizens, were born in Central Montana, but raised in Alberta, and returned to the United States when Pearl Harbor devastated the USA. My maternal uncles, along with my dad, spent four years on the front lines during World War II. My mother was a committed educator. She taught in a Judith Basin country school house, all of grades 1-8, during the war years. The entire Cunningham family had a lifelong love for their other country, Canada, … which I inherited. You might say I carry out – cross genetics. I embrace a bond with our Academy family members hailing from North of the 49th! The ranch my sons and I own today in the Judith Basin includes a spectacular 360 acres owned by A.C.