Timor-Leste Farmer Carries Away Crops Destroyed by Heavy Rains
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This is about regulations around industrial processes that ravage wildlife and public health. This is about the right and ability to live-- the right and ability of rivers, soil, flora, fauna and people to live. This concerns land "owners." It's about the waste generated by gas-powered cars and e-vehicles, paved roads, air conditioners, telephones, smartphones, smart meters, the Internet, data storage and AI from their cradles-to-graves. It's about tin, copper, coltan, cobalt, lithium, silicon and plastic. It's about electricity, coal, natural gas, dams, nuclear power, nuclear waste. It's about solar PVs' hazardous waste, wind turbines (they don't biodegrade), batteries' toxicity and flammability.
It relates to the Declaration of Independence. Peter Smith recently explained that Thomas Jefferson took and tweaked words from John Locke's Second Treatise of Government when he wrote in the Declaration of Independence that every citizen has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. (Why did we found our country on the pursuit of happiness, a temporary thing-- like a slice of cake, or a cool email?)
Back to John Locke's Treatise. There, in 1689, he wrote that everyone has a right to life, liberty and estate. "Estate" means land.
Locke recognized that the Earth was given to all of humanity. A person makes a patch of land their own by planting a field, working it, and harvesting its fruit. John Locke considered property a right-- but only when everyone has the same right. No one should hoard land they don't work or let land lie idle while others go without.
In seventeenth century England, with the New World apparently limitless, Locke didn't consider the possibility that land could become scarce or that one person's estate could leave other people with none.
Locke also didn't consider what happens when land "owners" ravage land and waterways by clearcutting forests, extracting fossil fuels and rare earths, smelting, refining, generating chemical toxins, emitting radiation, generating nuclear waste, planting genetically modified organisms, spraying pesticides and herbicides.
THE RIGHTS OF NATURE
Regulations-- like the Clean Water Act or the Clean Air Act-- essentially provide a permitting process for corporations to do their business. They do not protect water or air through industrial or digital developments. They don't grant give rivers or forests the right to live, flourish or regenerate. Environmental lawyer Will Falk has authored The State Rights of Nature, for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). In 2006, CELDF passed the first modern "rights of nature" law. The report details the rights of nature movement's history, explains the past decade's most important legislation and court rulings, and lays out principles to help advocates distinguish between rights of nature initiatives that have been corrupted and those that have not.
In two of my substacks, Will Falk discussed Utah's ban on nature's rights, and what choices we have when a corporation wants to do business.
To learn meaningful, protective legal actions, I also highly recommend Jane Anne Morris and Richard Grossman's October 9, 2001 interview with Tom Lewiston about how the 14th Amendment has been used to protect corporate "rights."
On July 10th, the Trump administration rescinded the definition of "harm" from the Endangered Species Act to include only "direct harm." This benefits extractive industries (drilling, logging, mining, fishing, etc.). It will likely cause irreparable damage to biodiversity and natural places. Wilderness Watch has a detailed assessment of the damage. The Center for Biological Diversity, Columbia Riverkeeper, Conservation Law Foundation, Conservation Northwest, Friends of the Wild Swan, Oregon Wild, Sierra Club, Swan View Coalition, and WildEarth Guardians-- all represented by Earthjustice-- have filed a lawsuit lawsuit in the Federal District Court of Seattle.
Meanwhile, for trying to protect Thacker Pass, Nevada, from lithium mining Will Falk and Max Wilbert have been fined $49,890.13.
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