Speaker 1: In our last narrative season, La Luja Longla, about the
Speaker 1: decades long fight over oil pollution in the Ecuadorian Amazon,
Speaker 1: I mentioned something unique about Ecuador's constitution. It includes a
Speaker 1: provision for the rights of nature. Ecuador rewrote its constitution
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight to include a chapter called
Speaker 1: Rights for Nature. Other countries have toyed with this idea
Speaker 1: since then, and it freaks a lot of people out,
Speaker 1: especially people running large multinational corporations, mainly because it challenges
Speaker 1: one of the core tenets of capitalism, private property. Rather
Speaker 1: than treating nature as property under the law, writes for
Speaker 1: nature articles acknowledge that nature, in all of its life forms,
Speaker 1: has the right to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate, and
Speaker 1: that we the people have the legal authority to enforce
Speaker 1: those rights on behalf of ecosystems. Here's Natalie Green with
Speaker 1: the Global Alliance for Rights of Nature explaining how the
Speaker 1: concept works in Ecuador.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Ecuador in two thousand and eight rewrote its constitution and
Speaker 3: it was passed by the majority of Equilorians. And what
Speaker 3: we decided is that we don't want to follow a
Speaker 3: model development, like a socialism model or a capitalist model,
Speaker 3: because all those model were proven to be wrong, and
Speaker 3: we decided to recognize something that is that we are
Speaker 3: going to fight for, and we're going to be working
Speaker 3: for a model basic will being. What's what's establishing the
Speaker 3: constitution is a model basic will bean And what will
Speaker 3: being or sumacausai or wembibat in Spanish, will being is
Speaker 3: this notion of believing in harmony with nature.
Speaker 1: And here is a handy explainer from the Community Environmental
Speaker 1: Legal Defense Fund, which has been leading a lot of
Speaker 1: the fights for rights of nature in the US.
Speaker 4: Under the current system of law, nature is considered to
Speaker 4: be property. When something is considered property, that often gives
Speaker 4: the property owner the right to damage it. Therefore, those
Speaker 4: who own these natural communities are largely allowed to use
Speaker 4: them however they wish, even if that includes destroying it.
Speaker 4: Rights of nature is honoring and recognizing that nature has
Speaker 4: the right to exist, flourish, and thrive. Laws recognizing the
Speaker 4: rights of nature change the status of these ecosystems to
Speaker 4: being recognized as rights bearing entities.
Speaker 1: In late twenty twenty, the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court heard a
Speaker 1: rights of nature case for the first time. It's called
Speaker 1: the Lessdros case and here's what it's about in broad strokes.
Speaker 1: With the country's oil revenue on the decline, in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: the Ecuadorian government opened up public lands for mining concessions,
Speaker 1: some six million acres, including at least sixty eight percent
Speaker 1: of Los Ceedros, a protected cloud forest. The idea was
Speaker 1: that those mining profits would make up for lost oil
Speaker 1: revenue the long shadow of oil colonialism. But because there
Speaker 1: was that rights of nature provision in the constitution, citizen
Speaker 1: groups were able to sue the government for this move.
Speaker 1: They called it unconstitutional, and a couple of the justices
Speaker 1: on that court wrote about it ahead of time, seeing
Speaker 1: how important the forest was to protect and how eager
Speaker 1: they were to think through the application of rights of nature.
Speaker 1: Their decision hasn't come down yet, but when it does,
Speaker 1: it's going to have a major impact all over the world. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: communities in the US have started to embrace this idea too,
Speaker 1: and no surprise, their biggest opponents are oil and gas companies.
Speaker 1: There's a concerted effort underfoots supported by the American Petroleum Institute,
Speaker 1: to pass laws that would preempt rights of nature laws
Speaker 1: from ever being passed. I'm joined today by Joshua Boaz
Speaker 1: Probannik and Melissa Troutman. They're the co founders of the
Speaker 1: great independent journalism outlet, Public Herald. They've done a lot
Speaker 1: of the work on fracking and the impacts of that
Speaker 1: industry on Pennsylvania and Ohio and on water in general.
Speaker 1: They made a documentary about rights of nature called Invisible Hand.
Speaker 1: It takes a look at the push for rights of
Speaker 1: nature laws in the US, particularly in two spots in
Speaker 1: Ohio and Pennsylvania. The film came out in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Here's a little sampling of it.
Speaker 5: What do you say to your critics that say this
Speaker 5: is absolutely bad ship and crazy absurd?
Speaker 6: Cai goa.
Speaker 7: We recognize a right that this watershed has had that's
Speaker 7: long been ignored, its right to thrive.
Speaker 1: To flourish, an injection will problem.
Speaker 7: We have a democracy problem.
Speaker 1: We have shifted our government to one that's now become
Speaker 1: totally corporate control.
Speaker 7: If a corporation has the same constitutional rights as an individual,
Speaker 7: why couldn't an ecosystem.
Speaker 1: Melissa and josh talked about how they came to follow
Speaker 1: the rights of nature, how they've seen it play out
Speaker 1: on the ground in Pennsylvania and Ohio and why the
Speaker 1: idea has an unlikely opponent big environmental groups. That conversation
Speaker 1: coming up right after this quick break. I'm Amy Westervelt
Speaker 1: and this is drilled.
Speaker 7: I get Google alerts for rights of nature in my
Speaker 7: inbox every day, and it's there's constantly new news about
Speaker 7: rights of nature all over the globe, particularly in the
Speaker 7: United States. What's happening right now is there's a growing
Speaker 7: movement to establish rights of nature in Florida to protect
Speaker 7: the fragile ecosystems down there, particularly from the effects of
Speaker 7: climate change. Interesting, and there's also some news just that
Speaker 7: I just read today that there's a Convention on Biological
Speaker 7: Diversity and that's an international environmental treaty and they just
Speaker 7: convened in Colorado a couple of days ago and signed
Speaker 7: the first international environmental Treaty to advance the rights of nature. Wow.
Speaker 7: Is a milestone for the global environmental movement, and that
Speaker 7: will be voted on at their next meeting in China.
Speaker 7: So there's a lot more happening worldwide. The big case,
Speaker 7: you know, the big spotlight that everybody in the movements
Speaker 7: watching right now is Ecuador, right because in Ecuador was
Speaker 7: the first country to establish rights of nature in its
Speaker 7: national constitution back in two thousand and eight, and for
Speaker 7: about ten years after that, there were a couple of
Speaker 7: cases that went before the Constitutional Court in Ecuador, but
Speaker 7: those the judges at the time didn't seem to prioritize
Speaker 7: rights of nature, so it didn't really nothing much happened there.
Speaker 7: But as of twenty nineteen, there's a new panel of
Speaker 7: judges on the Constitutional Court in Ecuador, and this particular
Speaker 7: court has prioritized rights of major specifically, and they have
Speaker 7: selected a few cases to concentrate on so that the
Speaker 7: parameters of rights of nature, how it is applied in
Speaker 7: practical ways, the scope of the law is worked out.
Speaker 7: And one of those cases before the Constitutional Constitutional Court
Speaker 7: of Ecuador is a case to protect Los Adro's Forest
Speaker 7: Reserve from mining. It's a very, very ecologically diverse forest
Speaker 7: that will be gone if concessions for mining put forth
Speaker 7: by the Ecuadorian government will go through.
Speaker 6: Well, I think we should speak, you know, to some
Speaker 6: of the updates in the film too. You have the
Speaker 6: Lake Erie Bill of Rights, which is one of the
Speaker 6: stories that's covered in the film. That's an international waters case.
Speaker 6: So you do have these conflicting Lake Erie resolutions about
Speaker 6: you know, how much water is going to be taken
Speaker 6: out of the lake for instance. Yeah, so, I mean
Speaker 6: you're dealing with, you know, basically treaty type situations where
Speaker 6: you're trying to come to an agreement between the two
Speaker 6: the two you know, international borders. But those those confrontations
Speaker 6: and and and that kind of court case in negotiation
Speaker 6: seems to be something that's going to happen here in
Speaker 6: the future. There's certainly a lot of discussion about you know,
Speaker 6: toxic trespass, the idea of Canada or somebody else introducing
Speaker 6: pollution from one country into another and holding them accountable.
Speaker 6: But I think that you know, in the cases with
Speaker 6: Lake Erie, you know, rather than the regulatory agency being
Speaker 6: the people who take over that decision making process about
Speaker 6: what's going on with the lake and its health, the
Speaker 6: local community is able to gain the kind of power
Speaker 6: and authority that they need through rights of nature, you know,
Speaker 6: if Toledo is able to make that sacro saying in
Speaker 6: the city. Yeah, so that that way they're dealing with
Speaker 6: you know, Canada or somebody else across the table when
Speaker 6: it comes to negotiations about Lake Erie and they're doing
Speaker 6: it on behalf of Lake Erie, Yeah, rather than behalf
Speaker 6: of these regulations who you know, have basically polluted that
Speaker 6: lake to the point where it's unswimmable, undrinkable, you know,
Speaker 6: is killing a massive number of.
Speaker 8: Species just due to the way.
Speaker 6: Permits have been handed out on that west side of
Speaker 6: the of the Lake Erie basin. And just recently, you know,
Speaker 6: the city is negotiating whether or not to pay out
Speaker 6: two hundred thousand dollars in attorney costs and basically for
Speaker 6: this this you know bill that they passed that they
Speaker 6: had to argue in front of the court and the
Speaker 6: you know, the prosecutions asking for payment of two hundred
Speaker 6: thousand dollars. So they're negotiating whether or not to payments
Speaker 6: pay that. So if you want to take action, you
Speaker 6: can either help you know, Taledoans for Safe Water raise
Speaker 6: funds to you know, contribute to that fight over there,
Speaker 6: or you can contact Toledo directly and tell them not
Speaker 6: to participate in this you know, egregious request to make
Speaker 6: the city pay this two hundred thousand dollars for a
Speaker 6: democratically elected bill.
Speaker 9: I'm curious about sort of you know what your your
Speaker 9: hopes are for this documentary in terms of raising awareness
Speaker 9: or where it.
Speaker 1: Might kind of.
Speaker 9: I don't know, just help to take the story well.
Speaker 7: Joshua and I since co found Public Herald in twenty eleven,
Speaker 7: we've come into this work through water. Our initial projects
Speaker 7: were investigations of water contamination, the cover up of water
Speaker 7: contamination related to fracking development in protected watersheds in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 7: And it was over the past ten years that we've discovered,
Speaker 7: I mean, it didn't take ten years, but that we've
Speaker 7: discovered that the system of law that is in place
Speaker 7: of environmental law, that is supposed to protect things like
Speaker 7: our water, which is essential for life, of course, are
Speaker 7: not are They fail And an examination of why they
Speaker 7: fail brought us to create this documentary Invisible Hand, And
Speaker 7: with this film, I see it as just the beginning
Speaker 7: of continued coverage of how people confront the systemic fundamental
Speaker 7: flaws in our legal system and in our society which
Speaker 7: is built on you know, these same legal foundations, but
Speaker 7: also our value system. You know, as we struggle with
Speaker 7: climate change, with racism, with ecoside, I mean, all of
Speaker 7: these problems stem from the same fundamental flaw for me,
Speaker 7: which is a disconnection from the laws of nature, which
Speaker 7: govern the universe and keep everything in balance. I think
Speaker 7: that the film is just the beginning of covering this,
Speaker 7: and it really it's the film is about the movement
Speaker 7: that itself is in its infancy in terms of the
Speaker 7: way that movements go. So my hope is that this
Speaker 7: film introduces the concept to a level of detail to
Speaker 7: people who may have never heard of it or who
Speaker 7: just heard it in passing, and shows how communities actually
Speaker 7: implement this and how brave and resilient they are in
Speaker 7: this fight, because it's a really really hard one. I mean,
Speaker 7: we're talking about shifting a paradigm which is not just
Speaker 7: our legal system but also also our civilization and the.
Speaker 1: Way we live.
Speaker 7: That is a huge, huge deal. But as for as
Speaker 7: big is that as the struggle is, it's also very
Speaker 7: very simple. Yeah, because the laws of nature are simple.
Speaker 9: I'm glad that you used all the clips of like
Speaker 9: the people's saying this is so silly, This is ridiculous,
Speaker 9: in contrast with like the woman explaining what it actually does.
Speaker 9: Because people do they talk about it as like, oh,
Speaker 9: what do you want a treat to be? In negotiating
Speaker 9: these treaties you know, and no, we're talking about community
Speaker 9: control over the resources that the community depends on, which
Speaker 9: they don't have otherwise.
Speaker 6: Truly, truly they don't have. And Grant is a perfect,
Speaker 6: you know example of that, and so is Toledo and
Speaker 6: then some of the other people that we, yeah, included
Speaker 6: in the film, And yeah, you're right, I mean, it
Speaker 6: was really nice to hear from these these antagonists and
Speaker 6: what they have to say about it, because you know,
Speaker 6: when you listen to those arguments about basically why life
Speaker 6: shouldn't have rights, they sound pretty obscene and they get
Speaker 6: to kind of the core of the problems with capitalism
Speaker 6: and with you know, libertarianism or other things like that,
Speaker 6: which have created this enormously selfish situation that relies on
Speaker 6: a completely utopian fantasy that we will have unlimited resources
Speaker 6: provided by the earth forever.
Speaker 2: I wonder if there are thoughts that you have on
Speaker 2: the media side of this coin and sort of how
Speaker 2: these stories do or don't get amplified in the in
Speaker 2: the broader media sphere. And oh and like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: sure you have many thoughts on that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, documentary on that it was because it was so
Speaker 6: it was so bad, It was so bad. We were
Speaker 6: all right, Melissa and I have nothing, you know, but
Speaker 6: the best intentions when it comes to sharing a story.
Speaker 6: You know, Public Carol is not some kind of profit
Speaker 6: machine wherever.
Speaker 8: We're worried about our bottom line.
Speaker 6: Our goal is to you know, to tell the story
Speaker 6: the way it is, rather than allow these propaganda machines
Speaker 6: to keep operating and basically either diffuse stories or just
Speaker 6: either lie and tell fall story. So we I remember
Speaker 6: we were talking about this and we had a documentary
Speaker 6: that we thought of called Journation, which was the mix
Speaker 6: between journalism and public relations, because we have so much
Speaker 6: of the journalism that we expected to work with across
Speaker 6: the state had been infiltrated by this public relations fallacy
Speaker 6: of balanced journalism that they were just they were shooting
Speaker 6: themselves in the foot every time they try to publish
Speaker 6: a story. You know, we would have we would send
Speaker 6: them a story like say, for instance, we sent a
Speaker 6: newspaper story that was that first complaint story that we
Speaker 6: did in twenty fourteen, which was on the Daily Show.
Speaker 8: And it's this like really grainy.
Speaker 6: You know, look at how a complaint happens from day
Speaker 6: one to like day forty five, when the investigation is
Speaker 6: you know, concluded, and you're reading the story and it's
Speaker 6: happening in real time. You know, as you're reading it,
Speaker 6: you know, you're on day thirty one and with the
Speaker 6: complaint and the readers on day thirty one, you're reading
Speaker 6: it like as it's happening. So we're including all the
Speaker 6: sources and everything, and we give this to another newspaper
Speaker 6: to publish a print version of it locally, and they
Speaker 6: weren't able to do it because they weren't able to
Speaker 6: balance the story by calling the state and the industry
Speaker 6: pr groups to provide a positive spin on all of
Speaker 6: this negative shit that was.
Speaker 7: Happening on people being without water for months of the time. Yeah,
Speaker 7: I was like, right, because there's something positive in there
Speaker 7: about that.
Speaker 6: You are they're saying, you know, I'm like, you guys
Speaker 6: are editorializing these stories.
Speaker 8: You understand that, right.
Speaker 6: You think you're creating a balance, but you're not actually
Speaker 6: including what's happening with just the primary sources and just
Speaker 6: the people involved. You're trying to paint this reality with
Speaker 6: these outsiders and bringing their voices in to shroud the
Speaker 6: seriousness of what these people are facing and the fact
Speaker 6: that the state doesn't want to comment, Like, that's what
Speaker 6: the state doesn't want to do. So that's what you publish,
Speaker 6: you don't you know that you can't publish the story
Speaker 6: until you get a comment. You've got all the state's
Speaker 6: emails and everything else. So this happened everywhere. This happened
Speaker 6: with our relationships with NPR. You know, we tried to
Speaker 6: do some stories with NPR and and that just went
Speaker 6: totally south and and they got stuff way wrong. Yeahs,
Speaker 6: and we we we published this giant report about state
Speaker 6: misconduct with layers of evidence just thrown throughout the whole
Speaker 6: thing about specific cases where the this.
Speaker 7: Is very well placed.
Speaker 6: Looking atamination and uh so we're like, you know, hey,
Speaker 6: you guys, we we just worked on this for three years.
Speaker 6: We really want you to cover this story about the
Speaker 6: state misconduct and the attorney gen generals investigating it. Like,
Speaker 6: we've talked to the attorney general. They're out in the field,
Speaker 6: they're talking to people. They're like, well, we can't write
Speaker 6: a story until the attorney general tells us that they're
Speaker 6: investigating it.
Speaker 8: I'm like, it's the attorney general.
Speaker 9: They're gonna yeah, they don't do that, guys.
Speaker 8: They're investigating dipshits go up there published.
Speaker 6: That's been like the constant wall of trying to to
Speaker 6: take these stories that are so important and that our
Speaker 6: people are suffering with and get them into the mainstream media.
Speaker 6: And the mainstream media just has this amazing wall that
Speaker 6: they don't let anything through, which it's it's it's not
Speaker 6: such a big deal for us because we haven't a
Speaker 6: huge readership, right so it's not like, you know, we
Speaker 6: haven't fallen short on that side of it. We utilize
Speaker 6: things like Google Ads, we utilize things like social media,
Speaker 6: you know, and all the different advertising platforms in public.
Speaker 8: Film is really good distribution and in the film the.
Speaker 7: Films themselves have really built our audience. But the issue
Speaker 7: with not getting into mainstream is that we're not getting
Speaker 7: to their audience. And these these are people who need
Speaker 7: to be informed about what's actually going on. You know,
Speaker 7: we have an election coming up and people are voting,
Speaker 7: and and if you don't know the truth about everything,
Speaker 7: if you have this picture in your mind of what's
Speaker 7: happening with fracking, for instance, in Pennsylvania, which is the
Speaker 7: second largest producer of natural gas in the country, if
Speaker 7: you do if you have this picture of things as
Speaker 7: if they're balanced, which is what the mainstream media tends
Speaker 7: to report, including people like MPR. Then people think things
Speaker 7: are okay, and that is very very much not the case.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: We we covered this in a drilled season of like
Speaker 5: exactly how the whole false equivalence thing was created mostly
Speaker 5: by oil and gas companies. Like the woman who's in
Speaker 5: charge of the Corporation for.
Speaker 9: Public Broadcasting right now is you know, was one of
Speaker 9: the like key architects of that and of climate denial,
Speaker 9: and in fact like came up with the fucking term
Speaker 9: clean coal.
Speaker 10: So like, god, yeah, I'm not surprised that NPR does
Speaker 10: a bad job.
Speaker 9: Wow, I'm curious what you're actually seeing on the ground
Speaker 9: with people in Pennsylvania and you know how you know,
Speaker 9: tracking regulation plays there.
Speaker 8: I have a I have my own version of that
Speaker 8: most of you.
Speaker 7: I'll share, you share your share living on the front.
Speaker 6: So I've been you know, I went to college and
Speaker 6: studied comprehensive planning and zoning, and I saw a lot
Speaker 6: of that work happening in Pennsylvania with regards to controlling
Speaker 6: fracking and keeping it in.
Speaker 8: Specific zones in the community.
Speaker 6: And you know, working with food and water watch to
Speaker 6: create a zoning plan that'll protect your community from oil
Speaker 6: and gas and these kinds of things. And here you
Speaker 6: have Grant right, and Grant is doing the exact opposite.
Speaker 6: Grant is saying for you to tell me that I
Speaker 6: have to zone things in my area and then make
Speaker 6: sure that there is a place for waste in our community.
Speaker 6: Make sure there's a zone for waste in our community.
Speaker 6: That's fucking unconstitutional, and we're not going to do that.
Speaker 8: We're going to pass home rule. And this home rule
Speaker 8: will have a bill.
Speaker 6: Of rights, which says what our laws are and what
Speaker 6: you must follow when you're in our community. It will
Speaker 6: not be these unconstitutional mandates that we have to accept
Speaker 6: waste or we have to accept fracking in our community.
Speaker 8: And that's something that Pennsylvania allows.
Speaker 6: Now, the problem is with banning fracking in pennsylvani And
Speaker 6: why you don't see Grant in one hundred other communities
Speaker 6: like you did in a place like New York.
Speaker 8: Is the entire green movement in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 6: Every single organization I've ever talked to about this, No
Speaker 6: one is focusing on passing home rule bands inside of communities,
Speaker 6: except for Cell Deaf Cell DEEV is the only one
Speaker 6: I know who's like created a platform for communities that
Speaker 6: actually ban fracking or ban infrastructure, or ban landfills or
Speaker 6: ban anything, you know, through something like home rule, because
Speaker 6: they've said, this is the this is the most powerful
Speaker 6: part of the law, and this is where we're going
Speaker 6: to help you pass if you want to pass. And
Speaker 6: they're not going to push any of that out you.
Speaker 6: They're just like suggesting, you know what it is that
Speaker 6: they know. However, the environmental organizations have completely lost track
Speaker 6: of how to deal with this with this problem, and
Speaker 6: they are entirely invested in zoning, an ordnance plan plans,
Speaker 6: entirely invested. So they're taking communities who are in dire
Speaker 6: straight who want to ban fracking so it doesn't happen
Speaker 6: next to the school, or they want to banfracking and
Speaker 6: they don't want these wells, or they don't want injection
Speaker 6: wells like plump Township, right, And they're taking these communities
Speaker 6: and they're saying, well, we'll help you build these really
Speaker 6: strong zoning and ordance laws and that'll make everything okay.
Speaker 6: And I don't have an example of where that's okay.
Speaker 6: All I ever see with Melissa and I filming this stuff,
Speaker 6: and we have been to I cannot tell you how
Speaker 6: many of these boring ass zoning meetings.
Speaker 8: It's a hearing and we're there for four hours. Yeah,
Speaker 8: the whole damn thing, watching every attorney talk.
Speaker 6: I mean so many times did we do this for
Speaker 6: this film to try and find one positive piece to
Speaker 6: stick in there about zoning and ordance.
Speaker 8: We couldn't get a shred of it. It was just
Speaker 8: a total total failure.
Speaker 6: So on the banning side and that whole situation, there
Speaker 6: is not good communication in Pennsylvania about your opportunities to
Speaker 6: ban fracking locally with Homer, and that's something that as reporters,
Speaker 6: I feel really important to share with communities because other
Speaker 6: newspapers have said, like you, Grand Township will not win, right,
Speaker 6: Grand Township is a case of home rule, and they
Speaker 6: won't win and this isn't gonna work. And then they win,
Speaker 6: And I'm like, are you gonna go back and retract
Speaker 6: your statement in your paper? Like do we need to
Speaker 6: send you corrections for this? Because you just misled a
Speaker 6: lot of readers about what they're supposed to do with
Speaker 6: fracking and basically told them that what Grant's doing, which
Speaker 6: is the exact same thing that somebody like Pittsburgh did,
Speaker 6: which has a band unfracking isn't going to hold up in.
Speaker 8: Court when in fact it has.
Speaker 6: So Yeah, it's a really confusing situation on that front.
Speaker 8: Now, you know, Ohio was different.
Speaker 6: Ohio lost that control their state Supreme Court stripped them
Speaker 6: of local control. So they need to go at the
Speaker 6: state level and kind of work their way down. But yeah,
Speaker 6: it's it's a really dynamic story and I wish somebody
Speaker 6: would write about it.
Speaker 8: We just don't have the capacity right now.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, I mean, the environmental groups in Pennsylvania have
Speaker 7: there's no campaign to ban fracking in Pennsylvania, even though
Speaker 7: as you're seeing in the polls, Amy that the majority
Speaker 7: of people in Pennsylvania support a moratorium at the least.
Speaker 7: And so it's a bit of a mystery to me
Speaker 7: why that is. I don't know if it's because a
Speaker 7: lot of the environmental organizations live are based in cities,
Speaker 7: and there's no fracking in cities. So I work remotely
Speaker 7: and I live my family with my family on the.
Speaker 9: Front lines of fracking.
Speaker 1: We live.
Speaker 7: Very on a road that is essentially become the driveway
Speaker 7: for a fracking wastewater facility. So there's active there's radioactive
Speaker 7: fracking waste being driven over top of our water supply
Speaker 7: all the time. Wow, and right. The environmental community does
Speaker 7: not get behind the rights of nature community rights movement.
Speaker 7: In fact, when I've brought it up with environmental groups,
Speaker 7: their response is that, well, if we allow communities to
Speaker 7: decide what's right for them, then some of them will
Speaker 7: choose what's wrong. They'll choose to enact laws to promote
Speaker 7: bad things like more fracking. Right, And I try to explain,
Speaker 7: you know, that's not exactly how it works. I mean,
Speaker 7: you community rights work as an addition of increased protection.
Speaker 7: It doesn't steal. You can't pass a local law that's
Speaker 7: going to poison the next community over. That's that's not
Speaker 7: that's not the purpose and the meaning of it all is.
Speaker 7: So I think that fear is very unfounded.
Speaker 9: But that's interesting.
Speaker 10: Do you think that also that like with the larger
Speaker 10: like with the national environmental orgs that they are, that
Speaker 10: it's some kind of playing politics thing too, that they're
Speaker 10: just like worried, But it's like they've bought into this
Speaker 10: this story. A fracking ban is like untenable to voters
Speaker 10: and whatever.
Speaker 6: Food and Water Watch is a fracking ban organization, yeah,
Speaker 6: but in Pennsylvania that push does not exist. It is
Speaker 6: a zone, zoning, an ordnance organization. And I've confronted them
Speaker 6: on this because we showed triple Divide it or invisible
Speaker 6: hand early at one point and a community wanted to
Speaker 6: use home rule, they wanted to ban fracking, and Food
Speaker 6: and Water Watch wouldn't come to the show, They wouldn't
Speaker 6: show up at the show, even though they have field
Speaker 6: agents in that community because it wasn't a zoning an
Speaker 6: ordinance situation.
Speaker 8: It was a home rule band fracking situation.
Speaker 6: And I kind of, uh, you know, I felt an
Speaker 6: obligation there, as you know, as a journalist, to make
Speaker 6: that clear. So I did publish my own editorial in
Speaker 6: regards to the Mayor of Pittsburgh's statements about home rule
Speaker 6: and why they felt that home rule was the only
Speaker 6: thing that would stop fracking in Pittsburgh rather than zoning
Speaker 6: and ordnance laws, which it has up to this point,
Speaker 6: against what I was being told by the Food and
Speaker 6: Water Watch organization in Pennsylvania, which was that, you know,
Speaker 6: the route, the better route to take was to try
Speaker 6: and push fracking to the edges of the community through zoning,
Speaker 6: which if you've ever been involved in a case with
Speaker 6: a corporation under zoning laws, they will find a way,
Speaker 6: one way or another to change your zone so they
Speaker 6: can put their well pad there. If they don't do
Speaker 6: it this year, they'll do it four years down the road,
Speaker 6: which is exactly what they did in this community who
Speaker 6: wanted to have home rule and ban oil and gas
Speaker 6: infrastructure because a natural gas power plant from in Energy
Speaker 6: was proposed to be built there and it is, you know,
Speaker 6: right now getting its air quality permits outside of the
Speaker 6: Pittsburgh and Elizabeth township. Kay, and it will increase dramatically
Speaker 6: all these different particulates in air pollution that's happening in
Speaker 6: the Pittsburgh.
Speaker 8: Region, And that could have all been stopped had green.
Speaker 6: Organizations created some kind of mobility and support for a
Speaker 6: community who had you know, a dozen or more people
Speaker 6: organized to go out collect signatures, get home roll passed,
Speaker 6: and ban a power plant. But instead, you know, they
Speaker 6: were left on their own. They were ostracized by bigger
Speaker 6: green organizations for taking this position. I mean, it's an
Speaker 6: astonishing treatment of the good intentions of a community to
Speaker 6: protect themselves.
Speaker 9: That's really interesting.
Speaker 7: I mean, all of these environmental organizations are funded by
Speaker 7: philothrapic foundations, right, and many of these foundations their priority
Speaker 7: is to make the system that's in place work better.
Speaker 7: What the fundamental piece that's missing is that the system
Speaker 7: is working precisely as it's supposed to. And we can
Speaker 7: dicker and play whack a mole to rearrange words on
Speaker 7: pieces of paper that are always meant to treat nature
Speaker 7: as property and always meant to prioritize commerce over basic life,
Speaker 7: and the problem that remains the same. You know, it's
Speaker 7: our laws are designed to serve an economic paradigm that
Speaker 7: treats as property and as a commodity, and that paradigm,
Speaker 7: it's it's our environmental laws come from that system, and
Speaker 7: that's why they have failed, and they are going to
Speaker 7: continue to fail until we see nature as something else,
Speaker 7: until we see nature as what it really is. The
Speaker 7: Rights of Nature movement that we've come to cover after
Speaker 7: covering all of this environmental degradation and this infighting about
Speaker 7: how to protect ourselves and you know, do we pass
Speaker 7: home rule laws or do we zone it to the
Speaker 7: outskirts of our community, which is incredibly unjust by the
Speaker 7: way our way of life and our system of law
Speaker 7: are constantly extracting far from from the outskirts of the
Speaker 7: marginalized people in places and until and the environmental groups
Speaker 7: are wrapped into that system. They're part of the capitalist system,
Speaker 7: the colonial system that has created this problem and will
Speaker 7: continue to until we manage to fundamentally shift the not
Speaker 7: our structure of law and our value system and the people.
Speaker 7: You know, you mentioned the technologists that think that we
Speaker 7: can we can techno fix our way out of this problem,
Speaker 7: but that is absolutely absurd because technology, you don't just
Speaker 7: wave a wand and create a piece of technology out
Speaker 7: of thin air. It has to be extracted from somewhere,
Speaker 7: and it's usually composed of pieces and parts and materials
Speaker 7: that are extracted from those marginalized communities that have been
Speaker 7: sacrificed for hundreds of years now through the through the
Speaker 7: industrial revolution. And so to techno fix our way out
Speaker 7: is just to perpetuate more of the same harm. But
Speaker 7: what we need to do, and I'm not saying that
Speaker 7: technology isn't part of the our solutions moving forward, but
Speaker 7: we have to put at the center of our decision
Speaker 7: making processes nature and the laws of nature. We have
Speaker 7: to start there. We have to design our future systems
Speaker 7: and redesign our way of life and redesign our legal
Speaker 7: system with the laws of nature at the center. We
Speaker 7: have to before we switch to one renewable energy, we.
Speaker 10: Have to ask.
Speaker 7: How and where. We need to ask ourselves how to
Speaker 7: do that in alignment with the laws of nature. And
Speaker 7: that's that's just how we have to do it moving forward.
Speaker 7: It's not about you can never cut down a tree
Speaker 7: or you can never drive a car. It's about how
Speaker 7: we do that as can. Communities has interconnected communities of
Speaker 7: people and living other non human relatives. You know, maybe
Speaker 7: we don't each have maybe each you know, it's not
Speaker 7: that we can't drive a car, it's that we have
Speaker 7: to share cars. It's not that we can't cut down
Speaker 7: agree it's that we have to acknowledge that we share forests.
Speaker 7: And for one corporation to cut to to take a
Speaker 7: forest like Los Adros, or a mining company to like
Speaker 7: in Ecuador, to for them to get a concession to
Speaker 7: decimate an entire forest, that kind of activity, that kind
Speaker 7: of economic paradigm, that kind of social value system needs
Speaker 7: to absolutely end, it's suicide if we don't. And instead,
Speaker 7: the decisions that we make moving forward about whether it's
Speaker 7: to mine lithium for electric car batteries or cut down
Speaker 7: trees for housing material, those communities need to those decisions
Speaker 7: need to be made as communities, not as you know,
Speaker 7: corporate entities that can that sit at the top of
Speaker 7: the priority list for our legal system