WEBVTT - The Tree Branch 0:00:15.396 --> 0:00:22.716 Pushkin. Imagine there's a place in our world where the 0:00:22.796 --> 0:00:28.876 known things go. A deer haunted forest, crowded with pines 0:00:28.916 --> 0:00:32.996 and hemlocks, the carpet of needles beneath your feet, grouse 0:00:33.156 --> 0:00:37.796 in the underbrush. Welcome to the woods. Outside of the 0:00:37.876 --> 0:00:44.196 Last Archive. I'm Jill Lapour. This episode, we're celebrating an anniversary, 0:00:45.276 --> 0:00:49.676 sort of the anniversary of a dream, an alternate history. 0:00:50.156 --> 0:00:53.036 We're imagining what the world might be like if fifty 0:00:53.116 --> 0:00:57.796 years ago, in nineteen seventy two, Americans had ratified an 0:00:57.876 --> 0:01:03.076 environmental rights Amendment, an amendment to the US Constitution granting 0:01:03.116 --> 0:01:09.396 not only protection but representation to the natural world. This 0:01:09.516 --> 0:01:12.796 did not happen, But this episode, I want to wonder 0:01:13.396 --> 0:01:15.636 about what the world would be like if it had happened. 0:01:16.116 --> 0:01:19.316 I want to think about the road not taken. I 0:01:19.396 --> 0:01:23.236 want to rekindle a spirit of imagination about what could 0:01:23.276 --> 0:01:27.036 still happen. To start, let's go back to where by 0:01:27.116 --> 0:01:32.036 my reckoning. The American environmental movement began in a seaside 0:01:32.076 --> 0:01:35.836 cabin on an island in Maine in nineteen sixty two, 0:01:36.596 --> 0:01:40.996 when Rachel Carson issued a warning about pesticides and petroleum 0:01:41.036 --> 0:01:46.756 companies so step through a screen door into Rachel Carson's 0:01:46.756 --> 0:01:52.636 cabin in Maine, on the edge of the sea. Now, 0:01:52.916 --> 0:01:56.436 to these people, apparently the vald of nature was something 0:01:56.476 --> 0:02:00.396 that was repealed or as soon as man came on 0:02:00.476 --> 0:02:03.596 the scene, Well, you might just as well assume that 0:02:03.796 --> 0:02:09.596 you could repeal the law of gravity. Rachel person had 0:02:09.596 --> 0:02:11.996 been writing for a long time by this point about 0:02:12.036 --> 0:02:16.236 the natural world, especially about the ocean. She loved mucking 0:02:16.236 --> 0:02:19.836 about in the shoreline, where she studied the tiniest creatures 0:02:19.956 --> 0:02:24.276 eddying in tide pools. She was fascinated by their interdependence. 0:02:25.476 --> 0:02:28.956 The balance of nature is built of a series of 0:02:29.036 --> 0:02:34.956 interrelationships between living things and between living things and their environment. 0:02:35.796 --> 0:02:39.116 In nineteen sixty three, a reporter from CBS News had 0:02:39.196 --> 0:02:41.996 driven up to her remote cabin It's on a little 0:02:41.996 --> 0:02:45.716 spit of an island, to ask her some questions. Carson 0:02:45.756 --> 0:02:50.396 had just published Silence Spring, a lyrical and terrifying account 0:02:50.396 --> 0:02:54.316 of what pesticides were doing to the natural world. Pesticides 0:02:54.396 --> 0:02:57.436 kill insects, sure, but they also kill birds that eat 0:02:57.476 --> 0:03:00.796 insects and the animals that eat the birds. You can't 0:03:00.836 --> 0:03:04.116 just kill one thing, Carson demonstrated, You put out a poison. 0:03:04.516 --> 0:03:08.196 It poisons everything because everything is connected to everything else. 0:03:08.796 --> 0:03:12.796 They come one day, she warned, an entirely silent spring. 0:03:13.236 --> 0:03:18.116 No crickets chirp, no frogs peep, no bird song. The 0:03:18.156 --> 0:03:21.196 pesticide industry waged a campaign to try to portray Carson 0:03:21.236 --> 0:03:24.476 as a silly old lady. It didn't work. We did 0:03:24.476 --> 0:03:26.956 a whole episode about Carson in season one. It's called 0:03:27.436 --> 0:03:31.596 for the Birds Anyway. In nineteen sixty two, Sound Spring 0:03:31.636 --> 0:03:34.676 became a bestseller, and Carson was hailed as a visionary. 0:03:35.156 --> 0:03:38.356 Her book fundamentally changed how people thought about the environment. 0:03:38.716 --> 0:03:42.476 President Kennedy read it, and Carson testified before the Senate. 0:03:43.276 --> 0:03:46.156 Carson died less than two years later, but she'd raised 0:03:46.196 --> 0:03:49.076 in the public mind a new and urgent concern about 0:03:49.116 --> 0:03:53.996 all kinds of environmental problems. Then nineteen sixty nine, NASA 0:03:54.076 --> 0:03:56.836 sent men to the Moon, and their photographs showed the Earth, 0:03:57.196 --> 0:04:01.356 the whole Earth, small and fragile, something to protect, a 0:04:01.396 --> 0:04:05.076 pale blue dot, as if made of glass, a blue marble. 0:04:06.796 --> 0:04:10.156 In September nineteen sixty nine, two months after men from 0:04:10.156 --> 0:04:13.956 the Earth landed on the Moon, Moonday, a Maverick, Wisconsin 0:04:14.076 --> 0:04:18.756 senator named gay Lord Nelson proposed a celebration, a national holiday. 0:04:18.796 --> 0:04:23.996 He called it Earth Day. The environment is all of 0:04:24.036 --> 0:04:27.156 America and its problems. It's the raps in the ghetto, 0:04:28.276 --> 0:04:31.796 It's a hungry child and a land of affluence. Nelson 0:04:31.836 --> 0:04:35.956 modeled Earth Day after anti war teachings. With all that urgency, 0:04:36.196 --> 0:04:39.556 life and death at stake, the future of humanity itself. 0:04:40.236 --> 0:04:42.996 I don't think there's any other issue, viewed in its 0:04:42.996 --> 0:04:48.036 broadest stands, which is his critical to mankind as the 0:04:48.236 --> 0:04:52.716 issue of the quality of the environment in which we live. 0:04:53.516 --> 0:04:56.796 Gaylord Nelson had grown up in Wisconsin. When he was fourteen, 0:04:56.876 --> 0:04:59.716 he'd started a campaign the plant trees in his hometown, 0:05:00.156 --> 0:05:04.236 clear Lake. As governor of Wisconsin, he'd made environmental protection 0:05:04.316 --> 0:05:07.716 his top priority. He taxed tobacco and used the money 0:05:07.716 --> 0:05:10.636 to buy land for public park. In the Senate, he 0:05:10.716 --> 0:05:14.636 dedicated himself to getting the environment on the national political agenda. 0:05:14.716 --> 0:05:17.716 In his first year, he co sponsored the Clean Water Act. 0:05:18.076 --> 0:05:20.996 He was also the first person to propose an environmental 0:05:21.076 --> 0:05:25.436 rights amendment. In a speech in the Senate on January nineteenth, 0:05:25.716 --> 0:05:30.836 nineteen seventy, Nelson proposed a constitutional amendment that read, every 0:05:30.876 --> 0:05:37.516 person has the inalienable right to a decent environment. People 0:05:37.556 --> 0:05:40.516 propose amendments all the time that never go anywhere, but 0:05:40.636 --> 0:05:44.316 still it planted a seed. I've been thinking a lot 0:05:44.356 --> 0:05:47.676 lately about amending the Constitution and why it's so hard 0:05:47.716 --> 0:05:50.356 to do, and when it got so hard to do. 0:05:51.236 --> 0:05:53.716 In the nineteen seventies, it looked like another amendment, the 0:05:53.756 --> 0:05:56.996 Equal Rights Amendment banning discrimination on the basis of sex, 0:05:57.316 --> 0:06:00.596 would surely be ratified. In the end, it wasn't. But 0:06:00.716 --> 0:06:03.676 in nineteen seventy when gay Lord Nelson proposed an environmental 0:06:03.756 --> 0:06:07.556 rights amendment, it just didn't seem that crazy. In nineteen 0:06:07.596 --> 0:06:09.956 seventy one, the twenty six the men it was ratified. 0:06:10.156 --> 0:06:13.556 It lowered the voting age to eighteen. In the nineteen seventies, 0:06:13.556 --> 0:06:16.916 In other words, you could still ratify amendments to the Constitution. 0:06:17.916 --> 0:06:21.836 On January twenty second, three days after Gaylord Nelson proposed 0:06:21.836 --> 0:06:25.956 his environment a rights amendment, Richard Nixon, the President, through 0:06:25.996 --> 0:06:28.556 his support behind this idea in his State of the 0:06:28.636 --> 0:06:33.036 Union address, The great question of the seventies is shall 0:06:33.076 --> 0:06:37.916 we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our 0:06:37.996 --> 0:06:41.676 peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the 0:06:41.836 --> 0:06:45.276 damage we have done to our heir, to our land, 0:06:45.636 --> 0:06:48.996 and to our wife. Nixon, in other words, seem to 0:06:48.996 --> 0:06:54.676 have embraced Rachel Carson's agenda restoring nature to its natural 0:06:54.716 --> 0:06:59.356 state as a cause beyond party and beyond factions. It 0:06:59.396 --> 0:07:01.636 has become a common cause of all the people of 0:07:01.676 --> 0:07:07.276 this country. The scale of the crisis was obvious to everyone. 0:07:07.796 --> 0:07:11.356 By nineteen seventy, States had become a very trashy looking place. 0:07:11.436 --> 0:07:16.436 It was embarrassing pollution, small glitter everywhere. The Cuyahoga River 0:07:16.516 --> 0:07:19.476 in Cleveland had caught fire only months before, and not 0:07:19.596 --> 0:07:22.396 for the first time. The water was so entirely polluted 0:07:22.436 --> 0:07:25.276 with oil slick debris that when sparks from a passing 0:07:25.316 --> 0:07:28.036 train flicked over the river, it went up in flames, 0:07:28.396 --> 0:07:32.156 flames as high as a five story building. Public outrage 0:07:32.156 --> 0:07:34.836 had been so intense that Nixon had signed into law 0:07:34.876 --> 0:07:38.836 the National Environmental Policy Act, which helped establish the Environmental 0:07:38.876 --> 0:07:43.596 Protection Agency. Through our years of past carelessness, we incurred 0:07:43.596 --> 0:07:46.076 a debt to nature. And now that debt is being called. 0:07:47.316 --> 0:07:49.596 The program I shall proposed to Congress will be the 0:07:49.636 --> 0:07:55.236 most comprehensive and costly program In this view. Again, America's history. 0:07:57.916 --> 0:08:00.916 I think about it this way, post War America, people 0:08:00.956 --> 0:08:03.756 are finally fed up with the ravages of the Industrial Revolution, 0:08:04.276 --> 0:08:07.956 the pollution, the filthy factories, the dead fish in the rivers, 0:08:08.156 --> 0:08:11.996 the dying oceans, the smog. To stop all that, you've 0:08:12.036 --> 0:08:14.436 got to pass some laws. One way to drum up 0:08:14.436 --> 0:08:19.436 support invent a national holiday. Call it Earth Day, Tell 0:08:19.476 --> 0:08:22.436 people about it, get them out on the streets, run ads, 0:08:22.556 --> 0:08:26.156 and stir up news coverage on television across the country. 0:08:26.836 --> 0:08:28.596 Do you feel as though all this is a reaction 0:08:28.636 --> 0:08:32.276 to publicity that's been blasted across the nation. It's going 0:08:32.316 --> 0:08:34.956 to be a real, real, big political move, probably bigger 0:08:34.956 --> 0:08:37.556 than any other political move we've ever seen this country. 0:08:38.156 --> 0:08:41.156 Birthday wasn't a federal holiday. We're like a rally day, 0:08:41.396 --> 0:08:44.676 but also more than rally day. Governors agreed to on 0:08:44.876 --> 0:08:48.316 Earth Day, so did a lot of musicians, poets, politicians. 0:08:49.156 --> 0:08:52.356 In Washington, the House and Senator journed for the day. 0:08:52.436 --> 0:08:55.676 Practically every Senator and congressman was off to make speeches 0:08:55.996 --> 0:08:59.796 on the year's most popular and least risky election issial 0:09:01.196 --> 0:09:05.076 April twenty, nineteen seventy, that first Earth Day took place 0:09:05.116 --> 0:09:08.596 all over the country, in cities and towns, at state capitals, 0:09:08.796 --> 0:09:12.876 a polluted highways. People picked up trash on river banks 0:09:13.116 --> 0:09:17.836 from the Kalamazoo to the Mississippi. Schools canceled classes, kindergarteners 0:09:17.876 --> 0:09:21.556 did crafts, college students marched in the streets, and middle 0:09:21.556 --> 0:09:24.876 schoolers went on field trips wearing baseball caps and muck boots, 0:09:25.076 --> 0:09:28.236 carrying binoculars as they trudged the woods to a lake 0:09:28.276 --> 0:09:32.076 whose shoreline was covered with trash. This is pollution, and 0:09:32.156 --> 0:09:37.436 it's poor hearby man, all right, So this isn't anything 0:09:37.476 --> 0:09:39.436 that Nature staff was that when you look at nature, 0:09:39.476 --> 0:09:42.396 you're going to find it a pretty peaceful thing. Twenty 0:09:42.476 --> 0:09:45.476 eight poisoned girls from Councils Loves AIOH. We're out early 0:09:45.556 --> 0:09:48.916 this Earthday morning. They are members of Missus Willard Hopper's 0:09:48.956 --> 0:09:52.956 sixth grade science class. Right full of answers. Another triumph 0:09:52.956 --> 0:09:56.916 of hope over experience. And pretty much everywhere that first 0:09:56.956 --> 0:10:13.236 Earth Day, people sang out. In Boston, protesters held a 0:10:13.356 --> 0:10:15.956 die in at Logan Airport to call attention to the 0:10:15.996 --> 0:10:19.916 pollution caused by airplanes. They pretended to die there. There 0:10:19.916 --> 0:10:24.436 were teachings and cleanups. Protesters wore surgical masks to call 0:10:24.476 --> 0:10:27.476 attention to air pollution. Parts of New York City banned 0:10:27.516 --> 0:10:30.756 cars for the day. Protesters in Chicago called for the 0:10:30.796 --> 0:10:35.156 elimination of the internal combustion engine, and in Washington, civil 0:10:35.196 --> 0:10:38.916 rights leader James Farmer tied the fledgling environmental movement to 0:10:39.036 --> 0:10:46.996 racial justice. The garbage, the trash, the carbon monoxide, the junk. 0:10:48.196 --> 0:10:51.436 Who suffers most from it if it is not the poor? 0:10:52.396 --> 0:10:57.356 And so the poor, especially the ghatois poor, the black 0:10:57.436 --> 0:11:01.356 and the brown and the red stand to benefit first 0:11:02.196 --> 0:11:07.116 from any successes in cleaning up the environment. In Albuquerque, 0:11:07.596 --> 0:11:10.876 in the Bareless Neighborhood, the leaders of a Chicano rally 0:11:11.036 --> 0:11:13.716 made the same argument. We're going to make people understand, 0:11:14.316 --> 0:11:16.676 but the kind of thing has come from our pollution, 0:11:16.796 --> 0:11:20.676 water pollution are the same kind of things that cause racism, 0:11:21.076 --> 0:11:24.996 to cause poverty, and cause hunger in this country. So 0:11:25.036 --> 0:11:34.636 we're all going to be marching to day. Okay. In Philadelphia, 0:11:34.716 --> 0:11:37.596 at the Salem Zion United Church of Christ, middle aged 0:11:37.596 --> 0:11:40.956 congregants and Sunday suits and bonnets joined their young pastor 0:11:41.396 --> 0:11:44.836 in a special Earth Day prayer. We have helped to 0:11:45.036 --> 0:11:49.356 fill up your air pollute your streams and clutter your 0:11:49.396 --> 0:11:53.516 earth with crash and gadgets. Now our high style heavy 0:11:53.596 --> 0:11:57.556 with sorrow for what we have done, but not before 0:11:57.716 --> 0:12:02.716 our sinuses and lungs warned us a great danger. Okay, 0:12:02.916 --> 0:12:05.476 nice idea, but I confess the prayer doesn't entirely work 0:12:05.516 --> 0:12:08.196 for me. Still, it's a measure of the intensity of 0:12:08.196 --> 0:12:10.796 all of this. And out of all those meetings and 0:12:10.876 --> 0:12:15.276 marches and clean ups and conversation after conversation came a 0:12:15.316 --> 0:12:27.036 demand for something more power to the earth. But what 0:12:27.076 --> 0:12:31.116 would that mean? Earth Day was the biggest protest in 0:12:31.236 --> 0:12:34.516 human history. Listening to the tape, you can feel this 0:12:34.676 --> 0:12:38.396 oceanic swell, this common knowledge that the earth is in trouble, 0:12:39.436 --> 0:12:42.316 the sense that people will make sacrifices to save it. 0:12:43.276 --> 0:12:47.836 It sounds as though things might actually change. But listening now, 0:12:48.356 --> 0:12:50.556 who know as well as I do that things didn't 0:12:50.596 --> 0:12:53.676 change nearly as much as they needed to. I don't 0:12:53.676 --> 0:12:56.196 want to tell that story again, though, I want instead 0:12:56.476 --> 0:13:00.756 to imagine what if that moment really had changed everything? 0:13:01.316 --> 0:13:17.956 How could it have the answer? After this break? The 0:13:18.036 --> 0:13:20.196 idea that everything could have turned out differently in the 0:13:20.276 --> 0:13:24.676 nineteen seventies is not crazy. Remember that in nineteen seventy 0:13:24.836 --> 0:13:27.356 at the very same time that Wisconsin Senator gay Lord 0:13:27.396 --> 0:13:29.596 Nelson had come up with the idea for Earth Day, 0:13:30.116 --> 0:13:32.236 he come up with the idea of an amendment to 0:13:32.236 --> 0:13:36.076 the US Constitution guaranteeing people the right to a decent environment. 0:13:36.756 --> 0:13:39.636 While he was working on that, some states started trying 0:13:39.636 --> 0:13:42.996 to guarantee the same thing. The first to succeed in 0:13:43.076 --> 0:13:47.916 nineteen seventy one was Pennsylvania. The state ratified its own 0:13:48.036 --> 0:13:51.916 environmental rights amendment by popular referendum by a margin of 0:13:51.956 --> 0:13:55.036 four to one. So people who wanted to change the 0:13:55.036 --> 0:13:58.396 federal Constitution to save the planet, we're getting pretty excited. 0:14:04.516 --> 0:14:09.036 It all seemed so promising, so promising that environmental advoca 0:14:09.316 --> 0:14:12.596 groups pressed the case. They came up with another way, 0:14:12.916 --> 0:14:15.876 a fascinating way to think about how to grant power 0:14:16.076 --> 0:14:22.476 to the earth. That idea spread it up. In California, 0:14:22.836 --> 0:14:25.436 the Walt Disney Company was about to build a ski 0:14:25.516 --> 0:14:30.116 resort in Mineral King Valley. The Sierra Club sued to 0:14:30.116 --> 0:14:32.996 stop the plan, but the court said it lacked standing. 0:14:33.836 --> 0:14:38.156 The Sierra Club challenged the permit permitting this to go on, 0:14:39.156 --> 0:14:42.276 and case went up to the Ninth Circuit and the 0:14:42.836 --> 0:14:47.036 far Service said, look, you the Sierra Club don't have standing. 0:14:48.476 --> 0:14:51.036 Maybe this is a wrong to issue the permit, but 0:14:51.116 --> 0:14:53.356 you're not injured. You as a club are not injured. 0:14:54.316 --> 0:14:58.116 That's USC law professor Christopher Stone from an old interview 0:14:58.516 --> 0:15:02.116 at the time, he followed the case very closely. When 0:15:02.156 --> 0:15:05.196 I saw that case, I thought, this isn't a way 0:15:05.236 --> 0:15:09.996 sort of silly. This is an important decision, I said, 0:15:09.996 --> 0:15:12.516 whether to develop the Mineral King Valley in this way. 0:15:13.356 --> 0:15:16.396 I'm not sure how it should come out, but at 0:15:16.436 --> 0:15:19.596 least it should be heard. And if the problem of 0:15:19.636 --> 0:15:25.076 its being heard is that this club was not suffered 0:15:25.116 --> 0:15:29.036 no injury, why not just saying, look, the injury is 0:15:29.076 --> 0:15:33.316 suffered by a Mineral King Valley. The injury is suffered 0:15:33.476 --> 0:15:37.396 by the valley. Stone decided to write a law review article. 0:15:37.556 --> 0:15:42.756 It's called should Trees Have Standing? Stone starts off talking 0:15:42.796 --> 0:15:46.556 about the Sierra Club versus Mineral King Valley case, but 0:15:46.636 --> 0:15:49.956 like most big legal arguments, Stones article made a very 0:15:50.076 --> 0:15:55.316 general claim, a legal innovation. He argued that trees and 0:15:55.556 --> 0:15:58.596 any other part of the natural world should have standing 0:15:58.716 --> 0:16:02.636 in courts of law as persons. After all, a corporation 0:16:02.716 --> 0:16:05.356 can be a person, so can a ship. So can 0:16:05.396 --> 0:16:07.356 your dog. If you leave your dog, your estate and 0:16:07.436 --> 0:16:11.516 your will, why not trees and valleys and rivers and streams. 0:16:12.316 --> 0:16:15.436 Stone didn't want humans to protect the environment. He wanted 0:16:15.476 --> 0:16:21.316 the environment itself to bear rights. He knew this might 0:16:21.356 --> 0:16:23.636 strike some people as a nutty idea, but he also 0:16:23.676 --> 0:16:26.436 felt the time had come for big, bold ideas because 0:16:26.436 --> 0:16:28.356 of how bad he thought things would be in fifty 0:16:28.436 --> 0:16:31.236 years time. There's a part of his article where he 0:16:31.276 --> 0:16:34.596 writes about that, and I find it uncanny, having been 0:16:34.596 --> 0:16:38.836 written in nineteen seventy two. He wrote, scientists have been 0:16:38.836 --> 0:16:40.996 warning of the crisis the Earth and all humans on 0:16:41.036 --> 0:16:43.516 its face. If we do not change our ways radically, 0:16:44.236 --> 0:16:48.596 the Earth's very atmosphere is threatened with frightening possibilities. Absorption 0:16:48.636 --> 0:16:51.796 of sunlight, upon which the entire life cycle depends may 0:16:51.836 --> 0:16:55.516 be diminished. The oceans may warm, increasing the greenhouse effect 0:16:55.516 --> 0:16:59.156 of the atmosphere, melting the polar ice cap and destroying 0:16:59.156 --> 0:17:02.676 our great coastal cities. Stone rushed a copy of his 0:17:02.756 --> 0:17:05.516 article to the Supreme Court, which was slated to decide 0:17:05.516 --> 0:17:08.716 the Sierra Club case, to decide, to begin with, whether 0:17:08.716 --> 0:17:11.676 the club had standing to try to block Walt Disney 0:17:11.676 --> 0:17:15.636 Company from chopping down a forest. Now sort of by 0:17:15.676 --> 0:17:18.636 one of those weird coincidences in the world. Write it 0:17:18.676 --> 0:17:22.796 about that time. Early in nineteen seventy two, Doctor Seus's 0:17:22.796 --> 0:17:26.156 book The Lorax was broadcast on television. You know, the 0:17:26.196 --> 0:17:28.756 cartoon about a creature who lives in the woods is 0:17:28.796 --> 0:17:31.476 trying to stop a lumber company from raising the forest. 0:17:32.836 --> 0:17:36.636 I speaking for the trees. Let him grow, Let him grow. 0:17:40.716 --> 0:17:45.276 But nobody listens too much, don't you know, No, they 0:17:45.356 --> 0:17:49.036 don't listen too much. Weeks after The Lorax was broadcast 0:17:49.076 --> 0:17:52.116 on TV, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in 0:17:52.156 --> 0:17:55.796 the case of Sierra Club versus Mineral King Valley, issuing 0:17:55.836 --> 0:17:59.036 a ruling in favor of the Walt Disney Company. Justice 0:17:59.036 --> 0:18:01.756 William O. Douglas wrote in a descent that if a 0:18:01.796 --> 0:18:04.276 ship can be a person under the law, so it 0:18:04.316 --> 0:18:11.196 should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beeches, ridges, 0:18:11.436 --> 0:18:16.756 groves of trees, swampland or even air. In a footnote, 0:18:17.196 --> 0:18:21.276 he cited stones article should trees have standing? But Justice 0:18:21.356 --> 0:18:25.716 Douglas said, but why not just essentially fall a stone's 0:18:26.836 --> 0:18:30.916 physician and let the mineral king be the plaintiff lest 0:18:31.076 --> 0:18:35.716 should be called mineral king against partner of interior. People 0:18:36.236 --> 0:18:39.436 like the idea that we should be speaking for nature, 0:18:39.516 --> 0:18:43.636 that nature should have its own voice. People did like 0:18:43.756 --> 0:18:47.876 that idea. So imagine what if Douglas's opinion had been 0:18:48.196 --> 0:18:51.396 not the dissenting opinion of the Supreme Court, but the 0:18:51.476 --> 0:18:55.716 majority opinion of the Supreme Court. What might have happened next? 0:18:56.476 --> 0:19:01.396 Imagine that with this incredibly huge legal victory, environmentalists had 0:19:01.436 --> 0:19:05.156 decided to really fight for an environmental rights amendment, not 0:19:05.236 --> 0:19:07.836 the one gay Lord Nelson had proposed in nineteen seventy. 0:19:08.116 --> 0:19:13.276 Imagine they'd propose something much much bolder. I mean, imagine, 0:19:13.316 --> 0:19:17.276 really imagine. Imagine that this crazy, bold constitutional amendment had 0:19:17.276 --> 0:19:20.676 gotten ratified in nineteen seventy two. What if today, in 0:19:20.796 --> 0:19:24.796 twenty twenty two, we were marking the fiftieth anniversary of 0:19:24.836 --> 0:19:29.396 that environmental rights amendment. To imagine that, I've got to 0:19:29.436 --> 0:19:31.956 take you to a place I've never taken anyone before, 0:19:33.756 --> 0:19:42.956 to the last archives fiction annex. Imagine that in nineteen 0:19:43.076 --> 0:19:46.796 seventy one, Christopher Stone and his students at USC Law 0:19:46.836 --> 0:19:50.596 School had drafted a new constitutional amendment. Found a way 0:19:50.596 --> 0:19:54.556 for the law to listen to the trees. Article one, 0:19:55.036 --> 0:19:58.636 All legislative powers shall be vested in a Congress of 0:19:58.636 --> 0:20:02.556 the United States, which shall consist of a Senate, a 0:20:02.636 --> 0:20:07.396 House of Representatives, and a Chamber of Nature. The Chamber 0:20:07.516 --> 0:20:12.236 of Nature better known as the tree branch. Imagine this 0:20:12.236 --> 0:20:15.116 thing was ratified by a majority of states, and to 0:20:15.156 --> 0:20:18.156 help spread the news, Schoolhouse Rock made a song about 0:20:18.156 --> 0:20:22.876 it so the kids would know, Treehouse Rock. The Chamber 0:20:22.916 --> 0:20:28.116 of Nature shall be composed of members has chosen every 0:20:29.076 --> 0:20:38.436 fourth year by the people of several states. Representation in 0:20:38.716 --> 0:20:45.996 the Chamber shall be abortion among the several states according 0:20:46.196 --> 0:20:55.516 to the number of trees in the state relative to 0:20:55.556 --> 0:21:00.076 the number of trees in state prison at the time 0:21:00.076 --> 0:21:06.356 of the state entered the Union. Catch you right, But 0:21:06.596 --> 0:21:08.756 the idea that a portion ofment in Congress should be 0:21:08.756 --> 0:21:11.716 done by counting people that had been a new idea 0:21:11.796 --> 0:21:15.116 in seventeen eighty seven when the Constitution was written. There'd 0:21:15.116 --> 0:21:17.796 been other ideas at the time. They could have calculated 0:21:17.836 --> 0:21:23.236 representation by square miles or by taxable income. Why not trees? 0:21:25.396 --> 0:21:28.196 Imagine the people making this argument were very smart. They 0:21:28.276 --> 0:21:32.116 argued it very well. They brought out the best evidence. 0:21:33.116 --> 0:21:37.156 Rallies were held today in all the countries. National parks activists, 0:21:37.196 --> 0:21:40.596 citing recent reports by the US Forestry Department, explained the 0:21:40.596 --> 0:21:43.556 ability of trees to counter and even reverse them the 0:21:43.636 --> 0:21:47.316 line effects of pollution. This amendment would have meant that 0:21:47.356 --> 0:21:50.076 not only did nature have standing in courts the way 0:21:50.076 --> 0:21:53.316 the Sierra case would have ruled, but that nature, at 0:21:53.356 --> 0:21:57.076 least by proxy, had a voice in government that if 0:21:57.076 --> 0:22:00.156 a state was going to lose vegetation, it would lose votes. 0:22:00.156 --> 0:22:03.316 In Washington, the annual County of the Trees has begun. 0:22:03.476 --> 0:22:06.396 This new forest census is to take place every July. 0:22:07.076 --> 0:22:11.196 It follows this springs frenzy. At some eight million trees 0:22:11.236 --> 0:22:14.396 were planted in April alone. The public awaits the results 0:22:14.396 --> 0:22:17.876 of this first census with bated breath, as states by 0:22:17.956 --> 0:22:21.756 for representation in the new so called tree Branch. A 0:22:21.836 --> 0:22:24.156 chamber of Nature would have made protecting the environment not 0:22:24.276 --> 0:22:27.876 something subject to the competing interests of different people, but 0:22:28.036 --> 0:22:33.476 instead subject to the interests of nature itself. Interesting, right now, 0:22:33.476 --> 0:22:36.356 How in our imaginary world could such a thing come about? 0:22:36.956 --> 0:22:41.236 That's the easy part to imagine. First, Nixon, the environmental president, 0:22:41.476 --> 0:22:44.876 gets behind it. I can almost hear him offering his endorsement. 0:22:45.756 --> 0:22:48.636 By our decision, we will demonstrate the kind of people 0:22:49.116 --> 0:22:52.356 we are and the kind of country we will be kind. 0:22:53.836 --> 0:22:58.756 That's why I've charted the course I have laid out tonight. Admittedly, 0:22:58.756 --> 0:23:01.876 the debating Congress would have been crazy, the timber trade 0:23:01.916 --> 0:23:06.236 against it builders, developers, the construction industry, no way, but 0:23:06.396 --> 0:23:09.956 in favor a lot of ordinary people and business interests 0:23:09.956 --> 0:23:11.876 that wanted to stay on the right side of the 0:23:11.996 --> 0:23:15.356 rising environmental movement. The whole of DC would have been 0:23:15.396 --> 0:23:25.196 one giant environmental rally and counter rally for weeks, and 0:23:25.396 --> 0:23:29.796 then it could have all happened so quickly twenty seven 0:23:30.076 --> 0:23:33.396 the Environmental Rights Amendment might have passed Congress and gone 0:23:33.436 --> 0:23:36.916 to the states. And imagine this. Imagine that the last 0:23:36.996 --> 0:23:41.116 state needed ratified the amendment in nineteen seventy two. Imagine 0:23:41.156 --> 0:23:44.796 that the federal government had become answerable to nature a 0:23:44.836 --> 0:23:48.916 half century ago. This week, mining companies are lobbying the 0:23:48.996 --> 0:23:52.916 Chamber of Nature seeking exemption from bands on fracking. But 0:23:52.996 --> 0:23:57.916 the tree branch so far appears to be holding firm. Okay, 0:23:58.076 --> 0:24:02.596 I'm locking up the annex again because this, all of this, 0:24:03.516 --> 0:24:07.756 none of it happened. What happened instead? After the break, 0:24:12.956 --> 0:24:16.196 there is no environmental rights Amendment to the US Constitution. 0:24:16.836 --> 0:24:20.116 We are not today in twenty twenty two, celebrating the 0:24:20.156 --> 0:24:24.796 fiftieth anniversary of its ratification. It was never ratified. It 0:24:24.836 --> 0:24:27.876 was never even written. A lot of other things, though, 0:24:28.036 --> 0:24:31.796 did happen in the early nineteen seventies, with Richard Nixon's 0:24:31.796 --> 0:24:35.796 full support the EPA, the Clean Water Act, the Clean 0:24:35.836 --> 0:24:40.956 Air Act. Still, the environmental movement never really trusted Nixon. Instead, 0:24:41.156 --> 0:24:45.156 it spurned him. As Dan Rather reported several weeks ago, 0:24:45.236 --> 0:24:48.236 the White House invited the Nice Stool organizers a birthday 0:24:48.316 --> 0:24:51.796 to drop by for a chat. They refused. On that 0:24:51.916 --> 0:24:54.996 first Earth Day in nineteen seventy, Nixon and his wife 0:24:55.036 --> 0:24:58.596 Pat planted a tree in the White House lawn and 0:24:58.716 --> 0:25:02.996 that's it. Pretty soon Nixon was embroiled in the Watergate scandal. 0:25:04.316 --> 0:25:07.396 The leaders of the environmental movement white middle class college 0:25:07.396 --> 0:25:10.916 students and young people, or pretty squarely anti Nixon for 0:25:10.956 --> 0:25:13.956 all kinds of reasons, and they didn't ever really seek 0:25:13.996 --> 0:25:16.796 his support, so it's hard to know how much he 0:25:16.876 --> 0:25:21.116 might have given. In the end, the establishment business leaders, 0:25:21.436 --> 0:25:25.516 the silent majority oppose the environmental movement. If you look 0:25:25.556 --> 0:25:28.836 at TV footage on Earth Day or listen to it, 0:25:28.836 --> 0:25:32.076 it looked and sounded pretty much like woodstock. And as 0:25:32.076 --> 0:25:34.836 for what civil rights activists thought about it all merely 0:25:34.876 --> 0:25:38.156 Evers put it this way. I was asked by someone, 0:25:38.356 --> 0:25:42.076 why is it that you think there are not too 0:25:42.076 --> 0:25:47.236 many black people participating in Earth Week? In Earth Day, 0:25:48.036 --> 0:25:53.676 they're interested about the health of themselves and their children 0:25:54.796 --> 0:25:58.436 when they are living in rat infested homes, about the 0:25:58.556 --> 0:26:03.116 garbage that's piled up. CBS News spoke to civil rights 0:26:03.236 --> 0:26:07.236 leader Herman Rice. He said, basically, we have bigger problems. See, 0:26:07.276 --> 0:26:09.076 we still have hungry children to feed, and we still 0:26:09.116 --> 0:26:11.116 will have houses to try to build. And I think 0:26:11.156 --> 0:26:15.036 we're taking the emphasis off the beat up buildings and 0:26:15.196 --> 0:26:18.396 the polluted streams that they're talking about. We've never seen 0:26:18.476 --> 0:26:21.316 anyway but trout. I don't know if they're dying. We've 0:26:21.356 --> 0:26:23.676 never seen that. I know, the rats of bike acue. 0:26:24.436 --> 0:26:27.916 Earth Day, for all of its successes and its huge scale, 0:26:28.636 --> 0:26:32.276 it's still had real limits. It's burned the establishment. It 0:26:32.396 --> 0:26:35.596 was too white. And then in nineteen seventy three, the 0:26:35.636 --> 0:26:39.156 gas crisis began, not just rising prices but in actual 0:26:39.196 --> 0:26:41.996 shortage due to US foreign policy in the Middle East 0:26:42.316 --> 0:26:45.796 and an embargo by OPEC, a consortium of oil producing 0:26:45.876 --> 0:26:48.516 nations in the Persian Gulf. Here's a clip from a 0:26:48.556 --> 0:26:52.476 special NBC News did about the crisis. There's almost unanimous 0:26:52.516 --> 0:26:55.596 agreement among the experts that the crisis is real, that 0:26:55.716 --> 0:26:58.076 it's been creeping up on us for about one hundred 0:26:58.116 --> 0:27:01.276 years now, and that it's getting worse each day as 0:27:01.276 --> 0:27:04.876 we continue to use up our precious supplies of oil, coal, 0:27:04.996 --> 0:27:08.596 and gas. And by the nineteen eighties, the fossil fuel 0:27:08.636 --> 0:27:13.876 industry was already organizing itself around an extraordinary project, undermining 0:27:13.876 --> 0:27:18.076 the science and promoting oil and oil companies as good 0:27:18.076 --> 0:27:22.036 for the environment. Climate change, pollution not real, they said, 0:27:22.356 --> 0:27:28.356 or at least not relevant. Exon BP and DuPont great 0:27:28.396 --> 0:27:32.716 for the environment. Recently, DuPont announced that its energy unit, Conico, 0:27:32.796 --> 0:27:35.476 would and hear the use of new doubleholed oil tankers 0:27:35.476 --> 0:27:37.956