Maya Van Rossum: Transforming politics with environmental constitutionalism (ep282)
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Maya van Rossum joins us in this episode to discuss:
how environmental policy has been setting us up for failure;
why we need to seek for constitutional changes in order to best protect our Earth;
some success stories from environmental constitutionalism; and more.
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by Johanna Warren (IG: @johahahanna, Spotify: Johanna Warren)
“Our current government system in the U.S. is fundamentally failing us, because the laws are written in a way that accepts pollution and environmental degradation as a foregone conclusion.”
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Here’s Maya on the power of environmental constitutionalism:
“When we were thinking about [how to confront] this pro-fracking law, we reflected and realized that in the Bill of Rights section of the Pennsylvania Constitution, there was a provision that had, for over 42 years, been ignored by Pennsylvania's government and courts as just being a statement of policy and not having any legal strength. It was a provision that said that the people of Pennsylvania had a constitutional right to pure water, clean air and healthy environment, and that Pennsylvania's government officials were duty-bound to protect the natural resources of the state for the benefit of present and future generations.
As we reflected on how we were going to challenge that pro-fracking law, we realized that maybe we were in a moment in time when we could take this long-ignored, constitutional environmental rights amendment and get the Pennsylvania courts to reconsider how they viewed this amendment and promise of environmental rights to the people of Pennsylvania.
So we claimed in court that this pro-fracking law, if it was allowed to be implemented, would, in fact, result in an unconstitutional violation of the environmental rights of the people of Pennsylvania—as promised in this long ignored bill of rights amendment.
Long story short, the case went all the way up to the Pennsylvania Supreme court, and we secured an amazing victory—a victory where the plurality opinion was actually written by the very conservative chief justice of the court. He said that this constitutional right to pure water, clean air, and a healthy environment had been misinterpreted by the Pennsylvania courts for over four decades, and that these environmental rights must be respected, honored, and protected as powerfully as we protect the other bill of rights provisions that we hold dear—like the rights to free speech, freedom of religion, etc.
The court declared the provisions of this law that we were challenging to be unconstitutional, because they would violate the environmental rights of the people of Pennsylvania.
In that moment, with that victory, we defeated not only the most devastating aspects of this law, but we breathed legal life into this long ignored environmental rights amendment.”
About Maya van Rossum
Maya K. van Rossum is the Founder of Green Amendments For the Generations (Instagram @GreenAmendments; Twitter @GreenAmendments), a grassroots non-profit organization inspiring a nationwide movement to secure constitutional recognition and protection of environmental rights in every state and ultimately at the federal level. van Rossum is also the Delaware Riverkeeper, leading the watershed based advocacy organization, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, for 25 years in its efforts to protect the health of the Delaware River and its tributaries.
Maya was a lead petitioner in the 2013 landmark Robinson Township, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, et. al. v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania case that breathed new life into Pennsylvania’s long ignored environmental rights amendment. A skilled activist, attorney, strategist and community organizer, she was named in 2020 as a River Hero by River Network, in 2019 as one of Philadelphia Business Journal’s Power 100, and One Of The “10 Most Influential People of 2015” when It Comes to Energy Issues by SNL Energy.
Maya is the author of The Green Amendment: Securing Our Right to a Healthy Environment, which was selected as the 2018 Living Now Evergreen Awards GOLD Winner in the Nature Conservation category. Since launching Green Amendments For The Generations, constitutional amendments have been proposed in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Vermont and West Virginia.
