Editorials & Letters to the Editor

The lake is Toledo’s to fight for

A Toledo Blade editorial, May 26, 2020 Last April, Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz said, “There’s no fight about the health of Lake Erie we would run from.” The mayor made the promise to fight for a cleaner Lake Erie at a news conference in which he was blasting agricultural interests who have been fighting regulation [...]

Getting Back to Normal?! No Thank You!


We're excited to announce that ZNet ran Paul's recent essay on a post-coronavirus world: More than 30 million people in the US are out of work, a similar percentage as in the Great Depression, and for many of them that also means they’ve lost their employer-linked health insurance overnight. More than 30% of all US renters couldn’t [...]

Open Letter to Communities Working to Stop Fracking by CELDF, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

This letter was published on the Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club's website in the winter of 2010. This morning, the Pittsburgh City Council became the first municipality in the United States to ban natural gas extraction within its boundaries. The ordinance isn’t just a ban – it consists of a new Bill of Rights [...]

Letter to the Editor: We need to think outside the box to stop LNG

As someone who is involved in a Community Rights campaign, and follows the movement somewhat closely, this letter to the editor by Mary Geddry (below) interests me. Why? Because she is pointing at the predictable results of trying to stop a "19th century, fossil-fuel energy project like Jordan Cove LNG [A Liquified Natural Gas Terminal [...]

Breaking the Spell of Misguided Obedience

A Letter to Lake Erie from Lake Erie Bill of Rights Petitioner Markie Miller This letter was published on the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund's website on February 26, 2020. Dear Lake Erie, As I write this, you are dying. I am searching for the right words – of comfort, inspiration, even acceptance – because [...]

The Blade: Who Speaks for Lake Erie?

This op-ed by The Blade editorial board was published on February 2nd, 2020. Lake Erie and those who rely on it need and deserve voices for action in Columbus. Advocates for the lake, exasperated with years of inaction on the part of state and federal agencies who were supposed to protect the lake from pollution, [...]

By |2020-03-02T08:07:12-08:00March 2nd, 2020|Editorials & Letters to the Editor, Rights of Nature|

Why is the state DEP suing Grant Township?

Corporations privatize profits and socialize costs This letter to the editor by Carol M. Saalbach appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on October 14th, 2019. I attended an Oct. 4 hearing at the City-County Building about the state Department of Environmental Protection’s lawsuit against Grant Township for upholding the home rule charter and trying to protect [...]

The Laconia Daily Sun: Embrace Community Rights to Save The Environment

This letter to the editor by Diane St. Germain appeared in The Laconia Daily Sun on October 9th, 2019. To The Daily Sun, Mindsets are evolving to understand our place in nature as embraced by the indigenous people of the land we occupy. The catastrophic consequences of nature existing as “property” under the law have [...]

By |2019-10-21T08:28:06-07:00October 9th, 2019|Editorials & Letters to the Editor, Rights of Nature|

TruthOut: Legislators’ Secretive Maneuvers Undermine Rights of Nature in Ohio

This Op-Ed by Lisa Kochheiser was published in TruthOut on September 17, 2019. For weeks, a legislator’s identity was kept secret by the Ohio General Assembly. When constituents asked who inserted language denying the rights of nature into the 2020-2021 House budget bill, their elected representatives simply shrugged their shoulders and told those of us [...]

My Turn: The rights of nature

This letter to the editor  by Sol Solomon appeared in the Concord Monitor on September 5th, 2019. The natural world is under siege. Rather than heed the dire warning signs staring them in the face, those who ravage the Earth’s resources are stepping up their efforts. They are in a frenzy to wrest every drop [...]

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