Thomas Linzey presented this groundbreaking speech at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law on March 4, 2004. We believe it is one of the most important original documents that have yet been produced since the beginning of the Community Rights movement in 1999. Thomas Linzey is the Executive Director of Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.
Our work over the past four years has taken us in new directions for environmental attorneys — we now give most of our presentations in municipal garages, one room schoolhouses, even bingo halls in rural Pennsylvania.
What we talk about is how environmental regulatory law has fundamentally failed to protect our communities and nature. And how rural communities must reject that regulatory approach and instead work to assert local control to protect the environment.
Many find that to be a depressing message — learning that tools conceived by many to protect the environment are actually protecting the rights of corporations to destroy the environment.
I find that it is, however, in the end, a message of hope — because it allows us to change course before it is too late.
So, in the time that we have this afternoon, we’ll travel from the state of the planet to the food that we eat, over to the American Revolution and the Fugitive Slave Law, then to factory hog farms, cell phone towers, and garbage, then on to corporations and that Alabama woman who refused to move to the back of the bus. Then we’ll come back home to the Constitution.
So, hang on to your seats.
We’ll start with the proposition that our home — this planet — is in dire straits, and getting worse. Whether we look at the oceans, the forests, the soil, our bodies, our water, or our air, one conclusion is readily apparent: this planet is being destroyed, and our life support systems — along with the habitat and the life support systems of other living creatures — are being destroyed in the process. …
To read the entire speech, click HERE.