We celebrate Earth Day amid challenging times. Donald Trump’s ongoing attacks on environmental stewardship remind us how ephemeral the day has become.
In our latest podcast episode, we talk with Maya van Rossum, founder of Green Amendments for the Generations.
Green Amendments, Fundamental Rights, and a Healthy Environment
Thomas Jefferson expressed the Enlightenment’s ideal of inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, of which no law-abiding person should be deprived. Of course, the gap between expression and execution is a long, hard road.
The consequences of Jefferson’s words stirred a revolution, eventually leading to the constitutional amendments that codified a right to free speech, due process, the right for adult citizens to vote, the right to bear arms, equal protection under the law, and many other essential rights that grounds our story as citizens in a free society.
These ideas imply the primary right to live without threat from environmental harm: safeguarding access to clean water, clean air, healthy, intact habitats, and a climate free from unchecked anthropogenic disruption.
This conversation with Maya van Rossum highlights the growing nationwide awareness that the same legal standard that secures the primacy of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be applied to the material elements that allow us to thrive as free people.
As of this writing, 19 states have drafted green amendment proposals, and eight are actively organizing to adopt constitutional green amendments. Montana, New York, and Pennsylvania all have green amendments in their state constitutions. Citizens in those states enjoy healthier lives, better economic opportunities, and neighborhoods free from industrial intrusion.
A thriving environment is not merely a privilege but an essential right that must be enshrined in our legal framework. In a natural environment increasingly under siege, Maya van Rossum offers an audacious, well-executed, and essential plan for making green amendments a reality.
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