Environmental Law & the Defense of Nature
As ecosystems collapse and the climate emergency intensifies, the government often uses its authority to allow the very harm that it is supposed to prevent. Sound crazy? It is. The granting of permits is a battleground where corporations, with their oodles of money to buy influence, have the upper hand over nature. In the face of corporate greed and the enormity of the climate crisis, we need action now before it is too late. An ancient and enduring principle is the trust doctrine. It asserts public property rights to crucial resources such as forests, rivers, minerals, and fisheries. Its core logic compels the government, as trustee, to protect nature and to safeguard the resources we rely on for survival. UN Secretary-General Guterres says, “We must end the merciless, relentless, senseless war on nature.” Amen to that.
Recorded at the University of Oregon.
Speaker
Mary Wood
Mary Wood is Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the University of Oregon School of Law’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program. An award-winning professor she’s co-author of leading textbooks on public trust law and natural resources law. She is the author of Nature’s Trust.
Steven in SF –
I got your fine Mary Wood program. Continue onward knowing that AR listeners appreciate information that inspires thinking, followed by conscious actions to repair the broken and restore the whole of life.
Chris Bowen –
Easily among the brightest presentations of the simple, existential truth that I have heard. The glowing beacon we need to debunk false narratives and to step up to the tasks at hand.
Cat Matthes –
Articulate informative and inspirational speech. Action required NOW!
Hopeful to know that people like Mary Wood are working to save lives…operation planet rescue. I’m in!
Ro Meier –
I listened to this on community radio here in Vancouver and was engaged and thrilled by the speakers’ engaged and thrilling account of the problems w Governmental agencies, their potential all but enthralled to vested interests, a brief history of democracy that aligns with the search for a solution to the grip of these vested interests and the deeply felt warnings that not enough is being done to change direction.
Although the many instances of small victories marginally warm up the discussion to the task at hand, it’s an unwelcome lecture that, sadly, could be broadcast from the rooftops as a sort of ironic comeuppance to an empty planet.
Worth listening to before then, then.
Jasmine Vaught –
AMAZING, HEARTFELT & INFORMATIVE PROGRAM.
LISTEN TO THIS PROGRAM AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, FOLLOW THROUGH WITH ACTION.
WITHOUT COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT, EDUCATION, AND MOST OF ALL, CONCERN FOR THE SURVIVAL OF OUR PLANET, WE ARE DOOMED.