Nature's Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age

by Mary Christina Wood

Environmental law has failed us all. As ecosystems collapse across the globe and the climate crisis intensifies, environmental agencies worldwide use their authority to permit the very harm that they are supposed to prevent. Growing numbers of citizens now realize they must act before it is too late. This book exposes what is wrong with environmental law and offers transformational change based on the public trust doctrine. An ancient and enduring principle, the trust doctrine asserts public property rights to crucial resources. Its core logic compels government, as trustee, to protect natural inheritance such as air and water for all humanity. Propelled by populist impulses and democratic imperatives, the public trust surfaces at epic times in history as a manifest human right. But until now it has lacked the precision necessary for citizens, government employees, legislators, and judges to fully safeguard the natural resources we rely on for survival and prosperity. The Nature's Trust approach empowers citizens worldwide to protect their inalienable ecological rights for generations to come.

Genres: Environment, Law, Economics, Politics

457 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2013

Reviews

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

In everyone's life, there are only a few books that you can reflect on and say it changed your world view, and by doing so, irrevocably changed your life and how you make decisions on the topics it discussed. This is one of those books....

For most of my adult life, I had felt ill at ease with how my white, privileged, technically advanced culture related to the environment. As a young boy, I felt drawn to the Native American relationship to Nature, which seemed like a dream to which the white man could only aspire. I recall a quote that a favorite high school teacher had on his wall: "To the red man, everything is alive; to the white man, everything is dead...and if it tries to live, he kills it." This black humor is an apt metaphor for the jurisprudential challenge that Professor Wood tackles head on in this paradigm shattering work. For what she is attempting is nothing less than breathing life into the dead culture our current judiciary has produced.

I must confess that I have not yet finished this dense, scholarly book; but such a volume is not to be rushed through, rather gradually absorbed for its deep lessons. Yet even in the first half the author has fully demolished the illusion that our environmental law is protecting us; rather, she proves the regulatory approach to protecting the environment has utterly failed, and a new paradigm must replace it -- beginning with the jurisprudence that informs our perceptions of the place of the natural environment in the law.

That paradigm is one which includes the natural environment where it should be: at the center of our world, and at the center of its protection. In other words, the natural world deserves to hold rights under our legal system, just as much as human beings, rights which must be enforceable in law.

I look forward to finishing reading this remarkable book, and discovering more about the shape of this new paradigm....which, in fact, I am looking forward to helping to bring about for the rest of my adult life. For this kind of paradigm change will take generations...and it is high time we got started on the work.

Rick Casey
Instructor, Environmental Economics
Front Range Community College

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent if technical. Forms the basis of the Our Children's Trust lawsuits on climate.

http://www.aulawreview.org/no-ordinar...

https://bifrostonline.org/what-is-the...

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/c...

https://lwvroguevalley.org/wp/?p=1380

https://thegreeninterview.com/intervi...

RE-READING JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2024

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diane and I read the first couple of chapters. It's an eye-opener and worth reading more to understand the politics and legal roadblocks to getting things done that will help preserve our environment and to act upon one of our fundamental rights and duty to invoke the law of "nature's trust".

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Standing as a child on the banks of the Columbia River, the writer picked up things that became her book Nature's Trust in three parts: Environmental Law: Hospice for a Dying Planet, The People's Natural Trust, and, The Public Trust and the Great Transition.

[Bailey]

Still in Progress...

It's pretty well-written, given that it was penned by a lawyer, as they tend to be more dry. Literary language and flourishes are discouraged in legal writing, so to find a lawyer who can add those to her work is great. That being said, she does go a bit overboard with some of the imagery, metaphors, and other literary devices. However, I'd rather have too much in this case because it makes the reading less dull. Although some chapters are just dull in nature when she lists laws and events in sequence.

Overall, the book is a frustrating read just because the events taking place are so rage-inducing. It's nice that she actually offers actionable steps towards making a change, unlike many books that just chronicle the problem and pose the question "how do we fix this?" However, it's too little, too late.
Her litigation steps are currently taking place, and some of the Children's Trust law suits, in particular, have already succeeded, but the law moves at a glacial pace and our glaciers won't be around to see the results, if any.

The landmark constitutional climate lawsuit filed against the federal government, Juliana v. United States, was filed in 2015. They've been battling it out and on July 30, 2018 the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of the 21 youth plaintiffs. "The Court denied the Trump administration’s application for stay, preserving the U.S. District Court’s trial start date of October 29, 2018. The Court also denied the government’s “premature” request to review the case before the district court hears all of the facts that support the youth’s claims at trial." Essentially, it took 3 years for the case to work its way up, just for SCOTUS to decide the case could actually go to trial. Ridiculous.

That's part of the reason Mims states over and over in the book that Environmental Law has failed us. The law is just so slow and bogged down with bureaucracy. By the time any of these cases reach their conclusions, it will be too late to effect measurable change (not to mention the years it will take to argue policy and regulations, then implement them, then discover decades down the line that they aren't even being followed).




Note: Marisa will read later.