What good is a "RIGHT" if you can’t enforce it when taken from you?
When it comes to our human rights to clean water and air, a safe climate and healthy environments, too often people have little to no power when our government allows corporations to pollute for profit in ways that destroy healthy lives, wildlife and beautiful nature we cherish.
Green Amendments change that dynamic by giving power back to the people and offering a pathway to protect ourselves from bad laws and government decisions that sacrifice communities and our environment for political or profit gain.
Green Amendments use our system of democracy and our state constitutions to create an enforceable right to clean air, pure water, a safe climate, healthy soils and environments. In the 3 states where Green Amendments exist - Pennsylvania, Montana and New York – communities are using their constitutional rights to fight for, and WIN, critical environmental protections.
Green Amendments Address The Climate Crisis: In Montana, 16 youth used their Green Amendment to defeat a law that actually prohibited government agencies from considering the climate changing impacts of the permits they were issuing to fossil fuel and other industries. With this law in place, Montana was very legally contributing an additional 166 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere every year, and thereby advancing the wildfires, floods, pollution, drought and ecological harm induced by climate change that was directly, and adversely, impacting the health, safety and future of the youth plaintiffs. Now that the law is defeated, Montanans have a chance to put government on a positive path for doing its part to address climate change.
Green Amendments Level The Playing Field Between People, Local Govt & Industry: In Pennsylvania, environmental leaders and municipal officials used their Green Amendment to defeat a pro-fossil fuel law that stripped communities of their authority to prevent fracking next to homes, schools and playgrounds. The law also gave the industry permission not to disclose pollution of private drinking water wells, and gave automatic waivers from environmental protection regulations. Pennsylvania does still have fracking, but now people are using their Green Amendment to take on the pro-fossil fuel factions of the legislature and to secure a growing body of protections.
Green Amendments Protect Wildlife & Nature: The ecosystems and wildlife just outside Yellowstone National Park were about to be decimated by industrial gold mining operations. Montana had issued approvals allowing dozens of drilling sites in an area that had been protected from human or industry incursion. Construction, drilling, and habitat fragmentation would disturb and displace grizzly bears; induce female wolverines to abandon their dens; threaten trout habitat with acid mine drainage; and permanently damage ecosystems important to lynx, bear, elk, moose, deer and wolverine. But because they had a Green Amendment, challengers were able to defeat the government approvals and stop the devastation before it started.
Green Amendments Protect Children, Families & Communities: Kate and Larry Stauffer, along with their community in East Whiteland, had been forced for decades to live next to a supersaturated toxic site contaminated by an industry long-since abandoned. The Stauffers had reason to believe that their daughter’s brain tumors were the result of the nearby contamination that had been spewed into the air, local creek, and the soil next to their home. Rather than require the companies legally responsible to clean up the site, state government allowed it to continue to ooze its toxic contamination. But once the Pennsylvania Green Amendment got legal life as the result of a powerful court decision in 2013, the Stauffers and their community were able to use it to force government action and clean up by the responsible parties. Thankfully, the Stauffer’s daughter survived her brain tumors, but the community believes there are other families and children who suffered from toxic exposure and were not so lucky.
Green Amendments Make a Difference As Soon As they Are Passed: New York’s Green Amendment was achieved less than two years ago but is already being used to hold government accountable for its failure to control pollution from industry and landfill operations that are exposing communities to dangerous levels of pollution. The cases are winding their way through the courts, but so far, early decisions have affirmed the people’s newly secured Green Amendment right to clean water and air, and a healthful environment.
These are just a few examples of how Green Amendments are saving lives and protecting the environment of present and future generations.
The only organization that is working across the nation to help communities secure these essential protections, and enforce them once secured, is Green Amendments For The Generations.
More and more communities are seeking our help. But to rise to the occasion we need your support.
Please donate this Giving Tuesday to help make the right to pure water, clean air, a safe climate, healthy soils, vibrant ecosystems, and a healthy planet a reality for all people and all generations.
