Environmental lawyer, Thomas Linzey
Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
Alan: The recent liberation of slaves and women required the re-definition of "possessions" as "persons."
In the following address, environmental lawyer Thomas Linzey explains how the reification of Nature enforces the qualitative degradation of the biosphere.
Linzey foresees a strategic half century -- already spearheaded by progressive-indigenous movements in Ecuador and Bolivia -- that will liberate earth's ecological matrix from the ruinous exploitation of chattel ownership.
By investing the fundamental sources of life -- water, earth and air -- with the legal dignification of personhood, the supposedly inalienable rights of corporate "persons" will be transferred to the effective personhood of Mother Earth.
The fact that corporations now have legal standing as "persons" is a useful template for arguing on behalf of Mother Earth's personhood.
Even on the face of it, Mother's personhood makes far more sense.
Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
2013 Keynote Address by Thomas Linzey
Video: http://vimeo.com/61778883
Thomas Linzey of Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) delivers the keynote address of the 31rst Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (PIELC) held at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, February 28 through March 3, 2013. Linzey points out the folly of the traditional avenues of redress environmental law has pursued, offering a new model to return democracy to the people currently hi-jacked by a corporate friendly legal system.
Down
Not Out
Dear Ian,
I am grateful to brother-in-law Rob for pointing out Linzey's extraordinary talk.
In a utilitarian, technocratic culture like our own, we are constantly urged to lose sight of the forest for the trees.
Taking advantage of this self-imposed myopia, plutocratic corporatocracy predicates decontextualization-of-truth as a dependable path to flag-waving autocracy.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
Disenthralling himself from the distraction of minutiae, Linzey focuses "the forest" through a lens of radical lucidity.
Dredging the darkness, he imparts klieg-light clarity to one transcendental fact: America's legal system is designed to prevent local communities from having any power that cannot be trumped at the state or federal level.
In consequence, local residents (and their allies in the green movement) have been co-opted by a maelstrom by minute regulatory squabbles that, sooner or later, will be defeated whenever The Constitution's "commerce clause" serves as ultimate arbiter.
Given the inevitability of tactical defeat, Linzey's strategic intention is to re-frame the debate; indeed to re-frame The Constitution itself.
His strategic outlook (which assumes a 50 year timeline) sees local grievances garnering gradual support at the state level, which, in turn, will re-constitute the entire legal system "from the ground up."
Were it not for The Rights of Nature movement (whose principles are already codified in Ecuador and Bolivia) Linzey could be dismissed as a starry-eyed idealist.
I encourage you to listen to the following 45 minute talk. (Skip the introduction by going straight to the 3:40 minute mark.)
Linzey provides an exhilarating ride across the landscape of American law, an exuberant romp that reveals Corporatocracy's usurpation of shell-game "Democracy."
Pax tecum
Alan
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