Our petrochemical lifestyle has poisoned the air, water, and soil, and now is changing the Earth's climate pattern toward an ecosystem that predates the circumstances under which we and the animals and plants on which we inter depend have evolved. Our agriculture, which made an exponential expansion of human population possible, is based in Earth's temperate zones, which will be drastically reduced as the planet heats up. Much of Earth's arable soil has already been damaged by industrial agriculture. All over the industrialized world, people are gathering to discus and implement projects for sustainability, conservation and relocalization. Individuals trying to change their lifestyles can only go so far - the problems are systemic and require a shift in the widespread practices of industrial societies and the fundamental concepts upon which they are based such as economic growth, globalized production, and the natural world as property and resource. Our laws and courts are not geared to deal with the scale of ecological harm, which once caused often can't be restored within a human timescale. It is irreparable harm
People attempting to address our ecological problems find the laws inadequate if not downright hostile. Activists find themselves in jail for trying to stop harmful activity, while the perpetrators receive the protection of the state. Legal practitioners and communities confronted by this legal brick wall are working to establish new law that will conform to our ecological reality, an earth jurisprudence. This week we'll begin a three part series focusing on the theory and
action of this movement for the rights of nature under law and how communities are using it to fight corporate destruction.
