Fair Start joins Zero Hour, actor Mark Ruffalo, and dozens of other groups filing amicus brief in support of lawsuit arguing for a constitutional right to nature, which would prompt federal climate action
The Fair Start Movement has joined dozens of organizations together to file an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief in support of a groundbreaking lawsuit brought by the Animal Legal Defense Fund and Seeding Sovereignty, a project of Earth Island Institute, that aims to compel federal government action on climate change based on a constitutional right to nature and wilderness. There is no freedom without nature. It sets the spectrum for autonomy from other persons, the buffer between us and their impacts upon us. The climate crisis is the erosion of the that buffer.
The case is currently pending before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The case is based simply on the plain meaning of the liberty right “to be let alone,” a constitutional right promised by the Supreme Court and enforced in a variety of contexts, but none as important as this case. While the government routinely protects our right to be let alone in terms of being free from surveillance or intrusion into our homes, it is this version of the right – protecting the ecological baseline of nature in which we can be free from others and thrive – that matters most.
Cat Hughey, Director at Fair Start, had this to say:
“The sacredness of all human life and the more than human life culminates at a moment that we hold space and protections for all equally. The Fair Start Movement holds that the full-fledged experience of humanity exists when we embark on fighting the climate and ecological crisis by ensuring that every child can restore nature and value its health. By environing wilderness and its right, we in turn protect our future generations’ ability to exercise freedom, democracy and, most importantly, keep at bay ecological and social catastrophe.”
The right to be let alone, applied in this case to require the federal government to take the greatest measures possible to stop the climate crisis and restore nature, would ensure our children enjoy the natural world generations past have enjoyed. The Constitution guarantees that.
Nature, like equity and democracy, is part of every child’s right to an ecosocial Fair Start in life, and we have a right to ensure that right by all means effective. No government that fails to ensure that right is legitimate. The Fair Start Movement knows future parents will do what it takes to protect their children’s right to an ecosocial #fairstart in life.
What’s next? The Fair Start Movement intends to file federal litigation challenging a state abortion ban not as a violation of personal privacy, but because such bans interfere with the first and most fundamental human right: Every child’s right to a Fair Start in life.
For more information, visit fairstartmovement.org
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