Securing Ecology “Capable of Sustaining Human Life”: Invoking The Inherent and Inalienable Public Trust Rights of The People
Mary Christina Wood* | 26.5 | Citation: Mary Christina Wood, Securing Ecology “Capable of Sustaining Human Life”: Invoking The Inherent and Inalienable Public Trust Rights of the People, 26 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 1 (2024).
We have crossed a defining threshold, both in environmental law and in ecology. In law, we see a new era of environmental constitutionalism, and not at all unrelatedly, we find ourselves in a new ecological era that is marked by colossal human destruction of the very systems sustaining all life on Earth. Bill McKibben says it is as if we have destroyed our planet that sustained us and are now on a different planet altogether. And as the years pass, it will feel more and more that way. Our climate system is so disrupted by the greenhouse gases that have accumulated in the atmosphere that we now face a clear existential threat to humanity and society. As a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel put it, we are nearing the “eve of destruction.”
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*Mary Christina Wood, Philip H. Knight Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Environmental and Natural Resources (ENR) Law Center, University of Oregon School of Law.