New Trump Admin Plan for Bears Ears National Monument 'Recklessly Weakens Protections'
The Interior Department on Friday released its management plan for Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah. Bob Wick / Bureau of Land Management
By Jessica Corbett
Conservation groups and congressional Democrats slammed the Trump administration Friday over its destructive new management plan for the "illegally reduced" Bears Ears National Monument in Utah.
In December of 2017, the administration provoked mass outrage with its decision to reduce Bears Ears by about 85 percent. The Bureau of Land Management — an agency of the U.S. Interior Department — published in the Federal Register on Friday a management plan for, as one critic put it, "the meager remnants of the original monument."
"This administration's management plan only reinforces its illegal action to steal huge swaths of land from the national monument so that oil and gas and mining companies can exploit the land," Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) said in a statement Friday. "It puts sacred sites at risk of being lost forever."
Haaland is an original co-sponsor of the Bears Ears Expansion and Respect for Sovereignty (BEARS) Act. The bill, introduced by Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) in January, would not only protect the original land designated by former President Barack Obama, but also expand the monument to the full 1.9 million acres encompassing sacred artifacts and cultural resources that local tribes wish to protect.
The administration's new plan, Gallego warned, "recklessly weakens protections even for the land that remains in the monument, failing to protect important sites from threats like ATV use, looting, vandalism, and damage from target shooting — which would be permitted within monument boundaries."
"This proposed management plan confirms what we already knew," he declared. "The Trump administration has no interest in protecting the thousands of cultural and archeological sites in Bears Ears Monument or in seriously consulting with tribes on how best to manage their sacred ancestral lands."
Environmental groups and tribes have challenged the administration's move to reduce the monument in court. Heidi McIntosh, managing attorney of the nonprofit law firm Earthjustice's Rocky Mountains office, said Friday that "if we win the legal fight to restore Bears Ears National Monument, this plan will just be 800 pages of wasted effort."
Trump released his new plans for #BearsEars today, but they’ll be useless if we win the battle to restore the iconic monument: “If we win the legal fight to restore Bears Ears, this plan will just be 800 pages of wasted effort.” #StandWithBearsEars https://t.co/wMXAP57AaB
— Earthjustice (@Earthjustice) July 26, 2019
Responding to the administration's plan for the monument, McIntosh added that "even in the parts of Bears Ears that President Trump left intact, he's planning on putting destructive activities before the American public's interests. Bears Ears is not the kind of place for chaining thousands of acres of forest or stringing up utility lines."
Other conservation groups quickly piled on with criticism Friday.
Katherine Malone-France, chief preservation officer at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, called the proposal "fundamentally flawed and premature," while Tim Peterson of Grand Canyon Trust said that the way the Trump administration has "added the insult of this detestable plan to the injury of slashing Bears Ears is deeply disturbing, and it cannot stand."
BREAKING: The Trump Administration's new plan for Bears Ears will not sufficiently protect cultural resources and sacred sites, leaving them more vulnerable to destruction than ever before. #StandWithBearsEars https://t.co/RiyGy2PjRB
— National Parks Conservation Association (@NPCA) July 26, 2019
Chris Saeger, executive director of the Western Values Project, raised concerns about the timing.
"The release of this management plan days before Congress leaves for a month is dubious at best and reckless at worst," Saeger said in a statement. "The Trump administration continues to prove its utter disregard of our public lands and outdoor heritage through its strong-armed attempts to illegally shrink this sacred and culturally-critical place."
"There is a lack of respect for the law, the courts, and the mass public concern that illegally shrinking Bears Ears has evoked," he added. "Stealing land away from the public in order to reward their special interest allies seems to be the only priority of this administration."
Trump Administration Sells Oil and Gas Leases Near Utah National Monuments https://t.co/XptLS04waz #renewable #solar #wind #PV pic.twitter.com/zIUy1q0977
— Renewable Search (@RenewableSearch) March 20, 2018
Reposted with permission from our media associate Common Dreams.
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Panorama of Horseshoe Bend from Grandview at New River Gorge National River, West Virginia. National Park Service
The U.S. is beginning the new year with a new national park.
<p>The nation's 63rd national park is also the first to be designated as such in the state of West Virginia, <a href="https://www.veranda.com/luxury-lifestyle/a35132939/new-river-gorge-national-park/" target="_blank">Veranda reported</a>. <a href="https://www.nps.gov/neri/index.htm" target="_blank">New River Gorge</a>, in Fayetteville, was officially changed from a national river to a national park as part of the COVID-19 relief bill that passed on Dec. 27, <a href="https://www.cntraveler.com/story/new-river-gorge-national-park-is-made-for-rafting-and-rock-climbing" target="_blank">Condé Nast Traveler reported</a>.</p><p>"Redesignation of the National River to a National Park and Preserve will shine a brighter light on West Virginia and all that it has to offer, and provide another catalyst for our tourism industry and local businesses," Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) said in a statement reported by <a href="https://www.wboy.com/top-stories/new-river-gorge-set-to-become-63rd-national-park-and-20th-national-reserve-with-redesignation-legislation/" target="_blank">12 WBOY</a>.</p>
<p>The New River Gorge is already a beloved destination for outdoor enthusiasts. It sees almost one million visitors every year and boasts activities like hiking, fishing, rafting, rock climbing and camping, according to Veranda.</p><p>Despite its name, the river is actually believed to be one of the oldest in North America. It has been important for West Virginians throughout the state's history, serving both Indigenous Americans and railway and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coal" target="_self">coal</a>-mining communities.</p><p>It has been managed by the National Park Service as a national river since 1978, but West Virginia's Congressional delegation hopes its new status will attract more visitors.</p>
<p>Capito, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and U.S. Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV) originally proposed the status upgrade in a 2019 bill, <a href="https://www.wvpublic.org/government/2020-12-22/new-river-gorge-to-be-designated-as-a-national-park" target="_blank">WV Public Broadcasting reported</a>. Capito noted that outdoor recreation is a $9 billion industry for West Virginia, and making the gorge a national park could boost visits by 21 percent.</p><p>Condé Nast Traveler also noted that the efforts to redesignate the river represents a signal that West Virginia is shifting its economy from coal mining to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/conservation" target="_self">conservation</a> and recreation. The Congress people met with small business owners and outdoor enthusiasts in the state to build support for the new park, and emphasized its economic benefits.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTI2NTk5MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NDEzMTYzMX0.LHxI2CBnXa-ACeniAWxAXUe9x8GcJVY6RUGOYlono20/img.jpg?width=980" id="bc7c4" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7fc431643c1cb29447b016e496cb19ab" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1463" data-height="1000" />
Rafters enjoy a scenic stretch of the New River Gorge National River. National Park Service
<p>"This designation will increase the international recognition by highlighting West Virginia's world-class beauty and resources. Over the last two years we have met with outdoorsmen, businesses and local leaders and other interested groups to ensure this designation will promote the beauty and rich history of the New River Gorge, while ensuring that the longstanding traditions of hunting and fishing are protected for generations to come," Manchin said in a statement reported by 12 WBOY.</p><p>To accommodate hunting and fishing, the new park will also double as a National Preserve, according to Condé Nast Traveler. It will feature 7,021 acres of protected riverfront and a 65,165 acre preserve where hunting and fishing can take place. This makes it the only duel park and preserve outside of Alaska.</p><p>"The New River Gorge is home to all West Virginia has to offer – our beauty, small businesses, and adventurous tourism opportunities. This legislation will preserve and protect the New River Gorge for generations to come and make our state an even better place to live, work, and raise a family," Miller said in a statement reported by 12 WBOY.</p>
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A crocodile jumps in the Adelaide River, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. "Amateur photographer'"/ Moment / Getty Images
By Max Stockdale
One of the most enduring tropes about crocodiles is to describe them as "living fossils." They are cold, slow moving and scaly, so they look like how one might picture a dinosaur. Like many clichés, there is an element of truth to this comparison. The crocodiles from 200 million years ago look surprisingly like the ones we know today.
<p>But why have the modern crocodilians, including crocodiles, alligators and caimans, changed so little over such an immense span of time? <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-020-01561-5" target="_blank">In new research</a>, published today, we have attempted to answer this question using advanced evolutionary modeling.</p><p>Relatives of crocodiles have been around for an extraordinary length of time, their <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1671/0272-4634%282002%29022%5B0593%3ACVANCF%5D2.0.CO%3B2" target="_blank">fossil remains</a> having been found in rocks from the early Jurassic period, around 200 million years old. Stranger still, these crocodiles from the age of the dinosaurs often look surprisingly like the crocodilians of today. All modern forms have long snouts, powerful tails, armoured skins and a sprawling gait, and many fossil forms are extremely similar.</p>
<p>This lack of change over such a long time is highly unusual, especially considering the immense diversity of modern animals that has accumulated in a much shorter time interval.<br></p><p>For example, the true birds first appear in the fossil record <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00114-003-0416-5" target="_blank">many millions of years after</a> the first crocodiles, yet today they number around <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-1078-9" target="_blank">10,000 species</a>, ranging from hummingbirds to ostriches. The crocodilians have <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/pala.12419" target="_blank">only 25 species</a>, and besides some variation in the shape of their skull they all look fairly similar.<br><br>However, this lack of modern diversity is deceptive, and there are many more exotic and unfamiliar crocodilian relatives known in the fossil record. This has included <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-71975-y" target="_blank">fast runners</a>, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article-abstract/189/2/483/5588829" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ocean-going swimmers</a>, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1671/039.029.0409" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">burrowers</a>, <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2005.3426" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">bipeds</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02724634.2010.532674" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">herbivores</a>.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTI2NjI1NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NDY2Njk2MH0.3I34FD6v6Gl755aBPtnSK0IKsGmD0P5hbqICTlgjNR8/img.jpg?width=980" id="ac006" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="349ef63ad1ef41411efa01562da90e9f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1200" data-height="828" />
The Philippine crocodile is one of 24 species of crocodilian alive today. Wikimedia, CC BY 3.0
<p>We developed an evolutionary model for our analysis by comparing body size data from crocodile fossils. This data, combined with the evolutionary relationships between each species, enabled us to calculate the trajectory of body size evolution through time. We could then calibrate this trajectory with the dates of the fossils, giving us a measure of body size change per unit time – their evolutionary rate.<br></p><p>These calculations yielded a measure of evolutionary rate for each species in our study, and the distribution of these rates revealed a new insight into how the crocodiles evolved. The majority of the species we looked at were only evolving very slowly, with a handful of species evolving more quickly. The more rapidly evolving species didn't appear independently, instead tending to emerge together when the climate was warmer.<br></p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTI2NjI1Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMjA5OTM2MH0.It8joYoI26Po2l3QjykD0O4o0-qFjP-r75irE-I9f8k/img.jpg?width=980" id="b0d9f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1d2d003eeace458f999d440da865e63d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1200" data-height="676" />
Unfamiliar crocodiles from prehistory. Author provided
<h2>Stop-Start Evolution</h2><p>This pattern of low evolutionary rates interrupted by occasional bursts of activity is known as "punctuated equilibrium." This is what we would expect to see in cases where evolution is being driven by external factors like mass extinctions or climate change, rather than intrinsic forces like sexual selection or the arms race between predators and prey. Punctuated equilibrium means that organisms will find an optimum state and remain in that state, until the environment forces them to adapt to new conditions. This results in a stop-start pattern.</p><p>It is not clear why some animals follow this model of punctuated equilibrium and others do not. There might be a few different factors at play. Modern crocodilians are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gr.2020.08.003" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">not able to control their body temperature</a>, so they may be more sensitive to changes in the climate than perhaps a mammal or a bird would be.</p><p>Conversely, modern crocodilians are <a href="https://www.rswa.org.au/publications/Journal/94(2)/Semeniuketal.pp.407-416.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">able to survive without eating</a> for very long periods, making them more resilient in times of hardship. This punctuated equilibrium model is certainly not peculiar to crocodiles, and a promising avenue of research would be to try and detect it in other groups of similar antiquity, such as turtles.</p>
<p>Our research strongly suggests crocodilians have remained unchanged for such a very long time because they have landed upon an equilibrium state that does not require them to change often. When crocodilian evolution does happen at pace, it is likely that this is because the environment has changed and has forced them to adapt. This may also explain why the crocodilians' more unusual kin became extinct.</p><p>Temperature does seem to have been important, but there is plenty of scope for other environmental factors to have played a role. The next step for us will be to examine how rates of body size evolution interact with variables other than temperature, like rainfall or sea level. We would also like to find out if characteristics other than body size follow this same pattern of punctuated equilibrium, for example skull shape.</p>
<p>
<em>Max Stockdale is a teaching associate in vertebrate macroevolution and palaeoecology at the University of Bristol.</em><br/>
</p><p>
<em>Disclosure statement: Max Stockdale receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council.</em>
</p><p>
<em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://theconversation.com/crocodiles-today-look-the-same-as-they-did-200-million-years-ago-our-study-explains-why-152635" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</em>
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Groundbreaking Court Case Argues U.S. Climate Denial Policy Violates Americans’ Right to Be Free
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People's Climate Solidarity March crossing the Mississippi in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on April 15, 2017. Fibonacci Blue / Flickr
By Carter Dillard
In 2019 a study linked climate change and hotter weather to early childbirth in the United States. "That's enough to take somebody from what's considered to be a pretty healthy pregnancy into a 'we are somewhat worried' pregnancy," said Alan Barreca, a UCLA professor of environment and human health and lead author of the study.
<p>Prior to this, several studies showed that the most effective way to mitigate the climate crisis, in terms of individual behavior, was to choose a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2017/07/20/scientists-say-family-planning-is-our-best-bet-to-reduce-climate-change/#480ee30d40f5" target="_blank">smaller family, and have fewer children than one normally would</a>.</p><p>That means the best thing we can do to protect our kids is to change the way we plan families. If you think about that statement, it makes sense: Planning ahead is much <a href="https://havingkids.org/fair-start-research/" target="_blank">more effective</a> than simply reacting to a situation. But as the <a href="https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2018/01/15/biodiversity-climate-change/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">climate crisis kills off nature</a> and <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/state-of-the-climate-2020-set-to-be-first-or-second-warmest-year-on-record" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">superheats the planet at an accelerating rate</a>, pregnancies give us a beautiful window to see the interconnection in one stark way — at the nexus between the human world and the nonhuman world and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/world/africa/comoros-climate-change-rivers.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">environment we are overrunning</a> — and to consider the best solution to the problem.</p>
<p>There's something hidden in this question that could be preventing the world from taking the effective action necessary to deal with the climate crisis, and <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-pandemic-is-not-a-natural-disaster" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">related crises like the COVID-19 pandemic</a>. What do we mean by the environment? What are we protecting from the climate crisis, and wish to have in the future? This is called the normative baseline problem, and it halts progress on policy and action as we struggle at the crossroads of different ways to go, between <a href="https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">more anthropogenic</a> and <a href="https://foundationforclimaterestoration.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">less anthropogenic</a> choices.<br></p><p>The baseline problem tends to linger when we consider things in terms of human welfare. If we switch to a framework of human freedom, our preference should become clear. Should infants be free of the ravages of an anthropogenic climate? How can we be free from others without restoring nature, or adhering to <a href="https://www.law360.com/articles/1259151/virus-highlights-nature-s-right-to-be-left-alone" target="_blank">the highest environmental baseline possible</a>? Freedom from the power of <a href="https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/pelr/vol29/iss3/5/" target="_blank">others is contingent upon restoring nature</a> and the wild — or a baseline based on the absence of human power — and pursuing the highest form of environmental protection. Freedom from others logically starts with the nonhuman world or the rewilding of our planet.</p>
<h3>The Baseline Problem</h3><p>There is a <a href="https://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cognitive dissonance</a> prevalent in our species of evaluating something without thinking through the normative baselines, or the things against which we are making the evaluation. For example, I might think that — relative to how I will feel in a minute's time — it is a good idea to gorge on doughnuts right now. If I had really considered how I would feel later, and <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/how-your-brain-stops-you-from-taking-climate-change-seriously" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">especially in the long run</a>, and if I keep making the same decision, I would realize that I should have thought beyond the short term, or made the decision at a later point of time.</p><p>The baseline problem <a href="https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=2143&context=wmlr" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">has dogged environmentalism</a> forever. It is a problem Cass Sunstein, former president Obama's regulatory czar, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Risk-Reason-Safety-Law-Environment/dp/0521016258" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">has tried to address</a> in his book <em>Risk and Reason</em>.</p>
<p>The world made the baseline mistake in developing environmental policy decades ago, choosing to treat nature as a resource for humans. The baseline was too low and allowed policies that fell short;<a href="https://mashable.com/article/climate-change-2020-records/" target="_blank"> indeed, it is</a> <a href="https://mashable.com/article/climate-change-2020-records/" target="_blank">one of the reasons our planet continues to superheat</a>. We are <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y6fv4fyx" target="_blank">making that same mistake now with regard to COVID-19</a>, by <a href="https://www.aspca.org/news/alarmingly-covid-19-relief-funds-prop-factory-farming" target="_blank">financially stimulating factory farming</a> and other forms of ecocide that degrade the buffer (or social distancing) between people that our pre-<a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/anthropocene/" target="_blank">Anthropocene</a> environment offered. Degrading that "natural buffer" <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/climate-change-coronavirus-linked/" target="_blank">exacerbates the risk of pandemics</a> and <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/28/social-distancing-is-a-privilege/" target="_blank">determines how we can react to them</a>. As the New Republic reported, the next pandemic <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/157129/next-pandemic-hiding-arctic-permafrost" target="_blank">could be hiding in the Arctic permafrost</a>.</p><p>Solving the baseline problem will allow us to trace these calamities — <a href="https://earther.gizmodo.com/its-horrific-climate-change-is-killing-the-great-barri-1842728096" target="_blank">like the unfolding death of the Great Barrier Reef</a> — and help us back to an ultimate source, and, perhaps, to a solution. We can no longer use a baseline for environmental policy that treats nature or the nonhuman world as a human resource. This is the baseline most environmentalists use, and the one that created the Anthropocene era in which we find the world today. A much higher baseline would view nature as something that ought to be a nonhuman habitat or the homes of sentient species who have a right to survive and thrive. This would be <a href="https://foundationforclimaterestoration.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a restorative baseline</a>, and the one more consistent with animal liberation. Such a baseline would be most protective against things like climate change and the pandemics it drives. A policy based on this baseline would revolve around ensuring our children have the only environment proven — over millennia‚ that allows humans and all species to thrive. It would seek to eliminate the way the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38094186" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">absence of nature in our lives is degrading our psyches</a>.</p>
<p>In other words, what should our environment be like? What environment do our kids deserve? Do we want to raise kids <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/26/world/expensive-car-drivers-study-scli-scn-intl/index.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twCNN&utm_term=link&utm_content=2020-02-26T13%3A35%3A36" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">with antisocial personalities</a> who will plague their future generations with the same issues? Can we avoid doing so? Our choices to answer that question are being cut off as corporate and government forces convert nature into profits for the uber-wealthy. Our freedom to choose, our freedom through nature, is being taken away from us.</p><p>Whether we and our children have a right to that higher baseline and environment — what our future ought to look like — underlies the climate debates and the culture wars over how we respond to COVID-19. In this context, the debate centers around whether we should <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2019/12/06/how-much-is-a-climate-change-solution-worth/#4f19d231f560" target="_blank">prioritize economic growth over preserving nature</a>, and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/social-distancing-culture/609019/" target="_blank">the protection of human life</a>. The debate is between those who favor a lower environmental baseline and economic growth and those who favor a higher baseline and human rights, like the right of the most vulnerable groups to survive the pandemic.</p>
<p>It is a debate that is now being <a href="https://www.law360.com/articles/1259151/virus-highlights-nature-s-right-to-be-left-alone" target="_blank">fought out in federal court</a>. The case will determine a lot about what it means to be free in America — for us and for our kids.</p><p>Here is the key to that case, something many people miss. In order for us to be free, wilderness — or the relative absence of human domination over nature — has to remain and be protected as a potential baseline against the imposition of human power. Without it, we will lose our point of orientation to know what it means to be free from others. Or as Senator Frank Church of Idaho <a href="https://www.britannica.com/explore/savingearth/freedom-at-malheur" target="_blank">said</a> in helping to pass the Wilderness Act of 1964, that "without wilderness this country will become a cage." Consider this, and the uber-wealthy class: People like Elon Musk <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/1/7/21003272/space-x-starlink-astronomy-light-pollution" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">insert themselves between us and nature in order to overrun it</a> and promote <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/30/elon-musk-jack-ma-biggest-problem-world-will-face-is-population-drop.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">increased population growth to accelerate that process</a>. They envision a future in which the world is one big market, or a place they can dominate as the alternative — <a href="https://www.walden.org/quotation-category/government-and-politics-2/freedom/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">or the free world of Thoreau</a> — recedes into extinction.</p>
<p>It's hard to think outside of the box when there is no outside, when there is no alternative to a man-made, human-dominated world. Anti-environmental groups who wish to convert the entire <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-billionaires-have-more-wealth-46-billion-people" target="_blank">world into a market that is owned by a powerful few</a>, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/06/trump-executive-order-on-us-space-resources-and-mining-policy.html" target="_blank">who are now even eyeing the resources in space</a>, know and exploit this fact. When I am in nature, in the wild, I can see the box or cage from the outside. I am free because I have that perspective, point of orientation, or baseline. Shouldn't we ensure that our kids have the same choice, and can see from that perspective?</p><p>The founders of this country thought so. They understood how crucial it was to have a baseline that could be used to judge and orient ourselves against human power, and wrote it into the Declaration of Independence, <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yhrdlj/vol10/iss1/1/" target="_blank">using the concept of wilderness and nature as the foundation</a> upon which to build the latticework of the American social contract. They understood that human rights and democracy are <em>objective</em> values and should orient around an external and objective point like nature. In the Declaration, they explicitly assured it to our progeny.</p>
<h3>No Freedom Without Nature</h3><p>In the case, which is now on appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the <a href="https://aldf.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Animal Legal Defense Fund</a> and <a href="https://seedingsovereignty.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Seeding Sovereignty</a>, two nonprofits, allege that the federal government's policy of ignoring the climate crisis — and in many cases knowingly exacerbating it — violates Americans' right to be free because it is destroying our environment relative to the higher, or restorative baseline. The concept of constitutional freedom can be complex but one way to unpack it is by dividing it into positive and negative freedoms — or the right to be <em>free from</em> the nonconsensual impact other people have on you, and the <em>freedom to</em> choose how to live your life. The plaintiffs allege our government is violating both these freedoms.</p><p>Consider the impact of the climate crisis on pregnant women, as the baseline environment, which generations of American mothers have enjoyed, and is now being degraded. Not only are <a href="https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/subtopics/climate-change-and-pregnancy-low-birth-weight/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the mothers and their babies subject to the disastrous and long-term impacts of the crisis</a>, but their choices and opportunities in life are being cut off by such long-term impacts. Instead of addressing this issue, the government's policies internationally have shifted the benefits to polluters, who use the wealth to minimize the harm of the crisis upon themselves and expand their own choices in life by ensuring poorer health, additional costs of care, etc. This case argues that because we have the right to be free from others and to live our lives as we choose, such government policies violate the Constitution, which protects us from these and similar intrusions. How can we have a right to be free from relatively nonintrusive things like <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-supreme-court-just-struck-a-blow-against-mass-surveillance/2018/06/25/1b5ee510-7653-11e8-b4b7-308400242c2e_story.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">government surveillance</a>, as the Supreme Court has always held, but not be free from life-threatening ecological impacts? We do have such a right — a right to a natural and restorative environmental baseline, or the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-52066238" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">highest possible standard of environmental protection</a>, which stands as a wall between us and those who would use nature for their own profits, and prevents from further endangering pregnant women and their children, and exacerbating pandemics in the future. Having that right is what it means to be free.</p>
<h3>Taking a Revolutionary Perspective and Acting on It</h3><p>The case of <em>Juliana v. United States</em>, which was filed in 2015 by 21 youth and organizational plaintiff Earth Guardians, is powerful and differs significantly from <a href="https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/juliana-v-us" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">other constitutional litigations regarding the climate crisis</a> as it is focused on anthropocentric standards for environmental protection, and relies on the role of nature, and wilderness, in particular, in the American Revolution and the founding of the country. Could the Founding Fathers have imagined that Americans would one day be so impacted by others, that nature would be so degraded, that our own environment threatened pregnancy? How would they have wanted us to react to that threat and our rights to be free from others, and free to live our lives as we see fit, relative to the environmental baseline they enjoyed <a href="https://www.earthisland.org/index.php/advocates/suit/rewilding" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">and extolled as a necessary condition of freedom</a>? This country is built on a promise to our progeny and we know the people who are making it impossible to keep that promise.</p><p>This is not about fealty to our Founding Fathers or some other form of nationalism masquerading as liberalism. If we don't orient our political systems around the absence of human power and <a href="https://foundationforclimaterestoration.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the restoration of nature</a>, we are adopting a concept of freedom that is incoherent. That, in turn, <a href="https://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/2020/07/dillard-on-legitimacy.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">poses serious legitimacy problems for any form of governance</a>, making consensual political association physically impossible. In other words, without the absence of human power — or nature or the nonhuman world — <a href="https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/pelr/vol29/iss3/5/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">it becomes impossible to consent to human power</a>. We cannot allow ourselves to simply embrace — and foist upon future generations — a world where we cannot be free from others' harmful influence, in which freedom from the power of others does not exist and political liberty is replaced <a href="https://www.consumerfreedom.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">by a degrading form of consumerist freedom</a>. In such a world, freedom is more economic than political, and the average person's role is reduced to being a buyer and seller in a world market rather than that of an empowered citizen in free democracies surrounded by nature. Those promoting such an emaciated form of freedom, and blocking family planning reforms that would ensure people are <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/02/24/humanitys-survival-on-earth-starts-with-having-smaller-families_partner/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">empowered as truly free and equal</a> might be thought of as pre-constitutional, but it is preventing the intergenerational constituting or coming together of people as truly self-determining.</p>
<p>The move away from a lower or resource-based baseline has begun, in part, with the recognition <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y3zg9aqm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">that humans and the environment are inextricably linked</a>, which is a partial move away from the view of nature as a resource <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674368224" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">and separate from humanity</a>. The next steps involve understanding exactly what we mean by the concept of nature and why we value it, and moving from the descriptive realm to the normative or evaluative realm — the realm of law and human rights — where we can articulate exactly how nature should be part of us and part of <em>who we as a species should be</em>. And when it comes to taking action, a useful perspective would be understanding that the fight for nature involves liberating <a href="https://tinyurl.com/mra52os" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the most vulnerable entities in the world — future generations and nonhumans</a>. This involves <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/02/24/humanitys-survival-on-earth-starts-with-having-smaller-families_partner/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">universal reform of our family planning system</a>. One effective option would be to liberate them by seizing the resources of those at the top of the power and population pyramid that Nobel laureate <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Chu" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Steven Chu</a> recognized and using those resources <a href="https://havingkids.org/its-not-about-population-its-about-an-intergenerational-revolution/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">to fund universal family planning programs that promote smaller and more equitable families</a>. And while we have been taught that countries like the United States were "constituted" by god-like wealthy white men in the past, new scholarship argues that this idea is nonsense and that if we assume political power derives from actual people, <a href="https://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/2020/07/dillard-on-legitimacy.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">we are constantly either constituting legitimate democracies or deconstituting into illegitimate "pre-constitutional" political states</a>, depending on the family planning systems at play.</p>
<p>Do you think the idea of linking equity and a universal ethic of smaller families to population and family planning sounds far-fetched? Others, like <a href="https://mashable.com/video/michael-moore-planet-of-the-humans/" target="_blank">Michael Moore</a> and <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2020/04/24/david-brooks-who-is/" target="_blank">David Brooks</a>, are already making the connection in the mainstream.</p><p>The war on nature has turned into a war against us and our kids. We cannot afford to make the baseline mistake in the face of threats like the climate crisis, COVID-19, mass extinction and many other interrelated catastrophes. That is what the case is about: arguing that our fundamental human rights include a right and responsibility to nature, which in essence means <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B-qdco0jAFa/" target="_blank">seeing ourselves as guests of nature</a>, and not its master. It is an argument that completely gels with changes around the country to <a href="https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0195150163.001.0001/acprof-9780195150162" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">limit destructive and mythical property rights</a>, such as those over animals and over specific parts of our environment, in favor of a form of personhood that would protect the most vulnerable entities in the world.</p><p>And whether courts recognize that right to be free in nature or not, the tide of those willing to fight for the highest standard of environmental protection, and to protect those most vulnerable will continue to rise all the way up to the doorsteps of our oppressors — specifically those who push for a lower environmental baseline and economic growth over our right and responsibility to nature.</p>
<p><em>Carter Dillard is the founder of <a href="https://havingkids.org/" target="_blank">HavingKids.org</a>. He served as an Honors Program Attorney at the United States Department of Justice and served with a national security law agency before developing a comprehensive account of reforming family planning for the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal. He has begun to implement the transition to child-centric "Fair Start" family planning, both as a member of the Steering Committee of the Population Ethics and Policy Research Project, and as a visiting scholar of the Uehiro Center, both at the University of Oxford.</em></p><p><em><span></span>This article was produced by </em><a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/earth-food-life/" target="_blank"><em>Earth | Food | Life</em></a><em>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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A rendering of CORE's proposed installation of "Stories of Climate Change / Historias del Cambio Climático" mural project that will appear on three Colorado Mountain College locations across western Colorado. Carlos Ulloa-Jaquez
Richard Mode, a North Carolina sportsman, has a story to tell. He likes to fish for trout, but the water is warming and the fish are disappearing.
<p>But Mode's story is more than that. It's a catalyst for shifting climate beliefs among political moderates and conservatives. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08934215.2020.1799049?journalCode=rcrs20" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">A recent study</a> reveals growing evidence on the benefit of humanizing the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-crisis" target="_blank">climate crisis</a>, and one local initiative is actualizing it in a new project.</p>
<p>The Colorado non-profit CORE, The Community Office for Resource Efficiency, is calling upon the public to submit a self-portrait and a 90-second story to be featured on an upcoming mural installation. The murals will span three Colorado Mountain College buildings in western Colorado in the spring, <a href="https://www.aspentimes.com/news/core-wants-200-community-selfies-and-climate-stories-for-mural-project/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the Aspen Times reported</a>. </p>
<p>"Climate change knows no boundaries," Mona Newton, executive director of CORE said in a <a href="https://aspencore.org/participate/stories-of-climate-change/#single/0" target="_blank">press release</a>. "We want to show the human diversity of this phenomenon, representing a breadth we don't usually see in the media or in the environmental movement."</p>
<p>Titled "Stories of Climate Change / Historias del Cambio Climático," the multicultural mural installation is part of French artist <a href="https://www.insideoutproject.net/en" target="_blank">JR's Inside Out global art project</a>, according to the press release. "We hope our portraits and personal stories will demonstrate that we are all in this together," Newton added.</p><p>The mural's goal to share local experiences of climate change underscores <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/21/how-americans-see-climate-change-and-the-environment-in-7-charts/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">growing concern for the climate crisis</a> across the U.S.</p><p>Yet, compared to older generations, younger people are more willing to turn this concern into action, according to a study performed by the <a href="https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/young-adults-climate-activism/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Yale Program on Climate Change Communication</a>. There's good reason for this. </p><p>A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll of American teenagers found that 57 percent reported that climate change made them feel scared, while 52 percent said it made them feel angry. Only 29 percent of teenagers said they felt optimistic about climate change, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/02/03/eco-anxiety-is-overwhelming-kids-wheres-line-between-education-alarmism/?arc404=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">according to the Washington Post</a>. </p>
<p>So, how can <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-change" target="_blank">climate change </a>communication motivate older generations?</p>
<p>"The scientists, we're interested in and motivated by the facts and figures and the raw numbers," Abel Gustafson, a postdoctoral associate at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, <a href="https://grist.org/climate/when-facts-fail-to-convince-storytelling-may-do-the-trick/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">told Grist</a>, "but we oftentimes forget that most other people in our audience are not."</p>
<p>Currently, climate communication channels make the crisis seem distant, <a href="https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/personal-climate-stories-can-persuade/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">according to an article by the Yale Program on Climate Communication</a>. But stories like that of the North Carolina sportsman portray climate change as an issue occurring today, and affecting a larger group of people. </p>
<p>Researchers of the Yale study shared Mode's personal account of climate change with political moderates and conservatives. The result? </p>
<p>Mode's story had a persuasive impact on listeners by shifting their climate change beliefs, the Yale Program on Climate Communication article found. It reported that the more people felt worried or compassionate, the more they adjusted their climate change beliefs. "Humans just aren't wired to care deeply about dangers that seem far away," Gustafson told Grist.</p><p>Personalizing climate change through human stories could inspire more people to understand the crisis beyond <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/anwr-trump-drilling-lease-auction-2649779271.html" target="_blank">polar bears in the Arctic,</a> for example, and connect it to their next-door neighbors or hobbies.</p><p>"These findings highlight the importance of sharing personal stories about how climate change is affecting people and ecosystems," the Yale article stated. They "underscore the importance of emotion as well as facts in climate change communication."</p>
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Fires, deforestation, logging and mining threaten the integrity of the Amazon rainforest. Ria Sopala / Pixabay
The future of the world's largest rainforest looks bleak. A new report for Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development concluded that the Amazon rainforest will collapse and largely become a dry, shrubby plain by 2064. Development, deforestation and the climate crisis are to blame, study author and University of Florida geologist Robert Toovey Walker found, UPI reported.
<p>Walker reviewed recent research, offering that heavy development in Amazonian nations depleted the forest and threatens to push it over the edge towards destruction.</p><p>By nature of being a rainforest, the canopy creates its own precipitation. The local environment and inhabitants rely on the freshwater created therein for survival. The ecosystem can recover from smaller, periodic droughts but longer and more severe events are already diminishing the forest's long-term resilience, <a href="https://interestingengineering.com/amazon-rainforest-will-be-decimated-by-2064-professor-claims" target="_blank">Interesting Engineering</a> reported.</p>
<p>Longer dry seasons, which the rainforest is already experiencing and which are exacerbated by <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/deforestation" target="_self">deforestation</a> and the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a>, prevent rainforest canopies from recovering from fires. Flammable grasses and shrubs "permanently invade" and take over the landscape; the tropical rainforest dries out and transforms into a tropical savanna, the study found.</p><p>"A forest cannot survive if its canopy needs more than 4 years to recover from a yearly [drought] event," Walker wrote in the report. "Southern Amazonia can expect to reach a tipping point sometime before 2064 at the current rate of dry-season lengthening."</p>
<p>Earlier this year, a different study found that the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-ecosystem-collapse-2645458118.html" target="_self">Amazon ecosystem could collapse in less than 50 years</a> with deforestation being the primary culprit. According to UPI, Walker's latest review shaved five years off from that estimate and gave the most specific date of ecosystem demise ever provided, citing the same reason.</p><p><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-rainforest-fire-brazil-2646869688.html" target="_self">Fire</a>, deforestation and logging are leading causes of tree loss. Industrial-scale cattle ranching and soybean production, in particular, drive the latter. Additionally, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-brazil-gold-mining-2645732733.html" target="_self">illegal gold mining is laying the forest bare and polluting rivers</a>.</p>
<p><br>Brazil's President <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/jair-bolsonaro" target="_self">Jair Bolsonaro</a> has been criticized for <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/brazil-bolsonaro-bill-open-indigenous-land-2645088985.html" target="_self">opening the forest to exploitation</a> and inciting forest destruction. Under Bolsonaro, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-deforestation-bolsonaro-2649115946.html" target="_self">Amazon deforestation skyrocketed to a 12-year high</a>, and activists warned that he <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/brazil-amazon-deforestation-coronavirus-2645950493.html" target="_self">used the pandemic as a smokescreen</a> to undermine protections for the rainforest. Walker criticized Bolsonaro's administration for "appear[ing] intent on scrapping all remaining restraints on the unfettered exploitation of Amazonia's natural resources."</p><p>Walker also estimated that the Amazon has shrunk by about 20% since intense development began and that the dry season has already lengthened in the south by an additional 6.5 days per decade, UPI reported.</p>
<p>The study's models predict that once deforestation reaches 30-50% in southern Amazonia, rainfall in the west will decrease by up to 40%, cementing the deterioration in that environment from lush, tropical forest to arid, open savanna, <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/new-report-predicts-southern-amazon-rainforest-is-heading-for-collapse-by-2064" target="_blank">Science Alert</a> reported.</p><p>"The best way to think of the forest ecosystem is that it's a pump," Walker told UPI. "The forest recycles moisture, which supports regional rainfall. If you continue to destroy the forest, the rainfall amount drops... and eventually, you wreck the pump."</p><p>As the forest transforms into a grassland, all the benefits of the massive ecosystem will also disappear and a "multidimensional catastrophe" will ensue, Walker wrote in the study.</p>
<p>Primarily, water security will evaporate for over 35 million people living in the region, Science Alert continued. The entire continent's dependency upon Amazonia for freshwater "means that the magnitude of the catastrophe will be worse than heretofore imagined," Walker noted in the study.</p><p>Additionally, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/brazil-amazon-wildlife-criminal-networks-2646841421.html" target="_self">many plants and animals in the biodiverse ecosystem will be driven to extinction</a>. Among those could lie new medical discoveries and foods, UPI noted. Timber and other precious resources will also disappear.</p><p>Finally and perhaps most alarmingly, according to Science Alert, the forest could lose its ability to store the world's excess carbon which helps to regulate the climate and planetary temperature. In fact, some predict the world's largest forest will flip from a sink to a source around 2035, the report said.</p><p>Walker concluded that it was "doubtful" that the Amazon forest could remain resilient into the future given the layers of threats facing it.</p>
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