Mitigating Climate Change–A Legal Strategy Based on an Ancient Premise

Mitigating Climate Change--A Legal Strategy Based on an Ancient PremiseThose of us concerned about climate disruption turn to legal scholars for strategies that may be successful in protecting Earth’s atmosphere.  Here’s one I just came across, propounded by Mary Christina Wood (pictured), a law professor at the University of Oregon, and author of “Nature’s Trust – Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age.” It’s based on a notion that goes back to Ancient Rome:

Government holds in public trust for all its citizens the resources they need to survive, and can be held accountable if it fails to protect those resources for future generations.

Not to take anything away from Ms. Wood’s construct, but one would think that all legal approaches in this space are variations on this theme; it really comes down to the purpose and duty of government to begin with: protection of the people.  Regardless of how much or how little government one thinks is a sound idea, the only folks who could possibly object to this concept are anarchists—and even anarchy is based on the concept that groups of people have natural, spontaneous tendencies to build ad hoc social devices that function to protect themselves from harm.

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