大象传媒

As the world faces growing ecological uncertainty, more of us face life-or-death scenarios every day. How do we live together, on this planet, in a way that is good for all? This is a question that has driven our work as storytellers for the past six years and inspired our coverage of the Rights of Nature movement. 

Our latest effort to document this movement鈥檚 role in the collective battle for survival is our film called Invisible Hand. In it, we show people fighting to protect their corners of the planet from corporate greed, environmental ruin, and their own governments in a showdown between capitalism and democracy. 

We come to this work as water defenders, after a dozen-plus years of watching corporations poison communities in pursuit of fracked oil and gas without accountability. Our mission is to tell the stories of those who are ignored or harmed by the engines of our society and to unveil the systemic injustices that make that harm possible.

In the film, Degaw毛no:da鈥檚 of Wolf Clan (Seneca), part of the Haudenosaunee alliance, recounts a lesson from the prophecy of the Peacemaker: 鈥淲e had to love, honor, and have respect for ourselves, for others, for all of creation,鈥� he told us while filming on the Allegheny River, or Ohi:yo鈥�. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 how we are to remain in balance.鈥� 

The concepts of respect, honor, and love seem simple enough, so why is it so hard to live in harmony with Nature? 

Well, for starters, it鈥檚 illegal.

Corporations Are People.  Nature Is Property. 

Most people think environmental laws protect the environment, when in fact they legalize pollution. Under current environmental laws, corporations get permits to dump pollutants into water, allegedly in a regulated manner that prevents permanent damage. But if that were true, there鈥檇 be no such thing as 鈥淐ancer Alley鈥� or 鈥淎merica鈥檚 most polluted river鈥� in the year 2021. 

Let鈥檚 say your community decides there should be no more water pollution, especially in neighborhoods that have been disproportionately burdened by industrial contamination for decades. It is illegal, under the current system of law, for your community to tell a corporation to stop polluting. In the United States and many other countries, corporations have rights comparable to people, and when a government issues a permit for a corporation to release X amount of pollution, residents are not allowed to infringe on that corporate right to pollute. 

Just ask the city of Toledo, Ohio, where citizens voted in 2019 to protect their drinking water by granting Lake Erie the right to exist, thrive, and flourish, making pollution of the lake illegal. A corporation, Drewes Farm, sued the city and won when a federal court struck down the local law, citing the corporation鈥檚 constitutional rights. Under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, corporations can sue anyone who deprives them of 鈥渓ife, liberty, or property鈥濃�攔ights that Nature does not share.

Or ask the small, rural community of Grant Township, Pennsylvania, where groundwater is the only source of drinking water. After state and federal authorities ignored community leaders鈥� pleas for protection and issued permits allowing a corporation to inject radioactive fracking waste underground, Grant Township democratically voted to ban the injection of industrial waste. Later, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sued Grant Township, asserting its preemptive authority over the municipality in order to block the local law. But the town of approximately 700 people fights on. So far, there has been no waste injection in Grant, regulators have revoked the corporation鈥檚 permit, and the corporation has been forced to take the local law back to court. 

The Grant Township and Toledo stories, which we feature in Invisible Hand, are two of many in the U.S. of people fighting their own government in order to protect their drinking water from pollution. Ever since the European colonization of what is now the U.S., Indigenous communities have also had to fight to protect water, land, relatives, and ancestors from invaders. Their efforts were the first to be deemed 鈥渋llegitimate鈥� under the laws of colonizers. 

The fundamental laws in the U.S., and indeed most countries, ignore the laws of Nature and reduce the living, breathing entity into 鈥減roperty,鈥� a mere possession of the privileged. And as long as the law remains this way, the best laid ecological plans are always under threat of being undermined by a corporation that wants to pump its poison emissions or toxic waste into the middle of your unwilling Eden. 

But 鈥渋f a corporation can have constitutional rights, why not an ecosystem?鈥� asked Grant Township Supervisor Stacy Long when we interviewed her for Invisible Hand. The question is simple enough. The answer, we discovered, is pretty simple, too: If Nature had constitutional rights, the capitalist system that underpins our society could not exist. 

The Rights of Nature

The Rights of Nature movement is changing the foundation of Western law to recognize Nature as an entity deserving of recognition and rights鈥攏ot for what she does for us, but by virtue of the fact that she exists. Such a fundamental shift automatically calls everything in modern society into question, especially economics, by placing Nature at the center of our decision-making processes. 

Honoring Nature as a living entity in our social contracts and systems may feel, to some, like too big a change to be practical. The Rights of Nature are not universally accepted as law鈥攜et. But for a very long time, neither was voting by women or freedom for the enslaved. 

It took the people to force those laws to change, too.

Unfortunately, time is running out. The unnatural, human-driven rate of species extinction is accelerating dramatically. International climate scientists warn that the climate is changing faster than expected, and we have less than 10 years to curb it. It may be too late to wait for the systemic change required of our legal system in order to protect us from ourselves. 

So how do we create such time-consuming change when there鈥檚 so little time left? 

That鈥檚 the question many audience members asked at our world premiere of Invisible Hand. In response, we shared wisdom from Hopi elders that continues to inspire our work: 鈥淵ou have been telling people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. … Do not look outside yourself for your leader. … Gather yourselves! Banish the word 鈥榮truggle鈥� from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we鈥檝e been waiting for.鈥�

For us, that means dedicating our energy and resources to the protection of water, because that鈥檚 the fight we face in our own communities. It also means confronting how our ways of life support the systems of oppression, colonization, and injustice that prevent us from living in harmony with Nature and each other. It means asking what must be done, not just what we can do.

Doing what we must means accepting that what鈥檚 necessary may also be illegal鈥攁nd doing it anyway. Whether it鈥檚 passing laws granting rights to Nature, dismantling the cornerstones of capitalism, returning stolen land, or putting bodies in front of bulldozers鈥攚hatever we are capable of doing, we must do it now. Remember: We are the ones we鈥檝e been waiting for.