Green Amendment Tips the Scales of Justice for the Environment
A legal victory in Montana in the fight for a healthy environment has demonstrated the incredible power of Green Amendment protections for present and future generations. Support the movement today so we can secure a Green Amendment in every state across the nation.
Green Amendments For the Generations is celebrating the amazing Montana court victory declaring and securing the right of all Montanans to a safe climate! Using the state’s Green Amendment, a Montana judge struck down, as unconstitutional, state laws that prohibited government officials from considering the climate changing impacts of their actions and that helped the state expand and perpetuate dirty fossil fuel extraction, production, and consumption.
What happened?
In Held v. Montana, 16 Youth relied upon their constitutionally protected environmental freedoms, recognized in the state’s constitutional Green Amendment, to defeat the state’s politically motivated efforts to expand dirty fossil fuel extraction and consumption that was sacrificing the youths’ health, safety, and very lives.
Why has Montana’s climate case succeeded when so many others have failed?
Up until this point, in states like Utah, Alaska, Washington, New Mexico, and Oregon, similar kinds of legal claims have failed – being dismissed early on -- because those states did not have constitutional language meeting the definition of a Green Amendment. These states lack language that provides the foundation for essential climate protection and victory.*
Montana’s constitutional language is different; it is one of just 3 states with a Green Amendment. Placed in the Declaration of Rights section of the state’s constitution, Montana’s Green Amendment provision recognizes the inalienable, human right to a clean and healthful environment. The carefully crafted language ensures that the ultimate power to wield, define, and defend the fundamental right to a healthy environment lies with the people, not legislators. This is what makes a Green Amendment starkly different from, and more powerful than, our current system of environmental laws and policies. And as a result, when existing laws, a gap in the law, or the way a law is interpreted and applied violates the people’s environmental freedoms and/or perpetuates environmental racism or the sacrifice of future generations, the Montana Green Amendment can be used as a sword AND a shield to secure essential protections.
Montana’s incredible victory was made possible because of one simple legal truth – the people of Montana have a Green Amendment. We need your support today to secure this powerful protection in every state across our nation, and then to secure one in our federal constitution.
As a result of the Held v. Montana victory, people nationwide have seen how Green Amendments are a powerful legal tool allowing them to take on government officials who are failing in their moral, political, and constitutional duty to protect the environment, the climate, and the health and safety of present and future generations.
Only 3 states have a Green Amendment today – Montana, Pennsylvania, and New York, which passed its amendment just 2 years ago as a result of our national Green Amendment movement. But, our Green Amendments For The Generations organization is right now helping to advance this powerful protection in 15 other states, with more communities asking every day for our expertise, help, & support. And we want to continue this fight to bring it to every state in the nation.
While Montana just used its Green Amendment to help achieve climate justice, Green Amendments have helped achieve a multitude of other critical protections. For example:
Pennsylvania’s Green Amendment struck down devastating legislation that would have exponentially expanded fracking in the state; secured clean-up of a super-saturated toxic site long-ignored by the state and which the community believes is responsible for cancers, tumors, and other health crises many have suffered, and is the foundation of some of the strongest drinking water protections from toxic Forever Chemicals nationwide.
New York’s Green Amendment is less than 2 years old but has already helped a marginalized community take on their government and gain protection from a massively expanding landfill and the greenhouse gas and hazardous contaminants it releases into their community.
Since 2014, Green Amendments For The Generations has been the only voice helping communities achieve the incredible and transformational protections a Green Amendment can provide. The term “Green Amendment” was coined and defined in 2017 in our award winning book The Green Amendment, Securing Our Right to a Healthy Environment. This book was part of the founding of the national Green Amendment movement.
To achieve this powerful protection and to make nationwide Green Amendment protection possible we need your support, and FAST!
Industry is mounting a false information campaign seeking to defeat Green Amendment protections before they can be achieved. But we can beat them! If we have your help to organize, educate, train, support and engage our grassroots and frontline communities nationwide, we can overcome the opposition and secure enforceable constitutional protection.
Through our nationwide Green Amendment movement, ‘We The People’ can secure OUR INALIENABLE, HUMAN RIGHT to a clean, safe and healthy environment, including a stable and safe climate, for both present and future generations.
*Hawaii is among the states seeking a constitutional Green Amendment. But meanwhile, they have alternative constitutional language mandating natural resources protection for present and future generations that should also provide foundation for a successful climate action.
