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Advocate touts benefits of adding ‘Green Amendment’ to state constitutions

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Advocate touts benefits of adding ‘Green Amendment’ to state constitutions

Oct 15, 2024 | 6:00 am ET
By Paul Hammel
Advocate touts benefits of adding ‘Green Amendment’ to state constitutions
Description
The 2024 Youth Climate Summit featured a speaker urging young people to get involved in passing a “Green Amendment” to the Nebraska Constitution. (Courtesy of Nebraska Interfaith Power and Light)

LINCOLN — In the states of Montana, Pennsylvania and New York, state constitutions include a  clause that gives citizens a right to a “clean and healthy environment.”

At the recent Nebraska Youth Climate Summit, about 200 high school and college students were told that it’s time for Nebraska to consider adopting a similar “Green Amendment” to its state constitution to ensure a clean environment during a time of climate change.

“It is a tool for people to protect themselves and the environment they live in,” said Sheridan Macy, an Omaha native and recent law school graduate.

“It’s also a good tool for holding the government accountable, especially when the government is hostile to environmental concerns,” added Macy, a post-graduate fellow at the Penn Carey Law School in Philadelphia.

Macy was one of the featured speakers at the recent Nebraska Youth Climate Summit, which was launched in 2016 as a way to educate young people about environmental issues and empower them to do something about public policies.

Platform for citizens

Macy told the gathering at the East Campus Student Center of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln that Green Amendments have provided a platform for citizens to argue in court that their state government is not doing enough to provide them with safe drinking water, clean air, and healthy soils and ecosystems. 

Draft language

Some initial draft language for a proposed Green Amendment in Nebraska:

“All people have a right to a clean and healthy environment, including pure water, clean air, healthy soils, balanced ecosystems, a safe climate, diverse and abundant native flora and fauna, and to the preservation of the natural cultural scenic, recreational, and healthful qualities of the environment. The state shall take no action that would infringe upon these rights. The state shall protect these rights equitably for all people regardless of race, ethnicity, tribal affiliation, socio-economics, gender or geography. The state, including each branch, agency and political subdivision, shall serve as trustee of the natural resources of Nebraska and shall conserve, protect and maintain these resources for the benefit of all the people, including present and future generations. The rights stated in this section are inherent, inalienable, and indefensible and are among those rights reserved to the people and are on par with other protected fundamental rights. The rights and obligations in this provision are self executing.”

In Pennsylvania earlier this year, that state’s Green Amendment allowed citizens to intervene in a lawsuit over whether the state was doing enough to protect them against greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2023, 16 young people in Montana won a court ruling that they have a right to “a stable climate system” under that state’s Green Amendment and that the state had a duty to reduce harmful emissions.

The Green Amendments in Montana and Pennsylvania were adopted in the 1970s. New York State voters approved one in 2021.

Now there’s a push by a national organization, Green Amendments for the Generations, that is urging adoption of such legal rights in every state. Last year, Macy said, Green Amendments were introduced in 14 states across the country.

Such amendments give citizens standing in lawsuits against the government “for not doing their jobs” in protecting against the pollution of streams and harmful emissions in the air.

“It is very difficult to bring those kinds of lawsuits without the Green Amendment,” she told Youth Summit participants.

Macy said her law school studies and internships showed her the benefits of Green Amendments and inspired her to begin conversations about getting one introduced in the Nebraska Legislature, as a forerunner to a possible petition drive to get a constitutional amendment on the state ballot in 2026.

So far, she said, she has met with representatives of the Sierra Club in Nebraska as well as Nebraska Interfaith Power and Light, the main organizer of the Youth Climate Summit and a faith-based group that promotes clean energy and related policies.

Macy said she’s talked with two Nebraska state senators about introducing a Green Amendment proposal next year but thinks that it’s unlikely that the State Legislature would advance a constitutional amendment measure.

But introduction of a proposal would guarantee a public hearing on the issue, she said, as well as help refine the language of a ballot initiative.

‘Never been used against farmers’

A draft proposal, tailored for Nebraska in hopes of mollifying expected opposition from farm groups, is posted on the website of the Green Amendments for the Generations website 

“It’s never been used against farmers, and we’ve adjusted it to make sure it couldn’t be used against farmers,” Macy said. “But that’s the argument that will be used against it, and there will be scare tactics used against it.”

The Nebraska Farm Bureau did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment.

In Nebraska, Macy said a Green Amendment might have been helpful in opposing the now-dead Keystone XL pipelin, and could have been used to oppose a proposal in the Legislature that would have blocked cities from passing bans on single-use plastic bags.

Ken Winston of Interfaith Power and Light said that gathering sufficient signatures to put such an amendment before Nebraska voters would be expensive. However, Macy said that “progressive” ballot initiatives have been successful in the state, such as those to raise the minimum wage and allow for Medicaid expansion.

“One of the big obstacles is convincing people that this is something that can help them and is not something abstract and legal,” Macy said.