Attorney and activist Maya van Rossum, author of The Green Amendment: Securing Our Right to a Healthy Environment discusses a pioneering new legal strategy to fight growing pollution problems, including drinking water contamination, air pollution, deforestation and climate change, by adopting constitutional green amendments that guarantee a safe and healthy environment. 

 

Van Rossum is also the leader of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, an organization that has successfully stalled fracking and pipeline development in the Northeast. The DRN initiated For the Generations, a project that provides a guide to creating an environmental rights amendment in every US state.   

 

This veteran environmentalist used the constitution in Pennsylvania to take on and beat big fossil fuel industries, and how these amendments could change the legal landscape to crises such as Flint, Keystone, ad beyond.

 

Van Rossum believes that environmental rights are a fundamental human right, just like free speech and the right to private property.