Environmental laws need to be of a constitutional character
Men seldom take into serious consideration the long term consequences of their actions, not only on an individual scale but at a social scale as well. Even the policy debates over the undeniable fact of global warming are analyzed over the scale of a century, while studies have shown that its effect over the scale of half a millennia (500 years) will be even more devastating. In the social and economic competition of daily life, we rarely step back to look at how current advantages gained today are offset by future losses which will be inevitably incurred by future generations. Nobody speaks in defense of the unborn.
The tendency is for each passing generation to squander an incremental share of natural resources, a pattern which can be universally detected over human history in multiple civilizations, from the Maya of 1,500 years ago to today's suburbanites that continually consume more fish than ecosystems can viably sustain. Yet while previous ecological devastations occurred over relatively small scales--the small river where a small tribe lived, as those described by Humboldt in his trip throughout Venezuela during the 18th century--the scope and reach of modern contemporary economies place in danger the totality of Earth's ecosystems. Most people don't realize that all of us are responsible for one of the largest mass extinction periods in global history, akin to the dinosaur extinction some 65 million years ago.
Environmental laws therefore need to be firmly grounded in national constitutions wherein they are placed outside the scope and arbitrary modification by contemporary governments, be they constituted by puppet governors, ignorant politicians, or hereditary 'lordships'.[1] Just yesterday here in Puerto Rico, the Corridor Ecológico del Noreste (CEN) legislation which had been 'miraculously' approved by the House and Senate was suddenly overturned back to committee on specious excuse, again bringing down for a second occasion nearly successful efforts to protect a unique wildlife corridor linked to the Federally protected El Eunice Rainforest. Hotels chains are intent on spoiling natural habitat when there are already dozens of hotels that line our beaches.
The suggestion might at first appear odd. Is a constitutional amendment really necessary to protect wildlife areas? You bet it is. Remember a couple of things. When the US constitution was written, the idea that humanity would ravage the Earth was far from the founder's awareness--far from it if we consider that the US was literally an 'unspoiled' wilderness. The early United States was such a young nation in 1776, that some historians argued that the 'conquest of the wilderness' as it spread westward shaped the formation of the North American mentality.
More importantly, constitutions are written to protect the most basic of social institutions, such as a moral political order maintained by the tripartite division of powers: the checks and balances that occur between the judiciary, the executive and the legislative. Constitutions make up the ground rules of our social order, such as abolishing slavery and preventing monarchies. Similarly, there is an urgent need to protect an even more fundamental basis of societies, literally the 'natural order' upon which they are all formed. There would, after all, be no 'society' if there occurred ecological collapse of the surrounding environment.
Finally, a third reason for the need to write environmental law into national constitutions is simply the fact that there is currently no World Government with the power and authority to regulate and control global issues. The United Nations, important as it may be, clearly lacks binding powers to establish and enforce environmental laws, loosing many environmental initiatives to eternally squabbling committees. The Kyoto protocol agreed to in the 1990s is basically a dead letter. In light of the absence of a genuine world government, the old adage, "think globally, act locally" is more true that ever. By placing environmental law into national constitutions will also send a profound signal as to the kind of societies we are, and the values we hold most dear--of our world and ourselves. Humans, after all, should consider themselves stewards of the Earth rather than its mindless parasites.
NOTES:
1. As a matter of fact, Puerto Rico should have a constitutional amendment prohibiting any and all children of politicians from becoming politicians themselves. This all too easily leads to a corrupt political class, wherein the virtues of the parent are wrongly imposed onto their children. We need not mention the medieval and 'non-progressive' character of such behavior.