The Constitutional Question to Save the Planet: The Peoples’ Right to a Healthy Environment (Environmental Law Institute)

About the Book:
More than 50 years ago, Franklin Kury drafted and championed an Environmental Rights Amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution, which was enacted on Earth Day 1970 and ratified by Pennsylvania’s voters a year later. In the half century since then, climate change has become the overriding threat to the environment of the planet. In this book, Franklin Kury expands upon the story of Article I, Section 27, to demonstrate how its principles can be the basis for addressing climate change in the rest of the world. The story concludes with a call for the federal government’s leadership to seek a national environmental rights amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a treaty to expand its reach to the international community.

About the Author:
Franklin Kury served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1966 to 1972 and the Pennsylvania Senate from 1972 to 1980. As a state representative, Kury was the author and lead advocate of the legislative proposal that became the Environmental Rights Amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution (Article 1, Section 27) that is the basis of this book. After leaving the legislature, Kury was a member of the Board of Directors of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council and Hawk Mountain Sanctuary.