By Franklin L. Kury

At the primary election held on May 18, 1971 the voters of Pennsylvania approved the Joint Resolution 3 for an environmental amendment to the State Constitution by a vote of 1,021,342 to 259,979. With that overwhelming support, House Bill 31 became Article 1, Section 27, Natural Resources and the Public Estate, of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

"The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania's public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people."

With it the environmental revolution in Pennsylvania reached its zenith.

Beginning with the passage of House Bill 585 in 1965, that brought the coal companies fully under the Clean Streams law, the legislature and the Governors with revolutionary zeal enacted a string of laws to bring about protection of the environment on behalf of the public - the All Surface Mining Act, the Coal Refuse Disposal Act, the Air Pollution Control Act, the Clean Streams Act, the Solid Waste Management Act, the Pennsylvania Scenic Rivers Act, the Department of Environmental Resources law, the $500 million conservation bond issue, and a law to require the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to conduct environmental evaluations in planning highway projects.

After a century of environmental exploitation by the coal, steel and railroad industries that inflicted great damage on our air, streams and land, an exploitation in which the state government had acquiesced, the people of Pennsylvania - like a sleeping giant suddenly aroused in anger - acted through the legislature to stop the environmental degradation and begin to repair the damage.

Article I, Section 27 provided a constitutional policy of stewardship of the environment that replaced the previous tacit policy that condoned the ravaging of our natural resources in the name of industrial prosperity. It provided strong advantages to the fight to reclaim our state’s environment. Everyone taking public office in our state now swears to uphold Article I, Section 27 as part of the constitutional obligation of all public officials. As a constitutional amendment, it can not be changed nearly as easily as an act of the legislature. The Constitutional amendment gives the spirit and philosophical basis for environmental protection that can endure indefinitely.

With the enactment of Article 1, Section 27 in 1971, it could be said - as William Butler Yeats said in another context - that out of Pennsylvania’s history of environmental devastation a terrible beauty was born. Our way of looking at our air, land and water was changed radically forever. No longer would environmental law be basically a matter of property rights alone. From then forward we would view the environment as a public trust to be administered by our state government. A new order had replaced the old.

The enormous environmental awakening that shook the body politic occurred in large measure because television brought into everyone’s homes the devastation of oil spills and other disasters. The public conscience reacted politically and created a movement in the states and federal government to change course.

Today, thirty-seven years later, thanks to the laws passed during the environmental revolution of 1965-1972 and in the years since, the threats to Pennsylvania’s environment from sources within the Commonwealth are in check. Progress is being made to undue our state’s environmental damages. However, Pennsylvania’s environment is now under a protracted siege from sources far beyond our state. Now the entire planet confronts serious environmental and humanitarian threats that cover our globe without regard to governmental boundary lines.

The polar ice caps of both the Arctic and Antarctic are melting and restructuring. Food shortages plague significant areas in several continents. The expanding populations in China and India and our relatively stable population in the USA continue a rapacious consumption of oil and gas for automobiles. Great fisheries of the oceans are depleted. Rainforests are being cut relentlessly. These and other developments cast a serious doubt on the long-term security of our planet’s life support systems.

Our world is in a position similar to that of Pennsylvania a century ago. Forces of economic and commercial prosperity are overwhelming rational analysis of the environmental damage. But there is a good side to the global news. People around the world are becoming aware of the problem and are increasingly angry and concerned about it. This year Earth Day was celebrated in 180 countries. The numbers of political and governmental leaders talking about the global environmental condition are increasing. Motion pictures and television inform the worldwide public of the damages being done and the action that must be taken.

Will the forces of rational environmental policy on our planet overtake and control the forces of commercial development in time? Our generation of citizens must address this question or risk losing our planet. Today’s environmental challenge is infinitely greater for the world than it was for Pennsylvania a half century ago. The scope and complexity of the threats to the world’s environment dwarf those that then confronted Pennsylvania. The number and diverse natures of the national governments involved compound the challenge immensely.

What can we in Pennsylvania, occupying such a small piece of the globe, contribute to aid in this planetary cause? A lot, I think. We must continue to defend and protect Pennsylvania’s 45,000 square miles of the earth. We can live smarter and take steps to move away from gasoline powered vehicles and be more efficient in the use of electric power. We can use alternative energy sources. We can act politically to elect candidates for office, especially at the federal level, committed to working with other governments to save and protect our world’s environment. We can also contribute the principles embodied in Article 1, Section 27, by urging all governments to adopt a policy of stewardship of the environment for the public now and for the future.

Franklin Kury, as a state Representative, was the author and advocate of the legislation that became Article 1, Section 27 of the State Constitution. He now is a state government affairs consultant with Malady & Wooten LLP, and resides in Harrisburg. He can be contacted by sending email to: fkury@malady-wooten.com .

5/2/2008