As the Trump administration pushes the climate crisis to a breaking point, a novel legal tactic is gaining momentum in the fight

Will the Great Lakes, one of the natural wonders of the United States, be allowed to go to court to defend their rights to exist on equal terms with the human race? Last month, a bill was introduced in the New York State Assembly granting them and all other bodies of water in New York those legal rights. The waters, the bill declares, “shall possess the unalienable and fundamental rights to exist […] free from human violations.”

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The bill comes at a time when the Trump administration has decimated the National Park Service, directed the Environmental Protection Agency to roll back environmental regulations, and tried to revoke billions in climate change-combatting programs. Just days ago, President Trump issued an executive order allowing commercial fishing in one of the world’s largest ocean reserves. Now, more than ever, nature is in need of protection.

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Granting rights to certain natural bodies or ecosystems is an idea that’s been a long time coming. Five decades ago, Christopher Stone, a professor at the University of Southern California law school, penned the idea. “I am quite seriously proposing that we give legal rights to forests, oceans, rivers and other so-called ‘natural objects’ in the environment,” he wrote in the Southern California law review. “Indeed, to the natural environment as a whole.”