Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Title
Environmental Law and Contrasting Ideas of Nature : A Constructivist Approach
Publication Date
2014
Abstract
Many of the forces that obscure the connections between individuals and the environment have their origin in extralegal constraints, such as economic forces, cognitive limitations, and the limits of scientific understanding. These constraints are often systemic and, while perhaps influenced by law, not directly a product of law. However, there are some ways in which law perpetuates and exacerbates a misleading and artificial separation between individuals as separate from, instead of an interdependent part of, nature. Laws that obscure the connection between individuals and nature can be grouped into several categories: (1) laws that employ individual exceptionalism, that is, focus on commercial and industrial sources of pollution while turning a blind eye to the environmental harms attributable to individuals; (2) laws that hide the environmental consequences of consumption; and (3) laws that obscure how environmental harms harm individuals.
Recommended Citation
Katrina Fischer Kuh,
An Unnatural Divide: How Law Obscures Individual Environmental Harms Environmental Law and Contrasting Ideas of Nature : A Constructivist Approach 28
(2014)
Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/faculty_scholarship/538
Comments
This chapter is from Environmental law and contrasting ideas of nature : a constructivist approach edited by Keith H. Hirokawa.