Nice! He must be working with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund – celdf.org. This is the group that is headed up by Thomas Linzey (speaker at two past Bioneers conferences). They have worked a lot in Pennsylvania, and this strategy is right out of CELDF's Democracy School, which I took last year.

Like Cleghorn says, this is a complete paradigm shift. Anyone who is interested in learning more about this can check out the CELDF website.

Also, here is a link to a presentation that Thomas Linzey made at Maharishi University of Management in September - "The Rights of Nature – Making Sustainability Legal." It'a about an hour long, but it gives an overview of the strategy of the Democracy School.

Personally, I think that using this strategy is the only way we will stand up to corporations and reclaim true democracy. It's a long-term strategy, but you have to start somewhere.

From: Debbie Neustadt <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wednesday, December 4, 2013 7:45 AM
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Interesting way for farmers to protect their land from fracking

I would think that subsurface is like mineral rights. My grandfather sold rights to store natural gas under his property. Even though he sold the surface, I get an inheritance on the mineral rights. Enough to have a very fancy dinner once a year; a fine way to remember my grandfather.

-----Original Message-----
From: Donna Buell <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Dec 4, 2013 7:10 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Interesting way for farmers to protect their land from fracking

A conservation easement affects subsurface rights owned by others? I guess I don't understand. There are lots of conservation easements in Iowa. But we don't usually care much about subsurface separate ownership, at least out here in NW Iowa.

Donna Buell

--Sent from my iPhone
.

On Dec 3, 2013, at 7:39 PM, Nicole Cook <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I'm not familiar with this - farmers using Rights of Nature easements on farmland. Is anyone in Iowa pursuing this?

http://onthecommons.org/magazine/how-one-farmer-protects-his-land-fracking
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