Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Lake Erie's Rights

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

The good people of Toledo, OH are leading the environmental pack by giving legal rights to Lake Erie to fight off polluters. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Ahoy and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and I am a born and raised

Toledoan. So I am in a very peculiar position to speak about this peculiar meaning special in every way. And I get to show off my slack. Yeah, you pink boy. I'm gonna kick back and just listen. Did you ever get that key to the city? No, I have not. And it bothers me every night while I'm trying to sleep. Weren't you offered or now? There was a Toledoan, I don't remember his name, but he was a dedicated suffix, you should know listener some years back who said, I am going to get Josh the key to the city and you too, I believe. Oh, he was working very hard to make it happen. Got in touch with some local politicians, I think was brushed off and then, you know, called it a day. So that moment happens where like you and I are standing at the hotel check-in

and they look at you and they go, are you gonna need two keys? And you look at me and I'm like, I wouldn't mind a key. Sure. And you're like, yeah, I guess too. But this will be on a podium with the mayor. Well, maybe I think that you should have the key and cut with the giant scissors. Okay. And I'll just be there and support you. Well, either way, I mean, I would be more than happy to share the key to the city with you. I mean, everything that we've done with stuff you should know we've done together. So yeah, but I'm not from Toledo. But you could be an honorary citizen too. Let's move on from this petty dispute. Wait a minute, I'm not done yet.

All right, we are talking about Toledo today because Toledo, my hometown, did something pretty amazing a few years back. And as far as I can tell, they are still very much working on it, right? I love this idea in spirit. The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, aka GARN, is a network of organizations and people from more than 100 different countries that are actually pushing for legal bodies and systems around the world to recognize nature and ecosystems as having rights. Yes, which you're like, what? That's stupid. Consider this, corporations are considered artificial people under the law that have a lot of the same rights. Yeah, they have a lot of the same rights as you and me.

So if corporations can have personal rights, why shouldn't nature? Amen. It makes even more sense to me than a corporation having personal rights. And that's kind of the push and the angle that people are coming from is like, look, this thing is being harmed. And sometimes it can be really difficult to show you have standing, which means you are being directly harmed by, say, polluting into Lake Erie. And it would be much easier to get something done through the courts if this thing that was actually suffering the harm, the body of water, say Lake Erie, had those rights because then you could sue on its behalf in court. Yeah, I love this idea, like where the ecosystem is the actual injured party, but when it clearly is.

But yeah, because it is. Ecuador has done this. They were the first country to recognize rights of nature in their actual constitution in 2008. And it is, quote, it means nature has, quote, the right to exist, persist, to maintain and regenerate its vital cycles. This seems like a no-brainer. No, it really does. Of course, nature has the right to do that. Yeah. Oh, Bolivia as well in 2010 with their universal decoration of the rights of Mother Earth was adopted there. So this is actually happening at places in the world. Yeah, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Toledo, Ohio basically are the leaders in this. And so the whole thing with Toledo started after, I think in August of 2014,

there was a terrible incident where there was a cyanobacteria algae bloom. And cyanobacteria is very much toxic to humans. And it got into the water intake crib in Lake Erie that supplies Toledo with its stock for the water that it sends through its taps to people's homes. And for three days, the people of Toledo could not bathe. They had no water to drink. They couldn't cook. They had no water all of a sudden for three days until the water company could figure out what to do about this. People were having to cross state lines to get bottled water. It was a nightmare. It was a mess. And that really prompted some people to get involved and be like, okay, enough is enough. Those algae blooms are not supposed to be happening. They're

the result of irresponsible fertilizing practices by local industrialized agricultural groups that are polluting the lake through runoff. And we're all suffering from this. We need to figure out what to do. That's right. And we'll take a break right now and talk about a great Toledoan and American named Markey Miller right after this. the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh, God, seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael,

um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if

the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars. If you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, Josh Clark, one great Toledoan. Marky Miller, another great Toledoan. Yeah, I think between me and Marky Miller. Marky Miller should probably get the key to the city. Jamie Farr. Great Toledoan. Jamie Farr was really from Toledo, right? Yeah, he really was. It wasn't just part of Klinger's character. He really was. He always talked about Tony Pacos, which is still around. I love it. So Marky Miller is a longtime Toledoan who after this water fiasco got fed up and tried to get some answers, went to the town hall meetings and said, all the things is a citizen that you can do. And they like, how can we make sure this doesn't

happen again? And they basically said, let's move forward about mitigation, but we don't really want to talk about what caused this in the first place. Like, let's just kind of brush that under the rug. And Marky Miller said, no, not good enough yet. And so Marky Miller in her late 20s started attending these meetings with and getting kind of people kind of riled up on her side. And they named themselves the Toledoans for Safe Water. And this eventually led to what's known as drawing up the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, a handful of people saying that they're fed up and this lake, this exquisite Great Lake actually needs to be protected with its own bill of rights. Yes. And one of the sad things about Lake Erie is like, it used to be really bad off. Like,

it was not a thing that you want to swim in, which coincidentally was the time when I was swimming in Lake Erie as a kid. But I remember catching fish and like some guy going past out to the lake on his boat and my dad and I fishing on this channel and him being like, do not eat that. Like just throw it back. And I remember being like, what is this guy talking about? And my dad was like, yeah, we really shouldn't eat the fish out of here. He had a mouth full of raw striper. Right. It was still alive in my mouth. But Lake Erie got cleaned up. It was a success story. And then now it's getting repolluted again. So that makes it even more tragic. And it makes that campaign for the Lake Erie Bill of Rights like even more vital. And it wasn't just

Marky Miller and the Toledoans for Safe Water who were all about protecting Lake Erie. They had to get a bunch of signatures to get on a petition to have a bill introduced to be put up to a vote on how to protect Lake Erie's rights. And they got, I think, double the amount needed of signatures to get the petition on the ballot. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Everybody's on board. Everybody wants to support Lake Erie and get it cleaned up and give it its own, like, let's get a lawsuit going on behalf of Lake Erie. Like, how cool is that? Yeah. So they get double the signatures. And they knew that was step one. And getting it actually to a vote would be tough. And I believe they were up against, you know, who you would think they

would be up against. These big industrial companies that said, no, actually, that'd be really bad for us if we couldn't pollute the lake. That'd be bad for our business. There was a $300,000 anti-Libor campaign, even though it passed by 61% in 2020. They came out with a victory, a very sad and short-lived victory, because about 12 hours later, an agricultural company filed a lawsuit against the city and said, this law is detrimental to our business. We got to pollute that lake, you guys. All right. There was a guy, the judge in the case, Judge Jack Zuhari, basically said, like, this is terrible. This is a terrible law that Toledo passed. Like, it makes sense in its spirit. And like, I respect it for that, but it was really poorly written.

And basically what he said was twofold. One, it's way too vague to be constitutional. He said that you could conceivably under the law be prosecuted for fishing in Lake Erie. A second one is that Toledo extended its protections across Lake Erie. Lake Erie is shared by a bunch of different cities from Toledo to Cleveland to Buffalo, New York to Erie, Pennsylvania. They're all on Lake Erie. And the law crossed state boundaries and state jurisdictions. Like, you could dump something in Buffalo, New York, and you could be sued in Toledo, Ohio for it because of this law. So it was an overreach, but it was a good first step. And I think it shows that the public is like on board with this. It's just that we need to figure out how the law needs to be written to

make it survive court challenges. Right. And also, and I think Miller is right in her contention that she said, quote, you have to redefine what it means to win. I don't think they thought, well, this is it. We're done. They knew it would be short-lived. They knew it would probably be overturned. But what it did was make the news and it's one more step closer to change. Exactly. And so there are more rights of nature movement, movements, I guess, that are kind of popping up around the country and around the world in places like Hawaii and Florida like you would expect in Washington state. And I think it's a great way to, I think that's a good direction to be progressing.

I think it's the future. Agreed. Well, cool. Well, there's not much more to say about it right now, but who knows? We'll be talking about it hopefully in a few years when is the law of the land across the globe. And by the way, we found this article originally on how stuff works. And you can go read it there if you like. And with that, short stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts to my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.