TagNature Rights
New Zealand Mountain Named a Person with Rights, Responsibilities
And what responsibilities can the mountain possibly assume? Can it be sued for an avalanche?
Rocks’ Lives Matter: The Political Face of “Everything Is Conscious”
When it comes to rights, just being human is becoming much less of an advantage
Harvard Law to Teach Rights of Nature
People think that such a whacky idea will never gain traction. But the nature-rights movement is making great headway
Utah Goes Up Against “Nature Rights”
Utah is the fourth state — the others are Ohio, Florida, and Idaho — restricting rights to the human realm where they belong.
The Anti-Human “Rights of Nature” Movement
Environmentalism is growing increasingly antii-human. Just look at what Milwaukee County did.Environmentalism is growing increasingly anti-human. The “nature rights” movement epitomizes the misanthropy. If the suppose rights of Nature (with a capital N) were ever enforced legally–human thriving would be throttled by elevating the entire natural world to quasi-personhood status deserving — at minimum — equal consideration with humans. Moreover, nature rights laws generally allow anyone to sue to enforce nature’s supposed rights, which would mean that human enterprise would be subject to lawfare by the most extreme environmentalists. Milwaukee County has jumped on the bandwagon. From a formal “Resolution Supporting the Nature Rights Movement:” WHEREAS, major bodies of water within Milwaukee County, including the Menominee River, Milwaukee River, and Fox River as well as Lake Michigan, provide essential biodiversity and wildlife habitats; andWHEREAS, these Read More ›
The United Nations is Considering Granting “Ocean Rights”
Why is granting “rights” to oceans becoming a thing?
Should We Give Nature “Rights”?
The nature rights movement is more ideological than rationalThe major science journals are growing increasingly hard left politically. The prestigious journal Science, in particular, has swallowed progressive ideology–including supporting the “nature rights” movement. The rights of nature–which include geological features–are generally defined as the right to “exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.” Nature is, of course, not sentient. So, this campaign is really about granting environmental extremists legal standing to enforce their policy desires through litigation as legal guardians serving nature’s best interests. But the movement has a problem. It is clearly ideological rather than rational. So now, three law professors and a biologist writing in Science urge scientists to promote the agenda by giving courts a scientific pretext to enforce nature rights laws, or even, impose the Read More ›
Should Great Salt Lake Have Rights?
The nature rights movement keeps making inroads into establishment thinking — and people keep ignoring the threatThe nature rights movement keeps making inroads into establishment thinking — and people keep ignoring the threat. The concept has now been advocated in a major opinion piece in the New York Times. Utah’s Great Salt Lake is shrinking — a legitimate problem worthy of focused concern and remediation. Utah native and Harvard Divinity School’s writer-in-residence Terry Tempest Williams — who focuses on “the spiritual implications of climate change” — makes a strong case that the lake is in trouble. A Conservationist Approach Her proposed remedies reflect a proper conservationist approach worthy of being debated: Scientists tell us the lake needs an additional one million acre-feet per year to reverse its decline, increasing average stream flow to about 2.5 million acre-feet per year. A Read More ›