Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagNature Rights

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Four silhouettes of people looking at the night sky with a telescope.

Vice President Vance Defends Human Exceptionalism at Munich

The idea that humans are special is under increasing attack by some of society’s most powerful political and cultural forces
Oppression, genocide, discrimination, slavery, and other evils arise from refusing to see us all as equals based upon our common humanity. Read More ›
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View of Mount Taranaki (Taranaki Maunga) from Lake Mangamahoe, Egmont National Park, on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island.

New Zealand Mountain Named a Person with Rights, Responsibilities

And what responsibilities can the mountain possibly assume? Can it be sued for an avalanche?
Nature rights is an ideological statement demoting mankind into just another animal in the forest. Read More ›
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People with banners protest as part of a climate change march

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
In a world where panpsychism is the science and neo-paganism is the art, environment activists’ rights will increase and workers’ rights will decrease. Read More ›
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Earth Mother International day illustration 3d concept of gaia made with Generative AI

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
If the law grants geological features, viruses, and pond scum “rights,” our economies and human exceptionalism will be the victims. Read More ›
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Aerial photo of mix color of stream in to river

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.
Indeed, it is our obligation as humans to benefit from the earth’s bounties in responsible ways. But nature rights would stifle our ability to thrive and shrivel the principle of human rights. Read More ›
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Beautiful autumn tree with mushrooms and moss in forest

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 ›

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Top view on blue ocean waves. Nature background.

The United Nations is Considering Granting “Ocean Rights”

Why is granting “rights” to oceans becoming a thing?
Common-sense environmentalism is no longer in style. The Ocean and Nature rights movements are symptoms of a viral anti-humanism. Read More ›
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Reflection of mountain range in lake, Grand Teton National Park

Should We Give Nature “Rights”?

The nature rights movement is more ideological than rational

The 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 ›

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View of the Great Salt Lake at sunset, at Antelope Island State Park, Utah

Should Great Salt Lake Have Rights?

The nature rights movement keeps making inroads into establishment thinking — and people keep ignoring the threat

The 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 ›