Bolivia is bringing a draft treaty to the U.N. for consideration, granting Mother Earth “the same rights as humans.” It’s modeled on Bolivia’s own recently-enacted domestic law, which
speaks of the country’s natural resources as “blessings,” and grants the Earth a series of specific rights that include rights to life, water and clean air; the right to repair livelihoods affected by human activities; and the right to be free from pollution.
It also establishes a Ministry of Mother Earth, and provides the planet with an ombudsman whose job is to hear nature’s complaints as voiced by activist and other groups, including the state.
“If you want to have balance, and you think that the only (entities) who have rights are humans or companies, then how can you reach balance?” Pablo Salon, Bolivia’s ambassador to the UN, told Postmedia News. “But if you recognize that nature too has rights, and (if you provide) legal forms to protect and preserve those rights, then you can achieve balance.”
Bolivia’s law reportedly grants “bugs, trees, and all other natural things” rights equal to those that we humans enjoy. Sure, it’s silly, but it’s also instructive concerning the language and culture of rights.
The framers of America’s Bill of Rights were, by and large, the same people who had stood resolutely by a statement that we were “endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.” They never conceived of themselves as granting rights, but rather as protecting rights already in our possession, granted us by God, not to be infringed upon by government.
But God has been Photoshopped out of the picture since then, so who remains in the world to grant rights? Just us humans. We have granted ourselves the right to grant rights. I do not know who granted us the right to grant ourselves the right to grant rights. That question gets a mite confusing, I’ll have to (ahem) grant. Anyway, I assume that in granting Mother Earth the “same rights as humans,” Bolivia also granted her the right to grant rights to others—and I suppose also the right to rescind others’ rights. Watch out for that one.
I’ll admit I could be making too much of journalists’ language of “same rights” here. I haven’t been able to find a complete translation of the rights Bolivia has given Mother Earth, but the partial versions I’ve seen do not baldly say “earth gets the same rights humans have.” I doubt that the right to bear arms even came up for discussion. And yet, and yet… according to the Sydney Morning Herald,
The law has been heavily influenced by a resurgent indigenous Andean spiritual world view, which places the environment and the earth deity known as the Pachamama at the centre of all life. Humans are considered equal to all other entities.
Equal in what way, I wonder? If really equal, then why not really the same rights?
Not incidentally, there remains a deity in the picture. Wikipedia explains further,
Pachamama is a goddess revered by the indigenous people of the Andes…. Pachamama and Inti are the most benevolent deities; they are worshiped in parts of the Andean mountain ranges, also known as Tawantinsuyu (the former Inca Empire)…. In Inca mythology, Mama Pacha or Pachamama is a fertility goddess who presides over planting and harvesting. She causes earthquakes. Her husband was either Pacha Camac or Inti, depending on the source. Llamas are sacrificed to her.
So we are turning full circle, and humans are granting rights to gods. There’s a pathetic sort of irony there that reminds me of Isaiah 44:12-17. Note that whether she has the right to bear arms or not, Pachamama can still cause earthquakes.
And she’s making progress in the world. She has legal standing now, in at least one country, to bring human polluters to court. Well, not quite. Bolivia is not a small country (it’s about 60% bigger than Texas), but it still doesn’t have courtrooms big enough for Mother Earth to stand in. She’ll have to send representatives instead. Bolivia’s new law, with its “Ministry of Mother Earth,” permits “activist and other groups, including the state” to bring complaints before an ombudsman. But with Pachamama being present only by proxy, the effect is to deprive humans of the right to face their accuser in court. The rights-giver giveth, and the rights-giver taketh away.
Therein the real truth is revealed. Bolivia hasn’t granted any new rights to the earth, and neither would this U.N. treaty. The new legal rights are for “activist and other groups, including the state.” The power of the state expands, inevitably shrinking humans’ ability to exercise our own rights.
Ambassador Salon asks how we can reach balance without recognizing that everything has rights. What he really means is, how can you reach balance without giving everything its opportunity to bring a complaint against everything else; or, how can we make everything happy without making everything adversarial? The balance he ought to be seeking is the one between inherent rights and mutual responsibilities. I say, let Bolivia pass a law enumerating Pachamama’s responsibilities to the rest of us. If they can make that work, I might reconsider my opinion of the rights they’ve granted her.
Hat Tip to Cranach. Also posted at Thinking Christian.
April 13th, 2011 | 10:14 am | #1
What about the llama’s rights?
April 13th, 2011 | 11:49 am | #2
I call dibs on legally representing the Sun.
Suckers!
April 13th, 2011 | 12:15 pm | #3
There is a reason why no one takes anything that comes out of the UN seriously.
April 13th, 2011 | 12:46 pm | #4
Right sentiment, wrong application of law. I’d suggest that the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecute people for crimes against the Earth instead. That doesn’t involve “granting human rights to non-human things,” but it does grant respect to the land that it deserves. While I believe God created a synergy of give and take between the ecosystem of the earth, often we abuse the earth as something to pillage for our own resources, instead of for its own good.
April 13th, 2011 | 12:47 pm | #5
Well, it’s actually going into the UN for consideration, Chuck, and I wish no one were taking it seriously. See for example http://polwaves.planetwaves.net/2011/04/bolivia-and-the-pachamama/
April 13th, 2011 | 12:52 pm | #6
Nikolai,
I don’t think it’s a wrong application of law at all. As I tried to make clear in this article (and hope I succeeded), one cannot manufacture rights as Bolivia has tried to do, and there are numerous errors and absurdities surrounding the attempt. Bolivia isn’t misapplying a law, it mis-manufactured a right, which is an entirely different kind of mistake.
April 13th, 2011 | 1:05 pm | #7
I see…I suppose then my previous statement requires some amending. I do think the Earth should be granted some rights; not full rights like humans receive, but some rights nonetheless. There are plenty of justifications for granting rights to the Earth that don’t involve recognizing it as a deity.
Moreover, we grant rights that aren’t inalienable all the time. Many of the rights in the US constitution aren’t “God-given” rights at all. That doesn’t make those rights bad.
April 13th, 2011 | 1:14 pm | #8
Is it possible to grant the Earth legal rights without at the same time granting it standing in court for enforcement of those rights? I’m no legal scholar, I’m just wondering. Based on what I know, it really just amounts to a sneaky way of granting rights to activist groups and the state.
There has to be a better way of thinking about our stewardship and responsibilities on this earth.
April 13th, 2011 | 1:28 pm | #9
The representation issue is difficult, but by no means a barrier to granting rights. For instance, comatose patients still have rights, despite their inability to appear before a court. In a scenario in which they would need to appear before the court, a loved one would probably represent that person. Now, in order to represent the earth, one doesn’t have to be a diehard environmentalist or an eco-anarchist. I see plenty of abuses of the earth that I’d gladly stand up in court to prosecute.
And, to be honest, in a world where capitalism (which I support) can allow for abuses of the earth and nothing changes as a result because any damages are perceived as “a byproduct of a system.” I think it’s perfectly fair to try those who malign the earth extensively.
April 13th, 2011 | 2:02 pm | #10
Do you know of any other cases where rights are granted to non-persons? (Corporations are legally defined as persons in certain senses before the law. Shall we do the same with Earth?) A comatose patient has rights in virtue of being a person, and his or her representative in court has at least some idea of what those rights are, what rights the person is likely to want to exercise, and (absent that) a history of case law and legislation based on centuries of human experience.
Also, in what sense do we care that Earth has rights? Do Mars and Venus have rights? Is it not plausibly the case that what Bolivia has granted are really rights for a certain strictly defined kind of human experience upon Earth? For without humans here, what could Earth’s rights possibly mean? Oh, and without Pachamama, too; I’m afraid I don’t believe in her.
The God of the Bible did not endow the Earth with rights; he placed responsibilities (and opportunities) upon humans.
April 13th, 2011 | 3:44 pm | #11
“The God of the Bible did not endow the Earth with rights; he placed responsibilities (and opportunities) upon humans.”
He didn’t, and, again, there is complexity in granting a non-human entity rights, which in the typical sense refers to things only humans have. But, given that atrocities have been committed against the Earth, I feel that those who don’t uphold proper stewardship of the earth should be punished. Crimes against the earth affect us all, since we are all stewards of God’s creation.
And there are people making movements to grant rights to non-persons. There’s a whole movement to grant rights to cetaceans (dolphins, porpoises, and whales) due to a lot of the mistreatment of those animals. (Check out http://cetaceanconservation.com.au/cetaceanrights/ ) I believe conservation is a better means than attempting to grant legal status to animals, but for crimes against the earth I don’t think it’s the same.
April 13th, 2011 | 5:03 pm | #12
“Do you know of any other cases where rights are granted to non-persons”
I may be wrong, but this question seems to insinuate that unless there is a similar case, for some reason that means that this is a bad case?
“his or her representative in court has at least some idea of what those rights are, what rights the person is likely to want to exercise, and (absent that) a history of case law and legislation based on centuries of human experience.”
There are some obvious problems with the comatose patient v. Earth analogy, but the principle is the same. Just because a subject cannot represent themselves, why should that mean they don’t deserve rights? Also, we have scientific evidence and observations to measure the effect of certain actions against the Earth. It’s pretty obvious that over hunting, polluting, deforesting cause X,Y, and Z. It’s not as if we don’t understand the impact that the Earth takes due to certain actions.
“Also, in what sense do we care that Earth has rights? Do Mars and Venus have rights?”
“The God of the Bible did not endow the Earth with rights; he placed responsibilities (and opportunities) upon humans.”
We are granted stewardship over the Earth by God, not ownership. This stewardship is what the “responsibilities” come from. Since we are granted stewardship over the Earth, not ownership, we can imply that the Earth is truly the property of God, we are simply granted stewardship to take care of and look after the Earth.
We can additionally imply that since this is the property of God, and we are only granted stewardship, and responsibility to care for the Earth, that the Earth has some kind of value, or even rights, endowed by God. Either this, or we don’t have the “right” to violate the Earth in certain ways. Legally and effectively, they amount to the same thing: There are certain things that we cannot do to the Earth, and it would immoral to commit those acts.
Why do we care about the Earth’s rights? Because it does not belong to us. Additionally, another person being granted these “rights” are future generations. I believe that part of out stewardship is maintaining the Earth and God’s creation for future generations. If we abandon care and rights for the Earth, we by extension abandon care for the future of our brothers and sisters.
April 13th, 2011 | 5:48 pm | #13
Imagine how this would impact anti-malaria efforts.
It is a conflict the human being is doomed to lose, because a human being is capable of understanding that it is now forbidden to kill the mosquito, whereas the mosquito can’t comprehend that it is now illegal for him to kill the man, and thus can’t be held to the same standard.
April 13th, 2011 | 6:39 pm | #14
Livingston and Nikolai,
Your arguments for caring for the earth seem sound. As arguments for granting the earth rights, though, I don’t see how they hold up. Livingston, you ask,
You’re suggesting that Earth is a subject. That term has various meanings, but I would suggest that the relevant one here is the philosophical one of having the capacity for subjective experience. That which cannot do that is not a candidate for having rights.
But you might have a different sense of “subject” in view, so please feel free to bring that into the conversation, but maybe with greater specificity.
The premise of your question is inaccurate anyway, however. I did not agree that the inability to represent oneself means that one has no rights. Please see my comment #10 again. You say the principle is the same, but I’d like to see some reason to think it is, in view of the fact that I’ve argued there are significant differences.
I agree that God has not granted us the right to violate the earth in certain ways. I don’t think that translates into the Earth having the right to send representatives on its behalf to court against us. That’s just a non-starter, a fully ridiculous concept. If someone is going to come to court against us, let them represent themselves or future generations; I have no problem with that. But to bring in this new language of the Earth (and beetles and slugs) having rights is unnecessary and makes no sense from any perspective other than the non-existent Pachamama’s.
April 13th, 2011 | 7:55 pm | #15
“That which cannot do that is not a candidate for having rights.”
The earth does. It is very much living. Now, obviously the earth does comprise of non-living things (like dirt), but much of it is made up of living material that cannot speak for itself. By granting it some rights (again, I don’t think earth’s rights should be equivocal to humans), it gives a voice to an entity that could not speak to atrocities that happen to it otherwise. (I know that sounds super New-Agey, but I assure you I’m not a part of that camp).
“I don’t think that translates into the Earth having the right to send representatives on its behalf to court against us.”
Of course the earth can’t represent itself, nor can it “send” representatives on its behalf. But humans, seeing atrocities done to a land that we are tied to, can speak on its behalf, even though we are not necessarily the earth itself. We very much can represent future generations by setting precedents for governments, corporations, and people as a whole to not violate the earth.
April 13th, 2011 | 8:29 pm | #16
Nikolai,
Whether the earth is a living thing is controversial. Never mind that, though. What should not be controversial is that I did not say that candidacy for deserving rights depended on whether a certain entity was a living thing. If the first part of your comment here was intended as an answer to my last comment, it has missed the point. I’d like to ask you to re-read what I wrote, please.
Your final paragraph is odd. You agree with what I wrote in the last paragraph of my previous comment, stating the importance of human rights in this generation and in generations to come, and yet you seem to be posturing it as part of your position supporting the earth’s rights. I have trouble understanding that.
Again, I agree that humans have a strong responsibility toward the environment. I’m not disagreeing with you on that part of what you’re saying.
April 13th, 2011 | 9:26 pm | #17
Hey does air have rights?
Are we injuring it by breathing?
April 13th, 2011 | 10:06 pm | #18
It occurs to me maybe I should have given a more complete philosophical definition of “subject,” and that that might help in the discussion with Nikolai. Wikipedia has a good one.
April 13th, 2011 | 10:46 pm | #19
Blake,
Not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about mass degradation of the land, pillaging it unjustly, and, as recently seen, ruining water resources. Moreover, we don’t hurt the air by breathing; it’s a give or take.
Tom,
I apologize, I did miss the part about the definition of subject. I’m familiar with the Cartesian subject, having just finished reading Meditations on First Philosophy, but I’m not familiar with courts of law using “The Subject” as determining who can or cannot be represented.
When I say the earth is living, I don’t mean necessarily that it has a spirit and thoughts (i.e. consciousness) in the way that humans do. Perhaps that is the case; I’m inclined not to think so myself. I merely mean that it is, in fact, biologically alive. Plants don’t have consciousness, but they are still living entities. They live in a different way than humans do, but, as you and I agree, humans have a responsibility to the land.
I should probably clarify my paragraph on precedent. Now, because of the need to have things like farming on a large scale, along with water pumping on a large scale, it becomes easy to dismiss environmental injustice because it becomes seen as a “natural byproduct” of the global economic scheme. In that way, cases brought to court by environmentalists rarely work through the framework of stare decidis, the rule of precedent. If we allow, it seems to me, the ability to try crimes against the earth like any other crime, better future precedent could be established so that future crimes against the earth are avoided.
I hope that cleared things up.
April 14th, 2011 | 11:14 am | #20
Nikolai, there’s something interesting in your note here:
If the question is “who,” then the answer is always some subject; for only subjects (in the sense we are discussing) receive the pronoun “who.” Objects are whats, not whos. So if the courts are deciding who can or cannot be represented, the answer will be some subject (or some related entity like a corporation or an estate) and not some object.
I confess I don’t know enough about environmental case law to comment on your last paragraph; but I doubt that making the earth a subject with rights by fiat would resolve it. There’s a philosophical/ontological gap there that cannot be filled by proper, rational means; so practically speaking people would try to fill it by other means, specifically through power-competition. This is the way the world works: where truth does not rule, then power does. The “rights” of the Earth would be claimed by whoever most successfully maneuvered to grasp functional ownership of those rights.
April 14th, 2011 | 8:26 pm | #21
Blake,
Not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about mass degradation of the land, pillaging it unjustly, and, as recently seen, ruining water resources. Moreover, we don’t hurt the air by breathing; it’s a give or take.
Sure you hurt the air. You change it as radically as you change land when you till it.
One man’s fair use is another man’s degradation.
If Earth has a right to be in a pristine state, then humans can’t be here. Period. Humans change nature. That is what they do.
By the way, why should those poor people over there be the ones to go without resources so that the land can be pristine? What are you giving up?
April 15th, 2011 | 2:17 pm | #22
In order to grant rights to the Earth or land in general, there must be some conception of what a flourishing Earth looks like, some understanding of the nature and telos of the Earth that rights would be grounded in.
I see two difficulties off the top of my head: 1) at the macro-scale, for “Earth,” any such description of the nature of the Earth would be so broad as to make it useless as to applications of particular areas. It would appear quite arrogant to come up with some sort of global policy for X that isn’t more effective and intelligible at smaller regional levels; 2) the nature of the Earth is tied up with the nature of humanity in such a way that it is often more appropriate to render judgments with respect to the rights and responsibilities of people than to the rights and responsibilities of Earth (for there are no rights without responsibilities).
The desire to steward the earth (“Earth”?) is virtuous; but I’m not sure granting the “Earth” rights is going to do much other than institutionalize megalomania.
April 15th, 2011 | 7:01 pm | #23
Nikolai, Tom,
Perhaps it would be better to bring this discussion into a context with immediate, tangible problems: Haiti. The current environment has been so denuded of essential vegetation and topsoil that the country can not feed itself. Aside from granting rights to Mother Earth, what environmental policies would each of you recommend? (I suspect that both of you are much closer to agreement, in general, than would be apparent in this discussion so far)
April 15th, 2011 | 9:27 pm | #24
Maybe we can re-frame the debate by saying that the Earth does not and cannot have rights since only persons have those, but we should take seriously the love of God and neighbor through the rightful use of the Earth.
April 16th, 2011 | 1:16 pm | #25
That’s my position, Orthodoxj.
R Hampton,
What I was commenting on in this post was not environmental policy but rights in general and where they come from. Our care for the environment ought to be motivated not by an adversarial rights-based approach but by our accepting responsibility as stewards. I don’t prefer to go into what that stewardship entails, because that would be a change of subject, as far as I’m concerned.
April 17th, 2011 | 7:44 pm | #26
“[W]e should take seriously the love of God and neighbor through the rightful use of the Earth.”
I agree. The problem, however, remains that if there’s no rights or rights-like framework applied to the earth, any unjust acts committed against it go unpunished because “it doesn’t have rights.” Saying “we should treat the land better” is true, but if there’s unnaccountable atrocities committed against the earth, that’s a problem. Merely saying “we should treat the land better” does nothing to remedy environmental problems. Obviously the earth cannot be treated like a person because it isn’t; it exists differently than we do. Nonetheless, there ought to be some legal structure that we can use when the earth is mistreated.
April 17th, 2011 | 9:39 pm | #27
The problem, however, remains that if there’s no rights or rights-like framework applied to the earth, any unjust acts committed against it go unpunished because “it doesn’t have rights.”
An inanimate object cannot have rights.
A vegetative organism cannot have rights.
What is really meant is that environmentalists want to have rights, which they will exercise on behalf of whatever it is they are claiming to speak for.
And maybe they will genuinely be persuaded that their interest is “saving the earth”, even if their actions appear to be more about power, control, scapegoating, hoarding resources, or whatever.
But we don’t know that.
Because basically, we will be handing the whole earth to self-appointed “guardians”, who will take it upon themselves to tell the rest of us who may touch the resources and who may not.
And the people who want to be “guardians” have made it clear that they are willing to let other people die for want of resources, so that they may have bike lands and pretty trees and the comfort & security of knowing the planet won’t be overpopulated. The people who want to claim total say-so over all the Earth’s resources are not nice people.
April 17th, 2011 | 11:29 pm | #28
So………let the earth be abused, then?
April 18th, 2011 | 2:42 am | #29
Here’s the dilemma:
I understand why inanimate objects don’t have rights. Much of the earth, however, is not inanimate, but quite living. Now, obviously these living plant and other things lack the consciousness that we humans possess, but they are not inanimate. I am aware, moreover, that plants are not “subjects.” It’s quite clear to all of us that plants could not sufficiently represent themselves in front of a judge. Unless Ents are real.
We all agree that we should be good stewards of the earth; there’s no doubt of that. But if we all agree that no one should get away with abusing God’s creation, we are saying that individual does not possess the right to destroy what God has given to us. To me, it seems strange that a human (or “subject”) should not have the right to destroy God’s creation, i.e. a negative duty, but the earth does not then has a correlating negative right to not be destroyed. Now, clearly this “right” isn’t the same as the rights humans receive in a courtroom, but it’s still something that should give the earth protection.
Again, I’m not advocating for what Bolivia suggested to the UN. I’m merely advocating for something that stops people from abusing the earth.
April 18th, 2011 | 3:14 am | #30
We don’t have to give the Earth rights. We can advocate for its proper use. We can even make laws that eliminate types of pollution. We can make certain places set apart, i.e. national parks. Ultimately, serious pollution is anti-human, which I believe is the only legitimate way of framing these things. Humans should treat creation well because we are its stewards and because we reap what we sow, which is quite literal in this instance. I think it’s a bona fide slippery slope if we grant the Earth rights.
April 18th, 2011 | 4:03 am | #31
“I think it’s a bona fide slippery slope if we grant the Earth rights.”
Slope to what? I’m not so convinced that this “environmentalists will overrun the legal system” is well-founded. My initial suggestion, the that the ICC ought to prosecute crimes against the earth, means that no one can just “lobby” to punish someone. Legal scholars would have to write a specific definition of what entails a crime against the earth, and only crimes that fall under that criteria would be tried. Perhaps some environmentalists would try to go crazy, but so long as the law is written well enough, there shouldn’t be too many problems. Plus, the ICC is an international body, and not subject to lobbies like Congress is.
Now, of course, comes the ever-difficult problem of finding someone to write a law that won’t be abused. Won’t that be difficult….
“Ultimately, serious pollution is anti-human, which I believe is the only legitimate way of framing these things.”
I disagree. I don’t think the earth is valuable only because it serves us; I think it’s valuable in of itself. I do believe that there is a synergy of give and take from nature that we participate in, but the earth isn’t just a means to an end. It’s an end in of itself. It seems anthropocentric to suggest otherwise. I don’t think God created the earth only so we could use it. He created it because, as Genesis notes, it is good.
But again: I’m not advocating something like “The UN Declaration on the Rights of Plants.” I understand that dirt is not “a subject.” I’m just trying to find some accountability system for crimes against the earth, of which in the status quo there is none.
April 18th, 2011 | 5:02 am | #32
Blake,
You said “Because basically, we will be handing the whole earth to self-appointed “guardians”, who will take it upon themselves to tell the rest of us who may touch the resources and who may not.”
And they must have really lobbied hard to get God in on this conspiracy theory, with commanding stewardship of the land and all. Especially having him command Noah to save all the species of the Earth during the flood, that must have cost them billions in Hebrew currency in lobbying.
Jokes aside, There’s a couple things wrong with this theory. First, the U.N. isn’t self appointed guardians, and neither is the ICC. Nations choose whether to be members of the U.N. of the ICC, and it isn’t as if the U.S. doesn’t have the option, as we aren’t members of the ICC. Secondly, U.N. policies are voted on, not established through fiat by “self appointed ‘guardians’”. Thirdly, the fact that environmentalists might be able to abuse a system for their own advantage is a problem with the system, not with the principle. If anything, much of our current legal system comes down to supreme court judges deciding what the Constitution means, and extensively what is or isn’t legal.
If anything, policies in our U.S. government have more ability to be lobbied and abused than the U.N. or especially the ICC. There’s a woman in Florida who hasn’t paid her mortgage in 25 years because of loopholes in the system, but we don’t decide “Ah hell with mortgages, people can abuse the system!”
You express some resentment about the ability of few deciding what resources could harm the environment. Wake-up Call: Name me policies that aren’t centralized. We have nine people that have the final say on what is or isn’t constitutional. If you really have a problem with centralized authority deciding what is or isn’t allowed I imagine you live in an anarchy? But then again, who would decide that it’s an anarchy? I suppose you could have representatives that…oh wait. =)
Additionally, guardianship of the Earth is a duty that was given by God. The Earth has value outside of human existence. Like Nikolai, I don’t think that what is being proposed to U.N. is the right approach, but I do find it disturbing that there is little international law concerning possible permanent damage of the Earth.
And before you bring up the air point again, you said Sure you hurt the air. You change it as radically as you change land when you till it. .
Changing is not the same as damaging. When you breathe air, you release carbon dioxide that is absorbed by plants and then released as more oxygen, completing a cycle. Obviously, there is a tension between human activity and nature, this is even confirmed in the Bible. However, even in this framework we aren’t commanded to destroy the Earth, we are still commanded to be stewards. I believe that in this stewardship, it’s more about balance than the “pristine” status of nature. There’s very few law and policy makers that will seriously advocate for the destruction of the human race simply to conserve nature.
Harm to the land doesn’t include participating in cycles. It’s things like mass destruction of ecosystems and habitats and extinctions caused by human activity. Lev 25:23 makes a pretty clear sentiment that the Earth has value that exists outside of humans.
Again, most of the arguments made are arguments for why the law could be abused. They all assume that the law operates a certain way, which an argument for why the law should be written carefully, not for why protecting the land is wrong. If it comes down to two worlds, A and B, where A=Corporations and Nations have freedom to do whatever they would like to Earth, including blatantly ignoring stewardship and allowing the extinction of ecosystems. And B=ICC or UN having international guidelines against crimes against the Earth and using fiat “rights” (or the equivalent to rights, as if we don’t already fiat rights, and which I don’t think are really fiat, but instead based on principles of stewardship) in which the system might have some problems that can be amended whereas extinct species are irreversibly destroyed. I am going to pick B over A every time.
April 18th, 2011 | 6:53 am | #33
Nikolai,
I think your statement here captures the essence of the problem quite nicely:
First, the Bolivians did not make that nice distinction.
Second, you have made a distinction without a definition. Why use the word “rights” when it doesn’t mean the same thing? Where humans have legally-recognized rights, we have the ability to defend them in court. That’s what legally-recognized “rights” means for humans. You’re equivocating on “rights.”
But that’s not the end of the issue in my mind. If we don’t grant such “rights” to earth, you suggest the alternative is,
I believe you think there is nothing to be done except to grant rights to the earth, and if we don’t then abuse will multiply. I think your imagination and memory could use a little jogging. Do you not know how much pollution the U.S. has cleaned up without resorting to “rights” language? You urge us,
There is and there has been, and in much of the world it has worked very well.
And I think you have to take much more seriously what Blake and I have said about how this would play out in court. The earth’s “rights” would be “represented” (as if the earth could choose and qualify a representative for herself) by people with an extreme position.
To grant “rights” to the earth is indeed a slippery slope position to take. To what? To believing that rights come from humans or Pachamama. Next thing you know, we’ll start believing an unborn baby has no inherent right to life, and that we have the right to re-define what marriage is. (I have an article coming out in about two weeks explaining the connection there, so don’t be too concerned if I haven’t shown it here in full.)
I think that’s a great idea. Of course the legal scholars would also be working with scientists, ethicists, and economists.
Livingston, your response with respect to opting in at the UN is disingenuous. The U.S. has opted in with the UN, and so has virtually the whole rest of the world. If the UN adopts a treaty granting legal rights to the earth, that becomes a very powerful legal document.
I agree with much of the rest of what you wrote, until,
The law does operate in a certain way and should be written carefully. I agree; in fact that’s another way I could have stated my own point. The word “rights” has a certain definite legal effect, and if it is included in language protecting the earth, it’s going to be hard to contain those effects, one of which is to grant the earth recognition as a subject or as a legal person. Far better to carefully write laws that do not do that.
April 18th, 2011 | 11:09 am | #34
And before you bring up the air point again, you said Sure you hurt the air. You change it as radically as you change land when you till it. .
Changing is not the same as damaging.
That’s a value judgment.
An arbitrary one, too.
April 18th, 2011 | 11:12 am | #35
Again, I’m not advocating for what Bolivia suggested to the UN. I’m merely advocating for something that stops people from abusing the earth.
You mean, you are advocating the right to pass laws commanding those people over there to be barred from (or punished for) consuming resources.
Only it somehow doesn’t sound so evil, the way you put it.
April 18th, 2011 | 3:39 pm | #36
Tom,
While I agree that there are certain legal implications to using the word “rights”, it appears that a bulk of your concern is with the wording. It appears that you want effectively the equivalent of rights without actually calling it that. You believe that the Earth has value, and that humans don’t have the “right” to do certain things to Earth, but for some reason transverse obligations don’t apply to say that the Earth has the right not have certain things done to it. I find this rather interesting. Is it merely the wording of “rights” and the possible implications that bother you? If I’m wrong, then correct me.
You also said
Livingston, your response with respect to opting in at the UN is disingenuous. The U.S. has opted in with the UN, and so has virtually the whole rest of the world. If the UN adopts a treaty granting legal rights to the earth, that becomes a very powerful legal document.
I think you may have missed my point regarding my comment about the U.N and the ICC. The point I was trying to make wasn’t that the U.S. can opt out of the U.N., making the policy less powerful. I agree that if the U.N. passes a policy, it is a very powerful policy with a lot of weight and worldwide jurisdiction. Rather, the point I was trying to make was that the U.N. and the ICC are not, as Blake labeled,
self-appointed “guardians”, who will take it upon themselves to tell the rest of us who may touch the resources and who may not , instead I wanted to point out that the U.S. and other nations come to laws passed by the U.N. in agreement, and nations have to vote on these policies. The U.N. is only as powerful as the nations that obey their rulings and policies, and therefore the hyper-environmental totalitarian conspiracy that Blake painted was an inaccurate picture of the workings of the ICC and the U.N. That’s was my point.
Blake said:
That’s a value judgment.
An arbitrary one, too.
Really? It was? And why did you come to that conclusion? The definition of arbitrary is
Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.
I gave reason for why breathing the air is different that hurting the Earth. Maybe you simply were feeling lazy and just read the part where I said changing is not the same as hurting, and then failed to read the other 144 words (yes I counted) where I explained WHY participating is cycles is different than causing mass and irreversible damage to the Earth. Additionally, “change” and “harm” have two different definitions, so it rather goes without saying that they are two different ideas in the first place, the burden falls on you, the one saying they mean the same thing, to say why they are the same, which you failed to.
Also, considering my “value judgment” was followed by 144 words of evaluation and criterion and your “value judgment” of assigning my “value judgment” as arbitrary was followed with blank screen, I would feel comfortable saying if any “value judgment” was to be considered arbitrary it would be your own.
April 18th, 2011 | 3:41 pm | #37
“That’s a value judgment.
An arbitrary one, too.”
Um……it isn’t. When one breathes C02, she contributes to part of a reciprocal ecosystem. That changes the ecosystem’s gas, but it doesn’t destroy it. When one destroys an ecosystem, she kills the food supply for certain animals and even threatens the population of a certain group of animals. Those are two different things.
Saying “it’s an arbitrary value judgment” doesn’t mean that it is. Saying “it’s an arbitrary value judgment” without a warrant is, in fact, arbitrary.
“You mean, you are advocating the right to pass laws commanding those people over there to be barred from (or punished for) consuming resources.”
Blake, a little fact about me: I’m a libertarian. I wish the government was small. But advocating for some blanket international standard for heinous damages done to the earth does not, in fact, amount to a totalitarian takeover, nor does it mean that environmentalists would overrun our governments. I’m not talking about punishing corporations that emit a fraction of a percent more C02 then they’re supposed to; I’m talking about massive violations of the earth that result in massive ecosystem destruction and the loss of species. There are pretty clear standards for when that’s occurred. One doesn’t have to be an environmentalist to know when massive damage has been done.
Tom,
I hate to pull the card, but I have to: “semantics.” It seems our conversation has come down to us both agreeing on the fact that crimes against the earth ought not be tolerated, but we’re merely disagreeing on what to call the framework by which we would protect the earth.
You mention the Clean Air Act. That legislation, however, brings up a difficulty I mentioned earlier: If one does not have the right to excessively pollute, then it seems to me a reasonable corollary to say that the earth has the “right” (or whatever you want to call it) to not be excessively damaged by pollution. However we might punish those who commit violations against the earth is still up in the air; personally, I don’t think a fine, often the punishment for those who do excessively pollute, is a commensurate sentence to those who enact massive grievances against the land.
We all love the earth, it seems. Now we just have to find a better way to protect it!
April 18th, 2011 | 4:03 pm | #38
Livingston,
You suggest this
No. I am saying that the word “rights” does not apply because it is the wrong word. That is to say, the bulk of my concern is indeed with the wording, and it is because words mean things, and “rights” means the wrong thing in this context.
Exactly. I think I’ve explained that clearly, and I’m glad you caught it.
Merely? MERELY?
As to the definition of arbitrary, I am always amused when someone in a setting like this uses the construction, “The definition of x is y,” as if (a) there was only one definition for x, and (b) no philosophical or other nuance had ever been applied to it. I’ve seen this kind of thing happen often. In the case of “arbitrary,” I quote from the dictionary resident on my Apple computer:
There is, as you see no such thing as the definition of arbitrary. There are multiple definitions. I’ll add this from the thesaurus for further context:
I’m not sure exactly where Blake was going with the value judgment argument. I can certainly imagine where he might have been going, and I could go that direction myself, but I’d rather let Blake have the opportunity—unhindered by arbitrarily selected definitions of “arbitrary.”
April 18th, 2011 | 5:42 pm | #39
Another thought: “rights” talk hasn’t been around too terribly long; it emerged largely during the time of social contract theorists. Before that, we had “duty” talk, and, in effect, “duty” talk and “rights” talk are often the same. Aristotle and Plato didn’t talk about “rights;” they talked about virtues and duties.
Saying, “I have the right to practice my religion how I please” is not different from the claim that “The government has the duty to not interfere with the citizen’s ability to practice religion.”
Similarly, while saying, “The earth has the legal right not to be harmed” might sound strange, saying, “Humans have a duty to not harm nature egregiously” does not sound strange at all. It actually sounds quite true. This is why I feel there should be some legal framework; humans have a duty, but we often fail to uphold it. Those things should not go unpunished.
April 18th, 2011 | 5:45 pm | #40
Tom,
I think where I was going with the question was to lead into another question, which was what word would you prefer to use in lieu of “rights”. I stated that you want effectively the same thing, without calling it that with which you responded: No. I am saying that the word “rights” does not apply because it is the wrong word. Um…..yeah that’s what I said. You don’t want it being called rights, while at the same time you want effectively the same thing, but you fear calling it rights because of how it might play out in court. I know you don’t think “rights” is the correct word, but that doesn’t disprove and negate that you want effectively similar protection for the Earth, you just think it should be called something different. Then instead of answering a genuine question posed to you, you respond with mocking my use of the word “merely”.
So here, Tom, just for you I’ll ask the question again, without semantical distractions for you:
Is it the use of the word “rights” that bothers you in this situation? Or is it protection of the Earth?
On to arbitrary, you said:
“I am always amused when someone in a setting like this uses the construction, “The definition of x is y,” as if (a) there was only one definition for x, and (b) no philosophical or other nuance had ever been applied to it.”
right after saying:
“That is to say, if the bulk of my concern is with the wording, it is because words mean things, and “rights” means the wrong thing in this context.”
So I’ll answer your point about arbitrary with another you made, which is that words mean certain things in certain contexts. In this case, the use of the arbitrary is LIKELY to mean a certain definition. In fact, the definition I provided is…oh wait….verbatim one of the definitions you provided, which I think you will agree is the one that most applies to this context and discussion. And once again, you decide to skip over the main point posed for semantics, with my use of the word “the” instead of “a”.
So here, Tom, once again I’ll rephrase my wording just for you so that you wont have to spend 247 words (once again, I counted) focused on my use of “the”:
The use of arbitrary in this situation is likely to mean based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system
Back to the use of “rights”, you said:
Second, you have made a distinction without a definition. Why use the word “rights” when it doesn’t mean the same thing? Where humans have legally-recognized rights, we have the ability to defend them in court. That’s what legally-recognized “rights” means for humans. You’re equivocating on “rights.”
But of course if Nikolai had given a definition of word “rights” you would have likely responded with:
I am always amused when someone in a setting like this uses the construction, “The definition of x is y,” as if (a) there was only one definition for x, and (b) no philosophical or other nuance had ever been applied to it.
So from now on, Tom, I’ll make sure to keep a dictionary with me in order to avoid equivocation, but I’ll make sure not to use it so that you don’t have to give another almost 250 word discussion on how words have more than one meaning (as if it was completely impossible for me to distinguish which definition Blake meant with “arbitrary”) Hopefully this will help us not to have an eggshell discussion–oh wait.
So let’s run with it, Tom. You, me, Nikolai, and Blake can all agree that the Earth doesn’t have the same “rights” as humans. Where we disagree is that the Earth has some “rights”. And apparently, what “rights” actually means.
You seem to believe that the only use for the word “right” is if it applies to the same “rights” that we think of with humans. You then argue that the use the word “rights” cannot apply to something cannot represent itself, and that it’s so unheard of? We give rights to animals, and corporations. Of course, the “rights” we give to corporations is the same we give to people, whereas the “rights” we give to animals are different “rights”. Obviously, there is a nuance given to the word “right”. “Right” no longer has to be applied to an actual person, in some situations. A “right” seems to have a new broader meaning. I could provide a definition, if you would like, but I fear another wordy explanation of how words have several meanings.
In addition, “rights” is a relatively new term that has always some ambiguity and different meaning in different contexts, as I pointed out earlier.
Why use the word “rights” when it doesn’t mean the same thing? Where humans have legally-recognized rights, we have the ability to defend them in court. That’s what legally-recognized “rights” means for humans.
That would be a good point if we were talking about humans. So why use the word “rights” when it doesn’t have the same meaning? Because as a man named Tom on Evangel just spent ample time explaining to me, words have several meaning depending on their contexts. In this case, we are not talking about “rights” in the context of humans. “Rights” HAS been nuanced to apply to extra-human situations.
April 18th, 2011 | 6:21 pm | #41
Livingston, if I had some realistic hope that the word “rights” might be carefully defined and circumscribed, and applied politically, legislatively and judicially in that careful manner, I might be willing to go with what you suggest here.
I don’t see that being realistic in today’s cultural environment. Newly invented rights more typically get used as judicial jack-hammers.
Recall the context: Bolivia wants to give Mother Earth the same kind of rights as humans. I notice and appreciate that you don’t mean the same thing when you speak of rights for the earth. Do you think that’s how it would really play out?
Think, too, of Bolivia’s call for “balance.” If rights equal to humans’ were given to Earth, shall we also give rights to economies? If Earth is a living thing, then arguably economies are living things, too; and they have interests just as the earth does. Shall we give rights to political systems? Don’t jump too quickly to an answer there. You might think we give them rights already, but in fact America’s founding documents give rights to persons and defined powers to governmental institutions. But arguably political systems are living things, too.
What I object to above all is this late 20th- and early 21st century belief that since rights have worked to solve some human problems, then they ought to solve all human problems and some non-human ones as well. I object to the way rights, once enshrined in culture (whether in any official document or not) become tools by which the judiciary can legislate. I object to what I consider the likely outcome of Earth’s rights, which is a corroding of human rights—and which I doubt your careful nuance could prevent.
Again: if nuance could practically solve these problems, I’d be a lot less opposed to the whole idea. A lot. But I don’t see culture and society working that way.
April 18th, 2011 | 6:23 pm | #42
Additionally: I return to my previous observation, which is that the U.S. and other Western nations have been remarkably successful in improving our environment without inventing a new right. What word would I use instead of “rights,” then? Why just one word? I would say, let’s build on our prior successes and keep going.
April 18th, 2011 | 10:04 pm | #43
See further: http://wdednh.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/mother-earth-what/
http://oforchristsakes.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/2-4-6-8-who-do-we-appreciate-evo/
April 19th, 2011 | 4:09 pm | #44
“That’s a value judgment.
An arbitrary one, too.”
Um……it isn’t. When one breathes C02, she contributes to part of a reciprocal ecosystem.
Any change that is made to the planet could be viewed as damage or could be viewed as progress, depending entirely upon a point of view.
You are assuming a point of view when you suggest that what you call a “reciprocal ecosystem” is good.
I remember watching a science video that called respiration “pollution”. And so it was, from the point of view of what had gone before.
Even if we were to assume that life is good and absence of life is bad, that still does not mean you are capable of accurately distinguishing between what changes will or will not be beneficial. You are reaching for the same flaw that has caused every single “central planning” scheme to not only fail, but crash.
You are no more in a position to understand how to manage an ecosystem from “on high” than the communists were prepared to manage an economy from “on high”.
Personally, I believe that the only hope for this rock is if humans can get off it, by colonizing space (and bringing the materials to start new ecosystems in the worlds they create). The only way that will happen is if we respond to population pressures by recognizing that we need to expand.
However counterintuitive it may be, your response is the same response that leads to famines on a smaller scale: faced with shortage, you want to hoard – and you want to punish those who try to gain access to scarce resources, and you don’t care if their lack of access has an unpleasant consequence on their life (or lack thereof). This is not the path of life. It is the path that leads to panics of the sort that used to cause runs on banks. It is the path of collapse.
However comforting it might be to you to secure what looks like security – for yourself – by passing laws granting you & yours the right to punish Those People for consuming resources, it won’t work, and will in fact backfire.
April 19th, 2011 | 5:23 pm | #45
“However counterintuitive it may be, your response is the same response that leads to famines on a smaller scale: faced with shortage, you want to hoard – and you want to punish those who try to gain access to scarce resources, and you don’t care if their lack of access has an unpleasant consequence on their life (or lack thereof). This is not the path of life. It is the path that leads to panics of the sort that used to cause runs on banks. It is the path of collapse.
However comforting it might be to you to secure what looks like security – for yourself – by passing laws granting you & yours the right to punish Those People for consuming resources, it won’t work, and will in fact backfire.”
Punishing people for taking from the earth is silly. Punishing people for destroying ecosystems on a massive scale and either causing extinction or a severe decrease in species population is not. It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to want to punish someone for massive violations of the earth, which is the only thing I’ve been advocating the whole time. I’m not some eco-anarchist who thinks that humans malign the earth with every step they take. I just think that ruining the environment on a massive scale is problematic and shouldn’t be ignored based on some faulty conception of dominion.
“Any change that is made to the planet could be viewed as damage or could be viewed as progress, depending entirely upon a point of view.”
Respiration is factually regarded as a change in the environment. Especially since it isn’t a permanent change; C02 becomes oxygen, and vice versa. Whatever science video you’re watching is wrong. Polluting the air with coal mining or cigarette smoking can cause permanent air damage; breathing, fortunately, is part of a cycle.
“I object to what I consider the likely outcome of Earth’s rights, which is a corroding of human rights—and which I doubt your careful nuance could prevent.”
I don’t see a clear link here at all. Your point about using rights as a tool is something to consider, and something that I’m continuing to think about. That, I agree, can be dangerous. Citizens United vs. FEC is a solid example.
However, I don’t see how by granting the earth rights suddenly my human rights become less valuable; the two are not linked in any way, especially since I’m not advocating the same “rights” (or whatever you want to call them) to the earth as humans have. Moreover, I don’t see that as a unique point since we’ve given corporations, governments (which you mention), and even animals rights. If your impact story is true, then we’d already be experiencing a “lessening of rights.”
But a better question: is it possible to punish those who damage the earth extensively without some rights framework? Given that punishment necessarily involves a legal system, wouldn’t there have to be at least a modicum of “rights” or “duty” talk?
April 19th, 2011 | 9:53 pm | #46
Punishing people for taking from the earth is silly. Punishing people for destroying ecosystems on a massive scale and either causing extinction or a severe decrease in species population is not.
I agree that the situation is urgent. I just disagree about the part where you get to appoint yourself the one who manages “Mother Nature’s” assets on behalf of
us allher.There are only two possible outcomes. Either we find a genuine solution – probably involving transcending our current technological limitations – or we experience massive depopulation.
Pretending to care about the “planet’s” feelings is just a sophist’s way of saying “I vote for depopulation”.
Just keep it nice and bloodless: make sure everyone is focused on how the planet feels, and nobody wastes any time putting a face to the people who will be affected by your new law that says you get to be the one – you lucky dog! – to decide when the rationing starts, and who should get what.
April 20th, 2011 | 12:20 pm | #47
“I just disagree about the part where you get to appoint yourself the one who manages “Mother Nature’s” assets on behalf of us all her.”
Actually, my suggestion involved experts from the entire international legal community coming to a definition of what an unfair destruction of the earth amounts to. I think that’s a pretty good representation of the entire globe’s stance on what fair environmental justice is.
“Pretending to care about the “planet’s” feelings is just a sophist’s way of saying “I vote for depopulation”.”
I’m searching for a warrant and……yep, it’s not there. I’m not advocating for a new world order. I’m not advocating the environment’s importance over human beings. Wanting a punishment for severe environmental crimes is NOT (a) punishing people who properly take from the earth or (b) tantamount to Malthusian population control. I’m not sure why my reasonable arguments are being taken to logical extremes. There isn’t a grand conspiracy here.
April 20th, 2011 | 11:46 pm | #48
Actually, my suggestion involved experts from the entire international legal community coming to a definition of what an unfair destruction of the earth amounts to.
Oh, so an “expert committee” will be the one gaining total control over all the earth’s resources, and not just you personally. That’s reassuring. Central planning always works so much better when a committee is granted unlimited control, historically speaking…NOT.
It’s still a vote for depopulation.
It’s still the affluent hoarding resources, deciding which non-affluent people will be sacrificed.
I think that’s a pretty good representation of the entire globe’s stance on what fair environmental justice is.
No, your committee represents a tiny collection of the world’s elites – the world’s most affluent people.
They do not have the credibility that comes with having a genuine majority. They rely on squelching dissent, which is false credibility.
And their legitimacy is further damaged by the oft-noted fact that many of the world’s most prominent environmentalists have been documented as observing way more than their share when it comes to resources.
Not to mention the fact that some of them have been caught telling lies in support of their pro-environmentalist propaganda.
If they had legitimate authority, they would be able to lead an effective movement, instead of having to hoard. But I see no evidence that your precious experts are interested in solving any of the hard problems. They are interested only in micromanaging other peoples’ resources.
I’m not advocating the environment’s importance over human beings.
Yes, you are.
Obviously you are blind to your own inability to distinguish between facts vs. value judgments: you are so persuaded of your own opinion that you see them as facts, rather than recognizing how many independent opinion-based judgments are involved.
So maybe you genuinely don’t see it.
But you want to bypass legitimate government in order to set up a class of rulers who will have unchecked power to judge and exert power over people according to some arbitrary, fluid definition of what is “good for the planet”.
And, yes, it is arbitrary. There is no obvious distinction between harm vs. “acceptable” environmental change. There is no clear distinction between those with the authority to have an opinion vs. those who do not; there is no clear consensus of all the stakeholders; there simply is no clear dividing line that can be referred to – so therefore it is safe to assume that your “committee” will be given potentially limitless power, with nothing to check abuse.
It’s a zero sum. You can’t give “the planet” (and her self-appointed guardians!) “rights” without taking away some other rights.
What you are advocating involves taking away rights and redistributing those rights to your “expert committee”.
It is hard to face uncertainty, especially when there is real risk involved. It is easy to understand why people would resort to cowardice, such as wanting to hoard all the resources – especially when the people who will suffer are faceless and nameless; third world people die all the time anyway, right?
But cowardice must be punished. We must be ethical and we must care for our fellow man, because if you would throw that man overboard, then it’s safe to assume that you would throw me overboard, too.
Maybe you think it’s okay to do whatever has to be done because you don’t have faith in humankind to solve the problem, and so you want to save the planet for yourself by passing laws that will be used to hoard resources, at the direct expense of those who will be deprived of access to those resources.
But smart people need to wake up and recognize, most of us will not have a spot on the lifeboat, once the world’s ruling class has an excuse to “save the earth” by basically replacing concepts like democracy and property rights with the idea that “experts” know what is good for us. Because those “experts” have demonstrated – and are demonstrating – that they are not interested in “what is good for us”. There is no need for elaborate conspiracy theory schemes; there is only logic:
- these people are already hogging more than their share of the resources
- these people are profiting by telling the rest of us to forego resources
- these people are not our friends, and do not serve our well-being
- what is under discussion is whether these people should be granted unchecked authority to override property rights and democracy, for the express purpose of appropriating other peoples’ resources, in the name of “saving the Earth”
Why should we think “saving the Earth” doesn’t actually include the unspoken but implicit “for ourselves”?
I just don’t see restoring the “divine right of kings” as “progress”, even if the king’s divine right gets its authority from Mother Earth rather than God.
April 21st, 2011 | 1:56 am | #49
Blake,
As it is, I’m quite busy, so I don’t have much time to respond to your Glenn Beck-esque mischaracterization of my suggestion, but I do feel the need to point out some things.
“Oh, so an “expert committee” will be the one gaining total control over all the earth’s resources…..”
Stop right there. Punishing people for extreme crimes (i.e. crimes that happen rarely) is not tantamount to controlling resources. There’s no link between the two, and you haven’t shown that there is. I’m not advocating for a total restructuring of how we take from nature; I’m advocating for punishing those who severely (keep in mind that word, because it means that I’m not complaining about people who put out just a little more C02 then they’re supposed to) destroy nature and its ecosystem, which, in turn, actually causes us to be less able to take from nature like you and I want to.
Plus, your complaints about the poor getting deprived of resources while the rich live in lavish squalor is…..the status quo. We can keep that system, whereby massive violations of nature occur unaccounted AND the income disparity continues to widen into a dark maw. I think that’s a bad idea. Clearly, though, that isn’t much of a problem for you.
“No, your committee represents a tiny collection of the world’s elites – the world’s most affluent people.
They do not have the credibility that comes with having a genuine majority. They rely on squelching dissent, which is false credibility.”
The International Criminal Court is comprised of over one hundred countries, rich or poor. Their lead prosecutor is from Argentina; hardly the world’s hegemon. The ICC also has democratic internal structure, so no, crushing dissent is hardly a factor. The ICC isn’t the US in that regard.
And their legitimacy is further damaged by the oft-noted fact that many of the world’s most prominent environmentalists have been documented as observing way more than their share when it comes to resources.
Wow, people are hypocrites. Doesn’t do anything to the principle of my argument. Plus, under the system you’re advocating, the status quo, the rich take beyond what they’re supposed to.
“There is no obvious distinction between harm vs. “acceptable” environmental change.”
If you’re burning forests down, excessively pumping water so fish populations drop off the deep end, and ecosystems are entirely destroyed, you’re not “changing.” You’re “destroying.” That’s kind of a problem.
“It’s a zero sum. You can’t give “the planet” (and her self-appointed guardians!) “rights” without taking away some other rights.
Rights are like math? Really? I was inclined to think, well, that they weren’t. Because they aren’t. Humans don’t have the right to ruin the ecosystem extensively because (a) it impedes other people’s ability to take from it, and (b) because the earth deserves to be protected at some level. Not tantamount to a whole world takeover, but a basic protection from egregious crimes. What I’m advocating doesn’t take away a right that humans have because, well, they don’t have it.
You say that I actually am advocating that the environment is more important than humans. Well, that’s just plain wrong. I’m not an environmentalist. I think global warming actually has a lot of sketchy science behind it, although it’s not entirely false. Never once have I advocated for the same protections that humans get for the environment. Ever. I only suggest protection for the most severe crimes, which are bad both on a human level and at an environmental level.
Look, I can see your concern. I don’t like overly powerful government institutions any more than you do. The problem is, you believe that allowing an international legal body power to prosecute for egregious crimes against the land necessarily leads to an environmental takeover. You haven’t provided any evidence to show that’s the case, mostly because….it isn’t the case. Crimes like the ones I’m talking about don’t happen every day. You’re totally mischaracterizing my suggestion and taking it to extremes that the plan doesn’t actually lead to. The ICC isn’t a government; it actually respects domestic sovereignties. It only acts if the domestic governments have failed to do what needs to be done. Moreover, the Court doesn’t have “unlimited power;” it actually has a system of checks and balances.
But even worse, what you seem to advocate, and correct me if I’m wrong, is the status quo. Whereby the rich continue to expand income inequality, and continue to gain all the power and make all the decisions that you wish to avoid. All of the impacts you link to my case, which are far-fetched at best, still exist even if we don’t grant the ICC that power.
But finally,
“Maybe you think it’s okay to do whatever has to be done because you don’t have faith in humankind to solve the problem”
I am advocating for human involvement. An international, fairly balanced community of humans holding other humans accountable because we all have a stake in the land, not because nature is a goddess that will cast us into the gates of Hades if we commit any violations against nature.
April 21st, 2011 | 9:36 am | #50
Interesting conversation.
Just a quickie question for the “earth’s rights” advocates.
In a third world situation, where rain-forests and wild animals abound, and people do too. Who wins?
That is, if I bought me a bulldozer and started ripping out rain-forests for the fun of it, at what point have I destroyed enough for it to be a major crime?
On the other hand, if, in order to survive, people begin to burn rain-forests and kill rare animals to eat them, at what point do their rights to survive become over-ridden by this “major crime against the planet” idea?
To claim that “major crimes” don’t begin a slippery slope to “any crime” is foolish. There are already places in the US where folks can expand their houses due to rare sand flies on the ground…
To think that people’s rights won’t be over-ridden ion short order, is also foolish. Especially considering that the UN spends so much time providing abortion “services” (murder for hire) in areas they consider over-populated, should tell you where the world’s priorities lie.
It’s one thing to say “Leave my land alone, if you hurt it, you’ll hurt me”. It’s another thing to say “You, over there! Leave your land alone, it might hurt someone, someday.”
Notice the “green” movement all around you. Notice the silliness around carbon taxes and the like. To make laws (especially laws that the UN, which has no country of it’s own, can enforce on nations) like the ones proposed here is dangerous and silly.
April 21st, 2011 | 11:41 am | #51
I am advocating for human involvement. An international, fairly balanced community of humans holding other humans accountable because we all have a stake in the land, not because nature is a goddess that will cast us into the gates of Hades if we commit any violations against nature.
You know, I thought I was joking about the “divine right of kings”, but the more I thought about it last night, the more it made sense.
If you are under the so-called “myth of mythlessness” – that is, a faith-based acceptance so profound that you deny your faith-based belief involves an element of faith, because it is self-evidently the truth – then that would explain so much.
Like how such a tiny percentage of the world’s population can be represented as a “consensus” of all the relevant stakeholders. This is obviously nonsense – unless you deny the personhood of those who do not share The Faith….
Or how you can say it’s obvious and clear which changes are beneficial or acceptable, vs. which changes are clearly destructive. Of course that involves a lot of opinion & value judgments – but your community does have a consensus on those value judgments, doesn’t it? And the rest of us don’t count.
So yes, while yesterday I thought perhaps you were simply naive or in denial about the inherently finite nature of the Earth’s resources (such that yes, you really are taking rights away from someone else, every time you decide your own clique should have the right to make the ultimate decision about what may get used when and how), today I seriously wonder if this isn’t the logical conclusion of the Enlightenment: scientism and humanism, craving control and wanting to build a centrally-planned (by themselves) Utopia, have somehow become united with Earth-worshipers, to create a new vision of Utopia – one that both makes “nature” into a sort of goddess (see: Avatar).
WOW that is even scarier! It really is “The Vision Of The Anointed”!
April 21st, 2011 | 2:19 pm | #52
Blake,
Your paranoid, warrant-less conspiracy theorizing has now gone from ridiculous to just hilarious.
“Or how you can say it’s obvious and clear which changes are beneficial or acceptable, vs. which changes are clearly destructive. Of course that involves a lot of opinion & value judgments – but your community does have a consensus on those value judgments, doesn’t it? And the rest of us don’t count.”
Yes…you….do….count. An international criminal body CAN, in fact, represent many people, and can even hear testimony from anyone, rich or poor.
Moreover, destroying the earth, ruining ecosystems, and killing off species unjustly (beyond what it is necessary to take) is normatively wrong. If you think it’s okay to rape the land, then I can see why you’re against what I’m advocating. Most people, however, environmentalist or not, are not okay with the earth being ravaged. That’s a completely fair consensus to assume.
“….craving control and wanting to build a centrally-planned (by themselves) Utopia….”
Letting an international body punish criminals who commit extreme acts is not tantamount to creating a new government. At all. Given that these crimes don’t happen often, and that what I advocate doesn’t involve changing how we take from the earth wholesale, there is no reason to believe that this is tantamount for some sort of new world order. If that were true, we already would have a new world order because institutions like the ICC and the UN, which are comprised of all those “elites” you’re so afraid of, have existed for years. Clearly, we can see that isn’t the case, mostly because international institutions like the ICC respect domestic sovereignties. You haven’t provided any reason beyond mere paranoia to believe that this “new world order” verbiage is true, so I really don’t have to warrant any further the argument I’ve already warranted.
But, again, more problematically, everything you’re against still exists even if we don’t do what I suggest. I fail to see how your situation is better at all.
April 21st, 2011 | 2:49 pm | #53
Daryl Little,
In the U.S. water rights are a practical, real-world example where use restrictions have become necessary to protect the greater good. Las Vegas exists only because the Hoover dam creates a vast supply of fresh water (Lake Mead). But in the midst of an eleven year drought, Las Vegas has had to increase its use of the Colorado river, and that negativelt affects businesses, farmers, and individuals in down river.
http://nevadawaterrights.com/
Should the people of Arizona have a right to claim some portion of the Colorado River, thereby restricting the amount of development up-stream?
How else can this be fairly settled unless all parties with a vested interest in the Colorado River are part of a negotiation?
In the bigger picture, tropical rain forests provide more than a quarter of the oxygen in our atmosphere. Clearly some portion needs to be left undeveloped if we wish to breathe, but how should we make this determination a fair process for all?
April 21st, 2011 | 10:29 pm | #54
Daryl,
“To think that people’s rights won’t be over-ridden ion short order, is also foolish. Especially considering that the UN spends so much time providing abortion “services” (murder for hire) in areas they consider over-populated, should tell you where the world’s priorities lie.”
There is absolutely no link between what you just described and any potential rights being taken away as a a result of enacting legislation to punish for serious crimes. I’m adamantly against abortion, but I hate it when people act as if any organization that supports abortion is dedicated to the destruction of humanity. It’s poisoning the well. Plus, that is hardly what the UN spends most of its time doing. In fact, I’m not sure it does it at all, given the following proofs:
http://www.un.org/geninfo/faq/factsheets/FS6.HTM
http://www.unpost.org/?p=81
What I suggested doesn’t involve super-stringent protections; it just punishes those who go far and above what is necessary to get resources from the earth. As I’ve said a million times already, I’m not saying we radically overhaul our system now. But for those who abuse the system, punishment should be enacted.
“That is, if I bought me a bulldozer and started ripping out rain-forests for the fun of it, at what point have I destroyed enough for it to be a major crime?
On the other hand, if, in order to survive, people begin to burn rain-forests and kill rare animals to eat them, at what point do their rights to survive become over-ridden by this “major crime against the planet” idea?”
If you’re ripping out entire rain forests for “the fun of it,” you are committing a crime against the earth. Plain and simple. No reason anyone should do that. As for your survival example, I see two problems: (a) why one would have to burn a rainforest down to attain resources is beyond me, (b) I’m not exactly sure what cultures kill rare animals to attain necessary food. A lot of rare animals aren’t animals that could be eaten anyways.
April 23rd, 2011 | 11:07 am | #55
If you’re ripping out entire rain forests for “the fun of it,” you are committing a crime against the earth.
Spoken like someone who sees the Earth as “yours” to make decisions about.
And the rest of us? The Earth is less ours than yours?
What’s really interesting is the idea that you can just attribute evil motives to people who consume resources. They’re doing it “just for fun”. This gives us a nice little taste of how it will go, when the rationing-nazis start actually flexing their power to punish the rest of us for consuming their resources, eh? You will legitimize the terrible things you’re doing by slandering other people, telling lies about their motives.
April 23rd, 2011 | 11:12 am | #56
Letting an international body punish criminals who commit extreme acts is not tantamount to creating a new government. At all.
And here I thought “monopoly on force” was the textbook definition of what a government is.
Oh wait! It still is!
So, yes, ability to judge behaviors as criminal and punish them is in fact the creation of a government.
Overriding democracy, human rights, and every “checks & balances” safeguard.
April 23rd, 2011 | 3:37 pm | #57
Blake,
I’m afraid this is the last time I’ll be posting. You obviously have no idea what I’m advocating, nor do you have any knowledge about how international law functions. Instead, you amble on about conspiracy theories, again without any evidence to suggest that they’re true, that absolutely straw man my position.
“Spoken like someone who sees the Earth as “yours” to make decisions about.”
You CANNOT tell me that you think it is okay to destroy entire rainforests for the sake of fun. Really. You could maybe make the argument that we need to destroy rainforests to attain resources (we don’t), but if you think it is okay to take a bulldozer to God’s creation just because you have the power to do so, I’m not sure you’re aware of what good stewardship is.
And I wasn’t attributing evil motives to people who take resources. I was responding to a specific example brought up by Daryl that involved someone tearing out rainforests for fun (see comment #50). Which is a crime against the earth. Again, I’m not advocating for not taking resources. I haven’t said it, and you can’t make that implication from all of my completely reasonable arguments. Obviously we all have to have food. But we don’t have to destroy the environment to get that food.
“And here I thought “monopoly on force” was the textbook definition of what a government is.
Oh wait! It still is!
So, yes, ability to judge behaviors as criminal and punish them is in fact the creation of a government.
Overriding democracy, human rights, and every “checks & balances” safeguard.”
You obviously have no idea how international law functions. If your argument is true, then we are already under a new world order. The UN Security Council can enforce things on its member states, and the ICC can take war criminals and people who have committed crimes against humanity from countries within their own member states. By your logic, then, adding environmental injustices wouldn’t do much at all. It would just add to the already present global government.
Unfortunately, that’s not true. Both the ICC and the UN respect domestic sovereignties. We aren’t forced to be part of either institution. We, in, fact, chose to be part of those institutions (save for the ICC, which the US is still not a part of). The ICC, the agent I’m advocating, only acts if the domestic sovereignty is unwilling or unable to prosecute. It’s called complementarity, it’s in the Rome Statute.
Neither agent receives taxes. The ICC doesn’t even have a police force; it relies on the domestic sovereignties, which it respects, to bring criminals in. Neither can be called governments; they’re independent legal bodies. They respect domestic sovereignties; they aren’t governments. That is a limit on force; therefore, the ICC doesn’t have “a monopoly on force.” In works in tandem with domestic governments.
And your “overriding checks and balances and democracy” is offensively unwarranted. And blatantly wrong. Aside from the fact that the ICC and the UN respect domestic sovereignty, both institutions are internally democratic. The ICC officials are elected, and an internal system of checks and balances is stipulated in the Rome Statute. And I think an institution that is focused on punishing transnational criminals against humanity knows a thing or two about protecting human rights. So if you want to make baseless, blatantly false accusations that feature a ton of loaded rhetoric, go ahead. Personally, I think you should use some evidence so that I could actually work with some of your conspiracies masquerading as arguments. So far, unfortunately, I haven’t seen any evidence, so all you’re really doing is throwing out words. Which do nothing to my suggestion.
April 24th, 2011 | 4:57 pm | #58
Oh, I understand what you’re saying.
I just believe that your assumptions are implausibly myopic.
April 25th, 2011 | 7:10 pm | #59
I’m not advocating the environment’s importance over human beings.
Yes, you are.
I just believe that your assumptions are implausibly myopic.
No he’s not. There, see, i can do it too!!!
April 25th, 2011 | 7:52 pm | #60
This is the dumbest thing I hav e ever heard! Babies are being aborted left and right and we are worried about giving rights to the earth??? Where are the rights of those unborn babies??
April 25th, 2011 | 10:02 pm | #61
I am an environmental attorney. The romantic notion that trees, polar bears, and “the earth” have legal rights that can be adjudicated in courts simply is an excuse to give courts the power to disregard the basic rights of property owners and other human beings. Those who claim to “represent” the earth have not entered into an attorney-client relationship, and cannot be fired for exceeding their mandate. It is a legal fiction that is simply a way to disregard the traditional established and God-given rights of human beings.
The fact is that no one “knows” enought about the complex ecosystem of the earth to be able to say with certainty and finality what will harm or benefit it. Example: The 1990 Montreal Protocol which banned CFC refrigerants in order to combat the “ozone hole” has resulted in the release of non-CFC substitutes which are major contributors to global warming (according to the IPCC), so much so that they contribute 2 to 3 times as much warming as the Kyoto Protocol was intended to remove! The side effects are worse than the so-called disease. Now we have had 15 years of NO measurable increase in global average temperatures, proving that NONE of the computer models used by the UN IPCC has worked accurately! The theories are WRONG and cannot predict climate temperature accurately. No theory ever has! The notion that we give power over our lives to people who have NOT met the most basic standard of scientific truth–the accurate prediction, the match between hypothesis and reality–is simply insane. The court decisions based on this fantasy of knowledge are even worse than insane, they are tyrannical. They are akin to the Lysenkoism of Stalinist Russia. They are nothing more than a religion, a faith that flies in the face of truth, like communism before it.
Governments exist to represent the interests of the larger society against those of individuals. Governments that are accountable to the people through election can be guided by popular deliberation and debate, and their policies and laws changed when the outcomes are not as predicted.
To understand the permiciousness of the notion of giving “the earth” legal standing and rights to litigate, imagine a law that gives God legal standing in the courts. That is not a far fetched notion in, say a Muslim country. The Ayatollahs in Iran would be more than happy to tell the courts what God wants. And the courts and governmental agencies, with all their coercive power of taxation, licensing, permitting, hiring, granting funds, and powers of investigation, arrest, confiscation, and imprisonment, would be available to be used against individuals in the name of the preemptive legal rights of God.
These are all different brands of tyranny, based on the assertion by a minority of people that they know better than the people what is just and fair and good. Governments that pervert the institutions of government in order to gather power into elites and take it away from the people generally, who are deemed too selfish or ignoble to govern themselves, are destroying the legitimacy of those governments, and will reach the point that the Declaration of independence announced had been reached by the 13 colonies: A state which involved intolerable tyranny and denial of the unalienable rights of man.
April 26th, 2011 | 3:46 pm | #62
Marcia,
In Bolivia, abortion is largely illegal except in cases where the mother could be harmed by the baby or in cases of rape. Though I think that it should be illegal in cases of rape as well, this answers the question of why Bolivia’s agenda is on environment rather than abortion.
April 26th, 2011 | 5:04 pm | #63
I’m not advocating the environment’s importance over human beings.
Yes, you are.
I just believe that your assumptions are implausibly myopic.
No he’s not. There, see, i can do it too!!!
No, no, no,
It’s more like, “I’m not advocating the environment’s importance over human beings.”
“Yes, you are [insert huge long post which is ignored and not read supporting why this position is taken]”
“You’re just not understanding me, because I said I’m not”
“I understood what you said, I just think your assumptions are implausibly myopic”.
Implausibly meaning, at this point, that if he’d read and responded to the actual points I’d made, he’d see why what he is claiming is problematic.
It is as if he is saying, “Giving power to a small committee of experts to determine how the Earth should be used – and with the power to punish those who use the Earth wrong – is not forming a government, and doesn’t constitute unchecked power”.
Then I say, “but it matches the very definition of what it is to form a government, and by your own definition it has power over every other human being on the planet – overriding property rights, local governments, democracy, even the idea of human rights.”
To which he says, “But that isn’t forming a government, and it isn’t unchecked.”
What can you say to that?
You cannot argue with someone who just pretends he has not heard any point he cannot rebut.
April 26th, 2011 | 5:16 pm | #64
Again, I won’t comment further on the merits of arguments brought up by yourself because you have yet to substantiate any of your arguments. I’ve given specific examples and specific evidence, of which you have given none. You have yet to warrant any of your arguments, so I’m afraid I’m not the one who’s incorrectly rebutting arguments.
I gave very specific reasons why the ICC is not a government. You didn’t rebut why they aren’t. You just merely reiterated your initial argument. Which I already showed was wrong.
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