The University of Sussex has published a “toolkit” to enable political and legal action to grant “rights” to trees. This is consistent with the radical environmentalist activism seen in many universities, such as Harvard Law, which is now teaching “nature rights” principles and strategies to students.
“Tree rights” is a subset of the overarching “nature rights” movement, which also includes “river rights,” “ocean rights,” and even “rights for the moon.” I don’t have space to discuss the entire 186-page advocacy treatise — developed over three years, evidencing the energy and commitment of nature rights activists to their cause — but here’s a fair nutshell overview.
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As we have seen before, “tree rights” advocacy principles are steeped in mysticism and neo-paganism. From “The Rights of Trees, Woodlands, and Forests Toolkit”:
Alongside economic and functional values, many belief systems recognise trees, woodlands and forests as living, sacred, intelligent beings. In Pagan, Celtic and many Indigenous worldviews, trees are ancestors, teachers and kin. Such worldviews align with the Rights of Nature movement, which recognises nature not as property, but as a rights-bearing community of life
In other words, tree rights advocacy is based substantially on irrationality. Trees are alive, to be sure. But they are not “intelligent.” Good grief, they aren’t even sentient. Sacred is a religious concept, as is the myth or belief (take your pick) that they are our “ancestors.”
“Tree rights” is a subset of the overarching “nature rights” movement, which also includes “river rights,” “ocean rights,” and even “rights for the moon.” I don’t have space to discuss the entire 186-page advocacy treatise — developed over three years, evidencing the energy and commitment of nature rights activists to their cause — but here’s a fair nutshell overview.
As we have seen before, “tree rights” advocacy principles are steeped in mysticism and neo-paganism. From “The Rights of Trees, Woodlands, and Forests Toolkit”:
Alongside economic and functional values, many belief systems recognise trees, woodlands and forests as living, sacred, intelligent beings. In Pagan, Celtic and many Indigenous worldviews, trees are ancestors, teachers and kin. Such worldviews align with the Rights of Nature movement, which recognises nature not as property, but as a rights-bearing community of life
In other words, tree rights advocacy is based substantially on irrationality. Trees are alive, to be sure. But they are not “intelligent.” Good grief, they aren’t even sentient. Sacred is a religious concept, as is the myth or belief (take your pick) that they are our “ancestors.”
e) The right to water. The right to unpolluted water, essential for life.
f) The right to be restored. Public authorities will support, and non-public bodies will be supported, in scaling initiatives to replant trees in line with healthy ecological function.
These “rights” would create a positive duty on humans to ensure that all trees receive sufficient nutrients and water to thrive and to ensure that they are protected in groves.
g) The right to be represented. Any person, or community can represent the rights of trees, woodlands and forests, and have the right to participate in decision making forums, and to call upon public authorities to enforce and interpret these rights.
Here, as with most nature rights laws, anyone who believes that nature’s rights are being violated may bring legal actions. That not only allows the most extreme ideologues to have a tremendous say in how resources are harnessed (or kept fallow), but “tree rights” would enable blatantly blackmailing lawfare.
The toolkit would also impose the precautionary principle on the use of trees for human benefit, meaning preventing their use would be the default setting.
And get this! Tree death with dignity!
j) The right to live out their natural life cycles and, where decline or death is inevitable, to die in situ with dignity, with decay understood as a regenerative process that sustains soils, biodiversity, and future growth.
If trees and woodlands are granted rights, humans would enforce those rights against other humans, but humans would have no rights to pursue (obviously) against our wooded brothers and sisters. And trees would have no enforceable rights against — it is almost impossible to write such illogical prose — each other.
It’s. All. Crackers.
There is so much more, but let’s stop here. (The link above will take you to the entire report to read for yourselves.) But please note: We can (and do) protect trees and woodlands with proper laws and conservation regulations without resorting to irrational ideological justifications and materially impeding human thriving.
“Rights of nature” activists are energized and on the march. In my view, the movement poses a material threat to human welfare and a proper understanding of our place in the world. I worry that those who would or should oppose these measures remain mired in complacency that it can never happen here. And that is precisely why it could.
LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D. is Chair and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. Wesley is a contributor to National Review and is the author of 14 books, in recent years focusing on human dignity, liberty, and equality. Wesley has been recognized as one of America’s premier public intellectuals on bioethics by National Journal and has been honored by the Human Life Foundation as a “Great Defender of Life” for his work against suicide and euthanasia. Wesley’s most recent book is Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine, a warning about the dangers to patients of the modern bioethics movement. He blogs at Human Exeptionalism.
