Radical Environmentalism: “Rights of Nature” Push Continues

Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Wesley J. Smith

I have been pounding the “nature rights” warning drum for a few years, and most people still yawn thinking, “It can’t happen here.”  (Anyone who would still say such a thing has been making like Rip Van Winkle for the last 50 years.)  The issue is being pushed on the radical environmentalist Australian Broadcasting Corporation (remember the network teaching OZ children when they should die to save the planet?)  by a professor (of course!) named Peter Burdon. From his column, “What if Trees Could Sue?”:

The legal recognition of nature’s rights is a novel but potentially important step toward an ecologically sustainable human presence on Earth. When the legal standing of the entity shifts, so too does our understanding of it. Throughout history, we have seen a continual evolution in the types of things that can be owned, who was considered capable of ownership and the meaning of ownership itself…In a country like Australia, which does not recognise a Bill of Rights for human beings, we are a long way off achieving such recognition for nature. But if nature is recognised as a bedrock value and limit on human activity, then it could create opportunity for a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship.

the rest