Discuss: If Nature Had Rights

Humans need nature, and vice versa.  Humans and nature have always lived in harmony together.  Man should respect nature, and it’s not like nature has no way of fighting back.  Floods and hurricanes serve as a reminder to us all that nature is not a force to be reckoned with.  Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunami that hit Asia in 2006 are both examples of how powerful nature can be.  Humans need to realize that power, and respect it, but should that stop us from taking what we need to survive?  Or should all humans just stop using nature and die out?  Many people speak about how we carelessly use nature to our advantage, but I don’t think so.  Humans take what they need to survive, and it has worked so far. 
Let’s go to the story about the Kenyan farmer.  Is it really fair to take away the farmer’s livelihood because he was defending his lifestyle?  All he did was kill a hyena, because the hyena was trying to kill his goats.  The goats were all he had to provide for his family, so they could live.  So should we sacrifice an entire family’s well-being just because a hyena was killed?  It just doesn’t make sense to me. 
They also set 100+ goats out into the wild to be eaten.  Isn’t anyone concerned about the goats’ lives?  They just set them into the wild, so they could be “eaten by the hyenas and other wild carnivores.” If they are so concerned about the hyena, why aren’t they concerned about the goat?  The goat is a living animal, just like the hyena.  That doesn’t seem fair, to the farmer, or to the goats. 
All in all, I understand the need to respect nature, and as humans, we need nature to survive.  Nature has provided us with so much, and as long as we respect and take care of it, we’ll be okay.

In response to the story at the beginning of the article, the Kenyan farmer was found guilty for killing a female hyena, who attempted to eat his goats.  The farmer was protecting his goats, which are his livelihood, his ability to provide for his family.  We must ask: by what standard would we judge the hyena’s actions to be justifiable?  Do we judge the hyena as a human?  How do we judge her intentions and motivations?  We do not have to question very far to conclude that saying the hyena’s actions are justified because of drought, is nonsensical.  The hyena was responding to its instincts.  The hyena may also be responding to its instincts when it allows one pup to starve allowing another one to survive, or when she eats a baby zebra in the wild.  Do we apply human ethical standards to these scenarios?  Or is it the fact that these are wild natural instincts that make them somehow superior to our human ethical standards?  This line of questioning is untenable.  It appears that an exaggerated anthropomorphism is being made by the council.  If we are to treat the hyena as a human, then she is guilty of theft as well as murder and may deserve to die.  Sure, there was a drought, and the hyena needed to feed herself and her pups, but so does the farmer.  He needed those goats to provide for himself and his family.  If we insist on defending the rights of all creatures using human standards of ethics based on man’s relationship to other men, then we are bound to end up with very odd consequences.  The goats, for example, what about their rights?  Is the farmer the bad guy for penning them up?  Or is the hyena the bad guy for wanting to eat them?  Could the hyenas actually the good guys, trying to set the goats free?  Perhaps from the goat’s point of view, the farmer is guilty of slavery and the hyena guilty of murder.  But wait: maybe the goats are tickled pink having a three square and a bed, rather than having to fend for themselves in the open savannas.  The fact is nature can’t tell us what they want.  If we apply anthropomorphisms onto nature then we have to be ready to do so in all of its many ways.  There may even be trees that want to commit suicide, who are just plain tired of living.  Trees live a long time.  Have you ever walked through an old growth forest?  It’s like a death ward. 
Not that we don’t care from hyenas or goats or trees, but to misapply human ethical standards; which have come about through thousands and thousands of years of cultural, social and religious conflict and refinement, and which focus on mankind’s relationship to other men and to his concept of a higher moral order, will not lead us in the direction in which we should go.  These ethical norms were made for man.  Therefore should we apply these norms to the animal kingdom?  To do so, where they have no basis whatsoever, is utter nonsense.  In the truest sense of the word, “not sensible, not reasonable, not rational” - it is in fact a joke.  Which makes me wonder if this article; which claims to tell of the “deep understanding” of a indigenous council, which by its virtue of being indigenous must be superior to our Western ethical values; is in fact a tongue in cheek satire of our current legal system, which will extrapolate anything in order to find some way in making Western capitalist civilization feel guilty in the fact that it continues to be wealthy and prosper. 
What this does clearly show, is that there is a need for a new standard of environmental ethics, the scope of which, as we have seen through the numerous questions posed in this response, will necessarily be quite limited: always dealing with man’s side of the relationship due to man’s inability to truly understand anything about nature’s side of the relationship.  There is need for an environmental ethic, but it will require very specific detailed definitions of what we are talking about.  Without establishing these definitions first, we will end up talking in circles about nonsense.

Nature vs Humans. This case has been repeted many times in American Law. The case that would pertain mostly to nature would probably be slavery. Slaves were treated not as human but more as Animals. People began to realize more and more that they had to do something, and began seeing them as equals sharing this earth just as they were. Only a man that went by the name, abraham lincoln had the courage to step up and start what became the civil war. 
Sooner or later someone has to step in and take control of the progressing situation that people are having on the enviorment. America has sided in favor of people over all others in many cases. The Exxon Valdez crashed and spilt millions of gallons of oil into the ocean, but through the America’s legal system, the strongest country in the world, were they have to pay the bare minimun. Finding an equal ballance between state and enviroment is comming soon. Protecting the enviorment and people needs to have a better line, wich seems impossible to draw. When you try to protect the enviorment to much you get all your goats taken away. If you take to little care of the enviorment your hyenas die off.
Enviroment has flaws of its own that people will have to deal with. Human involment has made everything have to tweak themselves drastically to continue. The U.S. Government seems to be carring less and less about enviorment and more about protecting themselves against an invisiable threat. Government officials seem to have major leeway in anything they do. Such as in Cordova Alaska, you have the United States Coast guard. The Coast guard has an abbudence of 25+ year old guys going out with many underage girls. Not only is this wrong, but it is considered Child Molestation. Yet, it is more proffitable to the government to turn a blind eye to this. Corpirations make to much money from butchering animals and the ecosystem, but yet again what is more profitable for the United States even though it may have dramatic effects, mentally and physically on everything we still have yet to do anything.

Man started out utilizing every resource that could be used, wasting nothing because man depended on nature to live. Man still depends on nature, we could not live without it, but man uses it excessively and not as it is needed.
It is no doubt we add to pollution of the land, seas, and air, but I’m not completely sold on suing on its behalf. Suing on behalf of a cut down tree is a little more understandable than suing on behalf of the atmosphere, though I still don’t think thats justified. Where I live, a majority of families have wood stoves where cutting down trees for fuel is necessary to live. Like Livy said, hunting is necessary and keeps the life cycle in check by making sure nothing is too abundant and we have limits to what we can kill for our own basic needs. Yes we are altering the life cycle, but we’re also keeping things balanced which is necessary
The story of the hyena and the goat farmer seems slightly ridiculous. The life cycle works in that plants grow to be food for small animals, to be food for bigger predators. The goat farmer was a predator protecting his food source from another predator, like is done in the wild, yet he was forced to give up his families dependencies, for doing what is natural in life. If a hyena were to enter the territory of a lion, it would be driven away as well, so should we begin to sue on behalf of the lion too?
Man has hurt nature, and I do feel man has a moral obligation to preserve and better it, but I just don’t know if suing on its behalf and altering the simple life cycle we’ve always known is the right way to preserve nature. Instead, do your part. Pick up litter, unplug electronics to conserve electricity, buy economically friendly cars, and do what you can to preserve the world that sustains us. It can live without us, but we surely cannot live without it.

To apply human morals and laws to nature is absurd.  By applying human characteristics to nature we are helping neither nature or humanity.
Is a wolf guilty of murder every time he kills a caribou?  Of course not. He is doing what he needs to do to survive.  If we say that trees should be given the rights of a person than is a woodcutter a killer? If so than we are all guilty of being an accomplice to murder every time we use a piece of paper.

I agree that nature needs to be preserved but I think that there are more affective ways of doing so than seeing nature as being human.

Everything I’ve wanted to say about this article has already been covered, for the most part. I agree with the idea of nature having rights; it takes ‘going green’ to a whole new level.
I’ve also never heard of the idea of restorative justice. If both concepts were adopted into American culture (at least), I think it would do a world of good. It would do the world some good, actually…

Nature already has rights, and it uses them reguraly. When mankind abuses nature, nature stops giving mankind the resources that they abused. When mankind abuses nature, mankind only hurts themselves, and nature lives on. No matter what mankind does to abuse nature, nature will will always strike back and win the war.

Dear G-Unit

I read your comment and I am sorry to ask, what is your point.  Would you please clairify what your trying to say?