Discuss: If Nature Had Rights

The world is experiencing a global problem of huge proportions.

The Human Population is growing very fast indeed.  The number of people living on this small planet is going has already reached 6.5 billion.

The Human Population was only just over 1.5 billion in 1900.

To appreciate the problem let us consider one fact - give an individual an apple a day.

Paul M Camilleri

Dear Paul M. Camilleri,

Yes, definitely yes.

The human species appears to be in an “overshoot” situation relative to Earth’s limited capacity to sustain life as we know it much longer.

In the course of history, I cannot find any evidence of a single species other than the human species that has precipitated such multi-faceted leviathan-like circumstances.

Inasmuch as human beings possess the attributes required to have induced the gigantic problem we see looming ominously before humanity in the offing, it seems to me that we also maintain the capabilities to take the measure of the problem, however colossal, and find a solution to it, one that is consonant with universally shared values.

Understanding population mathematics (i.e., the exponential function) and human creatureliness would make a big and helpful difference. Appreciating the limits of linear thinking will be another giant step forward.

Once we share an adequate enough understanding of the “global problem of huge proportions,” as you are seeing and reporting it, then it will become possible for the family of humanity to carefully and skillfully find a humane path toward a sustainable future, I believe.

Yours truly,

Steve

Nature DOES have a right - the right to survive - and survive she will, regardless of the outcome for Homo Sapiens or any and all other species currently living. 

I believe we have only begun to see what she will do to ensure her survival; including a complete revision of the planetary ecology into a new balance for the eons yet to come.

Your introductory story reminds me of the Tamil (S.India) jungle cow herder whom I interviewed some 30 years ago, and told me that the loss of a few calves to predators did not trouble him because it was the rent he paid to the king of the jungle (Tiger) to graze his cattle.

The concept of Nature having rights is absurd from the non-dualistic perspective of Nature and life, including human life, being one: Of the same creation, inter-dependent and co-evolving. Nature is not seen as something separate. But it is from our collective anthropocentrism. A seriously flawed world view indeed, considering the state of the Earth,Nature, mother of all.
If humans can have rights, then so should all beings and natural creations by the shared virtue of their existence per se.

Our anthropocentric language and way of thinking change as we evolve and establish new laws, customs and conventions.Animals are not objects of property, commodities, subjects of human exploitation created for our own exclusive use; nor are natural creations mere resources for commerce and trade. But in the dominant world view of materialism and consumerism, such valuations are the norm, embedded in econimic and other vested interests to the exclusion of more enlightened perceptions and treatments: And to the ultimate demise of that way of life and so-called civilization.

(For further documentation go to http://www.doctormwfox.org)

Dear P and the Orion Community,

From all I have seen and heard, many of you in the E & S Community are somehow on the correct track, I believe. I wish this was not the case. It would be my preference that you would be found to be simply wrong and all the politicians and economists, their benefactors and the talking heads in the mass media actually had an adequate enough understanding of the way the world works and a realistic recognition of the “placement” of the human species within the natural order of living things. Sad to say, at least to me, it appears that things will likely turn out the way all of you suggest rather than the other way around.

It appears the predominant culture on Earth and its artificially designed, endlessly expanding global economy could soon have pernicious, inadvertent impacts on the Earth. Would you agree that if the leaders of our culture choose to keep growing the global economy in the business-as-usual way they are doing now, then the future of life as we know it could be put at risk?

The current organization and management of the global economy, given its planful and unrestrained expansion that marks the rampant economic globalization process we see today, also appears to give rise to something that is unintended and potentially ruinous.

If you will, please examine how the hoarding of wealth and resources by millions of people leaves billions of people in the family of humanity hungry and destitute.

For fortunate millions of people with super riches to conspicuously consume resources, while billions of less fortunate people go without adequate food to eat, is an unseemingly economic arrangement in need of modification in a timely fashion.

Inequity is sad enough; grotesque inequity will one day be judged intolerable, I suppose.

If the leaders of our predominant culture choose to examine the way the currently unbridled global political economy grows and the way it distributes Earth’s resources, then perhaps they will find more reasonable and sensible ways to modify this obviously unfair and grossly inequitable economic system and, thereby, assure a good enough future for our children.

Wow.  This is the most intelligent series of comments that I think I’ve ever seen.

Nothing substantive to add here—it’s just wonderful that someone is revitalizing Stone’s & Douglas’s work after all these years....

One way to give nature rights would be to acknowledge that, instead of nature being fair game for anyone or any corporation who wants to do damage to it, it is in reality the property of all creatures in the world and all those yet to be born. And being the property of all of us, now and future, it is our obligation to preserve it for non-harmful use and to keep it in as good shape as we found it for coming generations.

Peter Barnes, in his book, Capitalism 3.0, has outlined how this might be accomplished. One indication of his desire to spread his idea is that he has made the entire book available for reading or free download at http://capitalism3.com/. Despairing of corporations ever restraining themselves voluntarily or of government effectively controlling corporations given the latter’s great power and influence, he proposes that trusts be established to manage commons such as air and water and the broadcast airwaves. The boards of these trusts would be responsible for protecting the commons for future generations and could be sued by anyone if they failed in their duties.

In the book Barnes says this:

What would happen if we, as a society, created a trust to manage the atmosphere on behalf of future generations, with present-day citizens as secondary beneficiaries. Such a trust would charge dumpers for filling its dwindling storage space. Pollution would cost more and there’d be steadily less of it. All this would happen, after the initial deeding of rights to the trust, without government intervention. But if this trust owned the sky, there’d be a wonderful bonus: every American would get a yearly dividend check.
Today we’re awash in capital and literally running out of nature. We’re also losing many social arrangements that bind us together as communities and enrich our lives in non-monetary ways. This doesn’t mean capitalism is doomed or useless, but it does mean we have to modify it. We have to adapt it to the twenty-first century rather than the eighteenth. And that can be done.

And this:

It’s possible to imagine that the next time corporate dominance ebbs, government—acting on behalf of commoners—swiftly fortifies the commons. It assigns new property rights to commons trusts, builds commons infrastructure, and spawns a new class of genuine co-owners. When corporations regain political dominance, as they inevitably will, they can’t undo the new system. The commons now has safeguards and stakeholders; it’s entrenched for the long haul. And in time, corporations accept the commons as their business partner. They find they can still make profits, plan farther ahead, and even become more globally competitive.

If curbing capitalism’s destructive ways is to be a matter of, in Cullinan’s words, “restorative justice rather than retribution,” we would do well to pay close attention to Peter Barnes’ creative and realistic solution.

Thanks to all for the insightful and thought provoking comments.  I am wondering if any of us has an idea about how to turn these ideas into reality.
Since our culture currently finds it acceptable to extend rights to corporations (often times more rights than we extend to human individuals) it makes perfect sense that we could / should extend equal rights to nature.  It seems to me that this would actually be easier since a tree or river is an actual object and a corporation is not. 
Obviously any world view which stems from the assumption that man is apart from is doomed to fail, but we must do our subversive best to work the system from the inside.  A complete rejection does no good, since the cultural machine will keep moving full steam ahead without us.  Ruining the planet we are making our stand on.

I would also suggest reading “The Consent of the Governed” published in an earlier Orion.