Legal rights to rivers, forests and air?

Guardian UK ^

[WaveMan]

Ecuador next week votes on giving legal rights to rivers, forests and air. Is this the end of damaging development? The world is watching. The South American republic of Ecuador will next week consider what many countries in the world would say is unthinkable. People will be asked to vote on Sunday on a new constitution that would give Ecuador's tropical forests, islands, rivers and air similar legal rights to those normally granted to humans. If they vote yes - and polls show that 56% are for and only 23% are against - then an already approved bill of rights for nature will be introduced, and new laws will change the legal status of nature from being simply property to being a right-bearing entity. The proposed bill states: "Natural communities and ecosystems possess the unalienable right to exist, flourish and evolve within Ecuador. Those rights shall be self-executing, and it shall be the duty and right of all Ecuadorian governments, communities, and individuals to enforce those rights."

[farlander]

In other news, circa 2018, Ecuador disappears into the jungle and is never heard from again.

[livius]

This is totally insane, but it gives the state enormous power in enforcing those “rights.” Basically, it makes the state the giver of “rights” and completely rejects natural law. Natural law accords God-given rights to man, and these rights (being natural) have generally been agreed upon or at least implicit in all human societies.

When the state can declare that a non-human thing has “rights,” it is creating these “rights” itself, deciding what they are, assigning them - and then enforcing them.

I was rather puzzled why my local Commie front group, a bunch of lefties who go to Cuba all the time and cultivate a small Potemkin village there, had suddenly gotten into eco-stuff about the mountain jungles there. Some of this “rights” language was in it, but I thought it was probably just a bad translation. It’s obviously just the latest tactic of the Marxist state in completely taking over and dominating people’s lives.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

I work on environmental issues, but this is ridiculous. It is a perfect example of what happens when a marxist takes power.

Guess Correa wants the ‘treehugger’ vote. I want to see the voter registration program for trees, rivers, plants, and wildlife. Probably will be based on the Chicago voter registration plan - if it is alive, register it, as a Democrat.