One day it struck me that the world would be a very different place if environmental crimes were treated in the same way as murders. So, why aren’t they? And should they be?
At the moment such crimes can, mistakenly, feel distant and abstract. If someone came into your flat and set fire to your furniture, stole your valuables, killed your pet, added poison to your water … what would you do? You’d be terrified. You’d go to the police. You might want revenge. You’d certainly want justice. It would be entirely obvious to you that a crime had been committed.
Rights of nature laws have been rapidly expanding for a couple decades now, have stopped massive deforestation and environmental exploitation in legal cases where nature advocates legally argue for and sue on behalf of the rights of nature.
So not exactly like murder, but in 40 countries nature can legally fight back.
Rights of nature aren’t popular yet because we aren’t living at the end of history where everything has been worked out, we’re right at the beginning of human civilization; most people are still struggling to survive, countries pop in and out of existence, a huge percentage of the world is currently officially at war while there are countless unofficial armed, economic and political conflicts everywhere.
An active minority of Maslow-secure, aware people have only just started to figure out how important the environment is and how to protect it in a resource-greedy world where the priority is immmediate profit over longevity.
Yes, and that’s a great idea. We need to value Earth over commerce and profits.
JFC, capitalists did the work for us! They paid unwittingly for research into ‘ecosystem services’
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