The nature-rights movement continues to advance, and that’s bad for human thriving. Now, a “tribunal” will be held in New York — coinciding with Climate Week NYC 2024 — to promote the rights of nature and undermine public support for fossil fuels.

The tribunal’s website is typical of the anti-humanism that permeates the nature-rights movement. For example, the fundamental philosophy of nature rights, as elucidated at the website, is “that the interests of nonhuman beings are of equal importance to human interests.” So, pond scum (pictured above), mosquitoes, trees, squirrels, grass, and scallops are equal to us. That’s self-loathing any way you look at it.

A Misanthropic Approach

Worse, adopting such a misanthropic approach to environmentalism would have serious consequences to human thriving. For example, forget about heating your home in the winter. Fossil-fuel industries are a primary target. Thus, the tribunal will hold a faux trial to prosecute fossil-fuel industries. From the Rights of Nature Tribunal website:

The International Rights of Nature Tribunal will leverage the platform of Climate Week New York to amplify its message and advocate for the Rights of Nature, calling for genuine solutions to the climate crisis. The Tribunal hearing will highlight the fossil fuel industry’s ongoing impacts on frontline communities in the U.S. and worldwide, including ecological destruction and exacerbation of the climate crisis. It will specifically examine the industry’s devastating effects on biodiversity and BIPOC communities.

This would play out in legal prohibitions on extracting oil and natural gas, pipeline construction, and other industry as violative of “nature’s rights” to “maintain its identity and integrity as a distinct, self-regulating, and interrelated being”:

An expert panel will address global cases where the fossil fuel industry has violated Nature’s rights, harmed human rights and environmental defenders, and pushed the planet towards catastrophe. Cases will cover false climate solutions, pipeline projects, oil spills, and sacrifice zones.

Mining in the Crosshairs

It isn’t just fossil fuels that the nature-rights movement targets. Mining is also in the crosshairs:

The mining industry, to be addressed during ‘The Post-Extractivism Non-Mining Era’ session to be held in Canada in March 2025 . . .

At least two copper mines have already been shuttered by nature-rights laws. But if mining violates the putative rights of earth goddess “Pachamama,” how will we obtain the lithium for batteries to run EVs, copper for electric wiring, rare earth for computers, etc.? If this movement get its way, we won’t.

Correction: The West won’t. China will have a monopoly on these crucial resources, as the ruthless leaders of the CCP are not sufficiently decadent to give this idiocy the time of day.

Nature-rights advocacy is Luddism at its most extreme. It is neo-pagan, in that it sees the Earth as a “living being.” And, it has the real potential — and intent — to impede the well-being of the human race.

Cross-posted at National Review.