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Clean environment could become U.N. human right

reuters.com

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Re: Clean environment could become U.N. human right

#131

Post by otrahuevada »

Kilonzus wrote: post #114
otrahuevada wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not understand this framing. Not joking, it's just... how exactly does proposing a right to not live drenched in poison present a slippery slope like the one you're proposing? Procedurally, I mean. Presumably the same mechanisms used to vote for/against this could be used to prevent terrible people from pushing for terrible things?

Hey I'm not a diplomat but I believe the problem with this specific problem is that in the the case of 'right to clean environment' how to you protect your rights? Do you sue your neighbor for litter or the company down the street for emissions? How do you prove that emissions are out of control? Also how do developing nations who may not have the legal strength who are just as affected by pollution from developed na…

This being the UN, I don't think there's going to be many legal intricacies because it's mostly a debate forum with little to no strings attached. Even ICC rulings serve more of a ceremonial/PR role than an actual court ruling: The world has judged you and very publicly found you guilty of stuff, but it's really up to the Security Council countries' own governing bodies to do something about that.

As things stand, what this decision does is make it look like the UK has a vested interest in polluting the world, which makes exactly 0 sense to me from a foreign policy POV: this is not something countries want to look like they stand for.

Hence my asking, I just can't make the decision or the arguments behind it make sense?

Re: Clean environment could become U.N. human right

#132

Post by eli_gottlieb »

a_diplomat wrote: post #73

Hi. Diplomat working with UN issues here. The issue at hand here is not this resolution in itself. It's the fact that opening up human rights to "new" rights sets a precedent. And that precedent will be used by other countries to shift the language on human rights in a more authoritarian direction - or dilute human rights as such. So it's basically about using one set of issues, which in substance are hard to fight,…

> Hi. Diplomat working with UN issues here. The issue at hand here is not this resolution in itself. It's the fact that opening up human rights to "new" rights sets a precedent. And that precedent will be used by other countries to shift the language on human rights in a more authoritarian direction - or dilute human rights as such.

You mean sorta like... the past 50 years or so?

Re: Clean environment could become U.N. human right

#133

Post by throwawaybchr »

trasz wrote: post #38
throwawaybchr wrote: post #6

China has been denying people human rights daily, what does the UN do to them?

US has been droning innocent people like crazy, what does the UN do to them? It's just as relevant as your comment.

It is, I chose one example. Do I have to document all such examples?

Re: Clean environment could become U.N. human right

#134

Post by mcdonje »

refurb wrote: post #117
mcdonje wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Confused about how that works. I believe the part about authoritarians trying to trojan horse bills that erode our rights disguised as unobjectionable bills. We see it all the time with bills that restrict our right to privacy disguised as anti-child porn legislation. People who come out in favor of the 4th amendment are painted as vile criminals. That said, I don't see how it works in this instance. Care to elaborat…

Democracies criticize authoritarian country for torture which violates human rights. Authoritarian country criticizes democracies for environmental “crimes” which violates human rights. Says they have no right to criticize since they also violate human rights. Massive whatsboutism that detracts from the important issues.

Do you have an example of this? I mean, there's a pretty good case to be made that the US and the companies it supports and enables are guilty of some serious environmental crimes that majorly contribute to climate change and negatively impact people's health. Climate change is an existential issue. How do we decide that other countries are engaging in whataboutism by bringing things like that up as opposed to us engaging in whataboutism to distract from our refusal to take meaningful action on environmental issues that directly impact people across the globe?

Re: Clean environment could become U.N. human right

#135

Post by 9wzYQbTYsAIc »

Veen wrote: post #83
a_diplomat wrote: post #73

Hi. Diplomat working with UN issues here. The issue at hand here is not this resolution in itself. It's the fact that opening up human rights to "new" rights sets a precedent. And that precedent will be used by other countries to shift the language on human rights in a more authoritarian direction - or dilute human rights as such. So it's basically about using one set of issues, which in substance are hard to fight,…

I'm always curious how diplomats and politicians regard the "rights" in the U.N. declaration of human rights. They don't conform to a defensible set of natural rights (even if it's agreed that such things exist), so are they considered a goal or a declaration of how the UN thinks people should live? Does it matter that few UN members conform to them? Or that they represent quite a specific ideological viewpoint in ma…

> In short, what's the point of a lengthy declaration of "rights" that almost none of the members seems committed to.

The stated point of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is to prevent the need for constant Declarations of Independence through violent revolution.

Re: Clean environment could become U.N. human right

#136

Post by joconde »

shock-value wrote: post #101
mgbmtl wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All rights subjective and temporal. Just take the question of freedom of speech, and how that evolves in time, how it varies between countries (even between allied countries, such as the US and Canada). One could argue that the desire for an increased level of comfort of one set of people should not happen at the detriment of the right to clean water, for example, of another set of people. Many countries will have th…

As in this case, the "right" to clean water (or any other exhaustible resource) makes no sense -- at least if described in such blunt terms. Hypothetically, what happens in a drought, when there is no water for anyone? Have your rights been violated? If so, by whom? If it's rather described as a right to nondiscrimination in the distribution of clean water (with respect to some set of properties, which could include…

> Hypothetically, what happens in a drought, when there is no water for anyone? Have your rights been violated?

If the government had a reasonable way of preventing that and didn't, I'd say yes. Otherwise, no.

> If so, by whom?

By whoever was in charge of maintaining your water supply (government again), or nobody if this wasn't doable.

A government violates your rights when it fails to take action to protect them.

Re: Clean environment could become U.N. human right

#137

Post by puglr »

abduhl wrote: post #119
puglr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue at hand here is not this resolution in itself. It's the fact that opening up human rights to "new" rights sets a precedent. And that precedent will be used by other countries to shift the language on human rights in a more authoritarian direction - or dilute human rights as such. It occurs to me that this same argument can be used against anything that ought to be enshrined at the UN as a human right. An…

Take the right you just proposed. Why is it limited to a “who”? Why is it linked to sex or gender? Is this a singular love or is polygamy a human right? Does love need to be reciprocated? What’s the fundamental human right? Shouldn’t we be worried that these so-called human rights are being newly discovered relatively recently?

> Why is it limited to a “who”?

"Who" implies a human. The topic is human rights. I'm not sure I follow what this particular question is trying to get at.

> Why is it linked to sex or gender?

Pro answer: It isn't. We've known this since prehistoric times.

Con answer: Because only a man and a woman can create a new human life on their own.

> Is this a singular love or is polygamy a human right?

Age differences would have made for a better example here. But my answer would be that this question is that it frankly doesn't matter for my example. I.e., one does not need to answer the question of "how many people should we allow someone to marry" to answer the question of "should people be allowed to marry someone with the same genitals as themselves". Indeed, our global reality reflects that.

> What’s the fundamental human right?

What I previously stated: "loving who you want without regard to sex or gender". Notice that it does not say "without regard to singular vs plural love" or "without regard to reciprocation" or anything else.

> Shouldn’t we be worried that these so-called human rights are being newly discovered relatively recently?

That's... how it works.

We (or at least Western society) don't enshrine rights into laws and constitutions until we realize something we ought to be allowed to do freely is being unduly infringed upon. That's a process that doesn't stop.

We should be worried when we stop "discovering" new rights, not the other way around. Humanity has yet to produce a generation that "has it all figured out" with respect to fundamental rights, and there is no reason to assume we ever will.

Re: Clean environment could become U.N. human right

#138

Post by imtringued »

realityking wrote: post #89
tgb wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Can you expand on an example of a 'new' human right that would be authoritarian in nature? I don't really understand the "right to development" example. It looks like it was adopted by the UN already in 1986 and I'm not sure if the authoritarian implications. https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/righttod...

There‘s an explanation, with a particular view point, here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/escr/pages/areescrfundamenta... The history is that western democracies generally emphasized civil rights while poorer countries social rights. This “evened the playing field” to play off rights against each other. For example one can claim that it’s been necessary to to limit certain civil rights to improve the situation of s…

> (Take away the farms and give them to the workers).

Why not just adopt the damn land value tax or just do plain old ground leases? Come on. Why does everything have to be solved with some stupid repossession thing where people get free shit that they don't want to take care of?

Re: Clean environment could become U.N. human right

#139

Post by caseysoftware »

RandomLensman wrote: post #55

This would be the ultimate blocking right to any large scale environmental engineering and change. But we will need that ability for change, the latest in a billion years or so... I don't understand the short-term, anti-growth thinking that has taken hold in recent years (we have been there before with forecasts of impending doom, of course).

What if it's not "short-term, anti-growth thinking" and simply "pro-control thinking"?

Do the various statements, proposals, and policies make more sense?

Re: Clean environment could become U.N. human right

#140

Post by gnomewascool »

colpabar wrote: post #92
gnomewascool wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is to provide, say, "a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family", which is also a basic human right, as listed by the original (1948) Universal Declaration of Human Rights[0]? The fact that there's nobody to provide it, doesn't mean that it's not a basic human right. [0] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...

I think people take issue with rights that must be provided by some external party because if said external party is not providing said rights, what do they really mean? Part of the argument is that human rights should only include "rules" that say what cannot be done to you, like us-style free speech, where the government cannot put you in prison just for saying something they don't like.

What about rights like the right to freedom from slavery or torture which, on the one hand, are about things not being done to you, but on the other may depend on third parties (for instance a government) from preventing people from doing these things to you?

The declaration on human rights is not really government-centric, so the US-style free speech comparison makes little sense.

> what do they really mean?

They're a yardstick to measure how well we as humanity, and, more specifically particular regions or systems, measure up to what we, as humanity, consider to be the things that every human should (expect to) have. (Sorry for the bombasity.)

For instance, if we lived in a libertarian/anarchist utopia, with no government, it would still make sense to ask whether people's human rights were being met.

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