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Quebec town recognizes trees as living beings with rights

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Re: Quebec town recognizes trees as living beings with rights

#61

Post by ClarityJones »

roughly wrote: post #33
tsimionescu wrote: post #9

Such a weird idea. Do they recognize the right of cockroaches to life as well - as they are much more clearly living beings with some realistic chance of being sentient and feeling pain? What about tomatoes or roses or other plants? Note that I'm all for the protection of trees - for pretty obvious environmental, esthetic, and human usage reasons. I just don't think recognizing trees as having their own rights as liv…

We recognize corporations as legal entities with rights because it makes a great deal of the legal wrangling around, eg, assigning blame for criminal activity, or assigning permissions to operate, more convenient. Assigning rights to trees means not having to draw the entire causal chain to the harms done to people by environmental degradation, which can take years to manifest and is often irreversible. It’s the same…

I think this is the opposite of missing the forest for the trees.

It's not a legal fiction that ~"corporations are people." Corporations are literally individual owners, managers, employees, etc. with various personal rights and responsibilities. There is no forest but for the trees that compose it.

Re: Quebec town recognizes trees as living beings with rights

#62

Post by dgellow »

ForceBru wrote: post #59
tsimionescu wrote: post #9

Such a weird idea. Do they recognize the right of cockroaches to life as well - as they are much more clearly living beings with some realistic chance of being sentient and feeling pain? What about tomatoes or roses or other plants? Note that I'm all for the protection of trees - for pretty obvious environmental, esthetic, and human usage reasons. I just don't think recognizing trees as having their own rights as liv…

Yeah, the article reads like they suddenly realized that trees are alive and rushed to make their discovery a law. Look how ridiculous this sounds: > Desrochers' film, called Des arbes et des arts convinced citizens that trees are living entities that breathe and communicate with each other through their root systems. Did the citizens... not know that trees are alive? Have they never seen a tree? What do you mean a f…

That reads like a parody of pseudoscience

Re: Quebec town recognizes trees as living beings with rights

#65

Post by arch_deluxe »

ClarityJones wrote: post #61
roughly wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We recognize corporations as legal entities with rights because it makes a great deal of the legal wrangling around, eg, assigning blame for criminal activity, or assigning permissions to operate, more convenient. Assigning rights to trees means not having to draw the entire causal chain to the harms done to people by environmental degradation, which can take years to manifest and is often irreversible. It’s the same…

I think this is the opposite of missing the forest for the trees. It's not a legal fiction that ~"corporations are people." Corporations are literally individual owners, managers, employees, etc. with various personal rights and responsibilities. There is no forest but for the trees that compose it.

A corporation is a single legal entity with distinct rights and obligations, that’s the entire point of incorporating, so you don’t have to create a fully connected graph of agreements between people, you can group them into entities that can then enter into agreements. The fact that corporations then have some rights similar to those of “natural persons” is the legal fiction referred to.

Re: Quebec town recognizes trees as living beings with rights

#66

Post by sdellis »

tsimionescu wrote: post #29
nemomarx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We kinda draw arbitrary lines? I mean we do animal rights and animal welfare, so what really is the difference between a mouse and a tarantula in those terms

Well, I don't think we recognize a general right to life for animals, even for those protected under the law. Euthanizing a cat or a dog is allowed virtually everywhere, unlike a human, for example. We certainly don't recognize any right to bodily integrity for animals, as even cats and dogs are routinely sterilized. Generally, we instead have animal welfare laws that protect various animals to various extents for va…

In the U.S., animal "rights" are superseded by property rights. There are many places in the U.S. where you can legally shoot a dog if it is chasing your chickens, cat, dog, or other domestic animals as long as you don't shoot it on its owner's property. Many people consider Kristi Noem to be cruel for shooting her puppy (on her own property) for killing someone else's chickens, but it's not illegal. What is tragic is that her dog was being trained to hunt fowl, and it was then killed for doing what it was taught.

The same priority on property rights applies to trees. I can't cut down a tree on your property, but I can cut down a tree on my property. The town in the article made a assertion that is no weirder than corporations being considered "persons" with "rights", yet that is widely accepted in our society.

In fact, corporate "personhood" is even weirder: This town did not make a law to enforce trees rights. However, applying "personhood" status to corporations is written into law all over the place even though corporations are a human construct, not sentient beings. So, again, the only way the current laws are logical is to see that they are all about enforcing property rights, not out of concern for trees, animals, and -- at one time -- humans.

Re: Quebec town recognizes trees as living beings with rights

#67

Post by dudeinjapan »

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #53
chingabazinga wrote: post #40

Imagine trees having more rights than fetuses because "A tree is like a human being," Bourdeau said. "It breathes, it lives, it takes in water. It protects us from all sorts of things."

Does a tree have a direct blood connection to a person? Does a tree die if that connection is severed?

In rare cases, yes. https://nypost.com/2009/04/16/small-tree-found-growing-insid...

Re: Quebec town recognizes trees as living beings with rights

#69

Post by cucumber3732842 »

jimbokun wrote: post #28
I-M-S wrote: post #14

This will be weaponized by NIMBYs to further limit construction of housing and infrastructure, leading to a situation in which trees have more human rights than people.

It already says in the article they won’t be building anymore housing because they are forbidding cutting down trees to clear land to build, and they’re already out of open lots to build on. This is 100% NIMBYs finding new ways to protect their property values.

Does this actually do that thought?

I would be very surprised if Quebec doesn't already have some longstanding clean water act type law that accomplishes the same "can't clear let alone develop land without our discretion and paying $$" type restriction that the NIMBYS are getting here.

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