A River Runs Through the Courts

Is there no end to liberal stupidity? Every day we're confronted with a new case of activism that is completely devoid of reality. The latest Wonderland absurdity is: Rivers have rights. Here is an excerpt from The New Republic:


Last September, an unlikely plaintiff sued the state of Colorado: the Colorado River. The lawsuit, claiming that the state had violated the river’s right to flourish and regenerate, was filed by the environmental organization Deep Green Resistance, who brought the suit as next friends of the river. “Environmental law has failed to protect the natural environment because it accepts the status of nature and ecosystems as property,” DGR stated in the filing. The current law “merely regulat[es] the rate at which the natural environment is exploited.” They argued that the very existence of the river was at stake, and that the time had come for courts to recognize damage—not just to human users of the ecosystem, as law typically does, but to the ecosystem itself


Humans aren’t the only ones with rights, after all. In recent years courts have heard cases arguing that chimps, elephants, and other highly intelligent animals should have legal personhood. In India, Ecuador, and New Zealand, courts and legislatures have recently recognized some special rivers as having their own legal rights—the time seemed ripe for DGR’s argument. In 2010, the Citizens United decision extended First Amendment rights to corporations. In 2014, the Hobby Lobby decision secured closely held corporations some measure of religious freedom. U.S. law has granted personhood to corporate entities, the suit argued. Why not ecological ones?


First Amendment rights are afforded to corporate entities because they are comprised of people who have a financial interest in laws and regulations that affect them and their business. A river is not a person. An animal is not a person. This shouldn’t be hard to understand.


Source:

https://newrepublic.com/article/148352/can-rivers-people-too