Quote:
We have to find a balance between nature and commerce, and right now we’re so far out of balance that the world is spinning out of control...
This is precisely the kind of mentality that requires "rights of nature" to begin with; I'm of the opinion that it seems like an odd concept from a technical standpoint but it's necessary for environmental protection to be taken seriously to any extent. Every single component of "commerce" necessitates some usage of natural resources. Humans, as well as all of our creations, arose through natural processes, and are thus not
beyond or
separate from nature in any meaningful respect. Artificiality is something that should be treated as spectral rather than binary; the less common it is in nature, the more effort a species has to put in to create something "artificial."
Are termite mounds artificial structures? They don't arise through biological processes alone; instead, termites take resources from their environment and create their mounds and tunnel systems from these found components. The only argument I can see for a human's home to be artificial while a termite mound is natural is the complexity and quantity of resources required in modern homes, and that breaks down when you consider structures like igloos or adobe buildings that are composed of more limited components. Humans may have had a greater impact on our environment than any previous species, but really that's due to the scope of how much we manipulate our environment rather than any fundamentally unique aspect of our species.
This isn't a semantic distinction. To my understanding, the reason people won't take this kind of protection seriously is because many of us feel that humanity is somehow a "conqueror" of nature and that the planet is entirely our own possession. Other species have no problem manipulating and constructing parts of their environment. We are still dependent on other organisms to survive in the first place, and the destruction of ecosystems around the world is absolutely a problem for human beings. If the only way people will pay enough attention to understand that we are
part of nature rather than something
distinct from it is to grant nature some nebulous legal identity that can contend with us in court, then so be it. It's less destructive and confusing than corporations being granted personhood.