I recently wrote critically about a Quebec town that granted “rights to trees.” These include the rights “to life, to natural growth, to integrity, and to regeneration.”

The new law has gotten a lot of media attention. Now, the New York Times has entered the fray, publishing a relatively objective story about the resolution and the nature rights movement’s history, with only one critic quoted — yours truly, from my NRO article (I was not interviewed).

There is more to say about this than I included in my original post. So, let’s dig a little into the Times’ story:

The small town of Terrasse-Vaudreuil, Quebec, was carved out of the forest about 75 years ago. But until recently, the trees had no rights.

The reporter and the townsfolk missed an obvious irony here. The town exists on stolen land! If trees in the forest that were felled to make way for the town had possessed the right to “life, natural growth, to integrity, and to regeneration,” the town could never have been built because those trees would have had the right not to be cut down.

Back to the story:

“If we live in Terrasse-Vaudreuil, it’s because we love trees,” said Sylvie Trépanier, a member of the town’s environmental committee, which drove the resolution. “We want to keep what we have.”

Fine. Pass laws forbidding logging in the town and regulating tree management. That can be — and is — done around the world without granting “rights” to trees.

This resolution is another case of “rights” being granted to non-human entities without its framers understanding the consequences, or even understanding the ultimate meaning of what they enacted:

Adopting the resolution was not merely symbolic, Mr. [Mayor Michel] Bourdeau said in an interview. In Terrasse-Vaudreuil, practically, the resolution requires the town to prioritize canopy protection across all municipal planning. The next step is to review existing regulations and strengthen tree protections, the mayor said, followed by plans to plant and distribute trees to schools, businesses and residents in an ongoing effort to protect and diversify what has now been deemed a collective asset.

What precisely this will all mean when put into law — whether it will require simple replacement of trees, limits on development or on cutting down trees — remains to be decided.

Again, note the irony. The statement implicitly admits that it is essential to human wellbeing — and environmental health, I would add — that the forest be managed. That will entail cutting some trees and trimming others. But if some trees can be cleared — say, for fire prevention, as Quebec has had serious conflagrations in recent years — and others cannot, that denies equal protection to all trees! This is part of why the entire nature rights movement is profoundly irrational. (The movement also reflects a return of neo-pagan earth mysticism.)

Movement activists and much media reporting claim that the cause is merely a “let’s treat nature better” movement. But the actual words of these laws — applied according to their definitions and common-sense meaning — would profoundly hamstring human enterprise and interfere significantly with human thriving by thwarting our ability to make productive use of the earth’s resources.

Indeed, most such laws — not the Quebec town’s — grant universal courtroom standing to anyone who thinks the rights of nature are being violated. Talk about unleashing extortionist lawfare and limiting our productivity to that allowed by the sensibilities of the most radical environmentalists.

I am glad the NYT reported on the story. Most people either remain unaware of the nature rights movement or don’t take it sufficiently seriously to care. But I must say, the reader comments to the Times’s article don’t give me much hope that people yet understand the ultimate consequences that would follow if this radical and subversive undertaking succeeds.