
Citizens allowed to sue on behalf of Lake Erie when it’s being polluted - howard941
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/2/26/18241904/lake-erie-legal-rights-personhood-nature-environment-toledo-ohio
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supernova87a
This movement is a little stupid, or at best trying to capitalize on headline-
grabbing aspects of it that appeal to laymen. In the best case, I would give
them credit for using "clickbait"-level tactics to get attention on the real
cause to be advocated.

Objects, geographic features, even animals, don't have rights of their own.
Their protection is advocated for by people, for the benefit of people, under
our laws. We fight to protect things like these because we value them as
people. They don't have inherent rights. Rights come with responsibilities.
It's a person-centric view, but what else do we have in our current system?
The Constitution talks about individuals, not objects.

I think their time would be better spent advocating for laws that are
formulated correctly in the legal framework. Though boring, more effective. I
give this low odds of survival in the courts. Why not spend the energy on
something that will succeed? This only will leave people disappointed when it
gets overturned.

~~~
joshAg
We could say the exact same thing about corporations, too, that you said about
objects, geographic features, and animals.

The reason it makes sense to treat those things as if they were a natural
person under the law is because it allows for natural people to group their
common interest into a single legal entity that is separate from any
individual member.

So, take the lake eerie thing. Sure, you could write a law to protect the lake
that focuses on natural people and corporations, but if something happens, say
an oil spill or algae bloom, then each individual who thinks they are be
affected by it would be bringing suit. in the case of a lake oil spill that's
possibly hundreds of separate lawsuits for the exact same incident.

Or, the lake could be granted juridical personhood and the law making the same
protections could be written based on that personhood. If the same theoretical
oil spill or algae bloom happened, there'd only be a single case instead of
quite possibly millions.

And that doesn't even begin to affect issues of standing and actual harm. If
I'm some poor schmuck getting water from downstream of Lake Eerie and there's
an algae bloom or oil spill, it's going to have to be massive for me to be
able to prove i've actually been harmed by the spill and that the harm is
enough to justify the costs of hiring a lawyer. Otherwise whoever caused the
spill is going to either get the case dismissed because i can't prove i was
actually harmed because of their spill, or they're going to argue that my
actual harm is something like 86 cents because that's how much extra it costs
for water filtration, so even with treble damages I'm entitled to less than
the price of a large drip coffee.

And even if you think, well, individuals shouldn't be bringing any sort of
suit for something like that, it should instead be via the government, the
government itself is just another instance of a non-natural person.

~~~
ams6110
Corporations, and the government for that matter, are made up of people.
Lakes, rivers, and forests are not. So there is that difference.

The article itself is an editorial piece with scant details. Who is sued? One
example is given of a lawsuit on behalf of a river in Ecuador, in which
"companies" were sued. Who represents the river? The government? Who is paid
the damages? The government? Are trial lawyers involved? What is their fee?
Surely no potential for shenanigans there </sarcasm>.

~~~
wolco
Corporations are people. People work for corporations and hold roles. Lakes,
rivers support people. Lakes can't sue but people could.

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate
> Corporations are people.

Corporations are entities made up of people that have _incorporated_.
Corporations are therefore supported by people. If the people aren't there, a
corporation will fall.

Forests don't need people, people need forests. To me, that would make them
more important to protect than a corporation. For this reason, suing on behalf
of a river seems quite reasonable to me if a corporation can, too.

~~~
roenxi
> Forests don't need people, people need forests.

Citation needed, your orders of magnitude are probably off.

If we literally burned every tree that probably would be catastrophic, but
most large corporate entities have created more net good than a given forest
or lake.

We rely on corporations for food and comfort, we rely on forests for ... maybe
oxygen? But from a rationalist perspective, the ideal would be to identify how
much forest cover is required and then convert the rest of the land to
productive use.

People don't choose to live in forests and visit cities. They choose to live
in cities and visit forests. Cities are literally 100% corporate supported,
from the infrastructure under the ground to to the tops of the skyscrapers. As
far as I'm concerned, people who don't live in cities are disadvantaged by
their lack of access to corporate support.

~~~
tony_cannistra
Yowza. Lots to unpack here.

> most large corporate entities have created more net good than a given forest
> or lake

"net good?" Perhaps, avoiding the strictly philosophical, you intend to invoke
an economic argument wherein the market value of forests or lakes is defined
within the bounds of the free market? Such that "large corporate entities'"
high economic valuation is "better" than that of a forest? In this context,
given that the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest outside of Seattle (many
trees, many lakes) is valued at $1 Trillion [0], this seems like a bit of a
reach. But, even then, why make the comparison, especially since...

> we rely on forests for ... maybe oxygen

Wildlife habitat, drinking water filtration, CO2 sequestration, timber
production, refugia against climate change, biodiversity reservoirs

Or, if you like: solitude, silence, wild spaces, discovering one's place in an
improbable universe

> from a rationalist perspective, the ideal would be to identify how much
> forest cover is required and then convert the rest of the land to productive
> use.

"Productive Use" is a dangerous phrase. There's much to say, but I'll let
someone else say it.

In an essay ("The Trouble with Wilderness" [1]) by William Cronon, which I
believe you all would enjoy reading, after he finishes dismantling the myth of
wilderness in America, he writes: "one of my own most important environmental
ethics is that people should always be conscious that they are part of the
natural world, inextricably tied to the ecological systems that sustain their
lives. Any way of looking at nature that encourages us to believe we are
separate from nature––as wilderness tends to do––is likely to reinforce
environmentally irresponsible behavior."

Further: "Learning to honor the wild––learning to remember and acknowledge the
autonomy of the other––means striving for critical self-consciousness in all
of our actions. It means the deep reflection and respect must accompany each
act of use, and means too that we must always consider the possibility of non-
use. It means looking at the part of nature we intend to turn toward our own
ends and asking whether we can use it again and again and
again—sustainably—without its being diminished in the process."

> As far as I'm concerned, people who don't live in cities are disadvantaged
> by their lack of access to corporate support.

As far as I'm concerned, people who _do_ live in cities are disadvantaged by
their constant immersion in a world where perverse incentives for corporations
(shareholder expectations, government contracts, CEO salaries) define the
_very environs_ in which a city-dweller spends their days, rather than the
natural world which cradled humanity for hundreds of thousands of years prior
to Google and Facebook, to Bechtel and Skanska.

[0]: [https://www.wilderness.org/articles/blog/what-intact-
forest-...](https://www.wilderness.org/articles/blog/what-intact-forest-
worth-1-trillion-case-greater-seattles-mt-baker-snoqualmie) [1]:
[https://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Trouble_with_Wildernes...](https://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Trouble_with_Wilderness_Main.html)

~~~
kortilla
That trillion dollar valuation is nothing short of complete bogus though. It’s
based on a bunch of handwavy extrapolations that gave them a number beteeen
159 billion and a trillion. They also include a bunch of secondary effects to
get there (the forest wouldn’t sell for anything close to that).

It would be like saying Amazon is worth 100 trillion because of all of the
time and money it has saved society.

------
Scoundreller
Canada has a similar law under the Fisheries Act.

You can pursue a private prosecution if you can find a court willing to hear
your case.

You would get half of the fine (if any).

The only problem is that the Crown can take over the case if it wants, so you
may lose out on your investment if your case is too good.

Other laws let you pursue private prosecutions, but you don’t get a cut, so
there’s little incentive.

~~~
ovi256
>private prosecutions

Is this another name for civil law suit ?

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tomatotomato37
This seems... abusable. I get that's it's going to be great for the lake and
everything, but given the clusterfuck of legal problems that come from
corporate entities being given legal rights I'm hesitant about giving it to
more entities that aren't actual humans.

~~~
Barrin92
we interact with hundreds if not thousands of entities every day that aren't
blood and flesh humans. Government institutions, think tanks, firms, cars,
vending machines, internet routers, all of which in many ways are subject to
regulation and have specific laws set out for them and whatnot.

It's not surprising, because we need to manage all the things we interact with
and depend on on a daily basis.

Honestly a lake is a pretty trivial and important entity because it's a basic
part of human ecosystems.

It's going to get a lot more interesting when we're going to have more
discussions about chatbots, fake news, and other non-human agents in similar
situations.

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Nasrudith
This conception is far saner than other "rights to natrual entity" schemes and
I must praise for being theoretically workable and fully consistent with other
intangibles in property rights - those can be taken too far but there is a
valid purpose to them.

Prior "ecological entity rite" proposals I heard were emotional appeals from
true believers which sounded superficially good on the surface but made no
damn sense. Who exactly can speak for the river with any authority? You say
the river wants to be clean and unfished? I say it wants to be pretty and
colorful with mine run-off! Those being affected by it have a perfectly solid
claim to damages ahead of time and can help bring many parties to the table
for nuance.

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headcanon
As a Michigan resident, I would love it if we were able to create a "council
of the Great Lakes", made up of all states that share coastlines with one of
the 5 lakes, including Ontario and possibly Quebec, and federal
representatives from US and CA. The goal would be to align each political unit
with environmental regulations that affect the lakes, since what happens to
one inevitably affects the rest, especially the downstream lakes Erie and
Ontario.

One example would be to prevent things like different regulations between the
US side and CA side that allow for barges to dispose of semi-toxic sludge they
collect in the CA side of Lake Huron, since they have to clean it properly in
the US side per EPA regulations. No citations for the above but I've heard
rumors.

Even more serious is the underwater Line 5 Oil Pipeline that runs parallel to
the Mackinac Bridge. A spill in that region affects the entire region, yet
only MI and the Trump-led EPA have any decision power as to what to do about
it.

Natural bodies transcend political units, and environmental regulations need
to do the same, as pessimistic as I am about how realistic that is.

~~~
jt2190
> ... I would love it if we were able to create a "council of the Great
> Lakes", made up of all states that share coastlines with one of the 5 lakes,
> including Ontario and possibly Quebec, and federal representatives from US
> and CA.

International Joint Commission
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Joint_Commissi...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Joint_Commission)

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dontbenebby
When you got a fishing license in PA, you used to get a booklet on the bodies
of water, with a small table of which you cannot eat the fish from.

Now, there's a small table listing the ones that are safe. (Or perhaps there
are none nowadays? I haven't had a fishing license in years...)

The pollution of Lake Erie is a travesty.

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egypturnash
Damn, this is awesome.

~~~
mc32
I think it could have been done in a better way avoiding the personhood issue
some people have: set up a regional (necessarily international) authority made
up of various stakeholders which looks after the interests of the lake.

~~~
joshAg
But that regional authority would have to be a legal person, too, in order to
do anything via the legal system. This doesn't avoid the problem of personhood
at all, so much as it changes who/what the nonnatural person actually is.
Like, say we did it your way. We make a regional authority that's only raison
d'etre is looking after the ecological interests of the lake. That's going to
be either some NGO or non-profit or government agency, all of which are
considered persons under the law.

~~~
ams6110
Yes it totally avoids the problem, because the hypothetical authority is made
up of people, thus granted (some of) the legal rights of persons.

~~~
joshAg
Nonnatural persons aren't granted rights under the law because they're made up
of people though. In America they're granted those rights because it makes
dealing with them much easier. That's it. That's why it's so confusing which
rights are reserved only for natural persons and which apply to all persons.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=4K0CWvR2FNEC&pg=RA1-PA284&...](https://books.google.com/books?id=4K0CWvR2FNEC&pg=RA1-PA284&dq=whence+do+non+natural+persons+derive+rights&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiD0ZzYrd3gAhU0NH0KHaokDuQQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=whence%20do%20non%20natural%20persons%20derive%20rights&f=false)

I'm trying to link to the section that starts just barely on the page before
"Indeterminacy of the Personhood Designation"

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somberi
A related read on India's top court reversing the lower court's order which
held that Ganges and Yamuna, two of India's well known rivers, have the same
rights as humans.

[https://phys.org/news/2017-07-rivers-rights-humans-india-
cou...](https://phys.org/news/2017-07-rivers-rights-humans-india-court.html)

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kartan
This is the only way to make companies and governments to pay for
externalities. It is the only way to make capitalism work.

If people can get profit by making other pay the cost, then there is a
perverse incentive for destruction.

~~~
ams6110
I agree in theory. In practice I would see this working like any other class
action. Most of the money will go into the pockets of lawyers, with very
little left to remedy the actual damages.

~~~
Loughla
So the question becomes does it matter where the money goes as long as the
corporation/individual doing harm is punished sufficiently to dissuade them
from future abuse of natural resources?

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QuamStiver
Why this link can be forbidden for me?

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Hamuko
I thought the US was the land of the free and that no one could tell you who
you could and couldn't sue.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _no one could tell you who you could and couldn 't sue_

Anyone can sue anything. That doesn’t mean the court won’t dismiss it.

