A bit ago, I warned that environmental radicals were pushing to grant rights to the Great Salt Lake. Thankfully, legislators noticed and passed a bill prohibiting granting rights to any non-human aspects of nature. From H.B. 0249:

63G-31-102. Legal personhood restricted.
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a governmental entity may not grant legal personhood to, nor recognize legal personhood in:
(1) artificial intelligence;
(2) an inanimate object;
(3) a body of water;
(4) land;
(5) real property;
(6) atmospheric gases;
(7) an astronomical object;
(8) weather;
(9) a plant;
(10) a nonhuman animal; or
(11) any other member of a taxonomic domain that is not a human being.

Here's the thing about rights: They can only apply to humans. A plant can't have rights. A (non-human) animal can't have rights. And any laws granting any such rights are fundamentally flawed. But that hasn't stopped legislators, as Mr. Smith points out, from trying.

There has been advocacy among environmentalists to grant rights to nature broadly understood and to each of these identified categories, hence the need for a detailed list. It is also worth noting that rivers, glaciers, and a few individual animals have been granted rights around the world. More than 30 municipalities in the U.S. have also granted rights to nature, including in Santa Monica, a city so developed that there is little nature left other than the mackerel swimming under the pier.

This tomfoolery started with the animal rights movement, on which topic I have a great deal of experience, having been involved in that debate since the days of Usenet.

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Here's the problem with laws of this kind: Rights are a uniquely human concept. They can and do only apply to humans; the moral claim they represent can only be made by humans.

Animal and, by extension, "nature rights" advocates seek to extend to animals, plants, landscape features, gases, and inanimate objects what they cannot have – "rights" - but the actual result of the achievement of this lunatic goal, by the very argument of the advocates for such rights, not only fails in that regard but would result in the stripping of rights from human beings.

Here’s the problem: While "nature rights" advocates may claim that animals, plants, and so forth may benefit from the extension of some variation of the human concept of "rights," the fact remains that the only results will affect humans, not animals, not rocks, not gases, not mushrooms or mountains. The policy changes made will only affect human society; the consequences imposed for infractions will only affect human behavior. These policies can and will only affect humans and will only be detrimental to society.

For example: A rabbit can not make a moral claim against a wolf that would eat it for lunch, nor can a wolf claim it has a right to the rabbit. This agenda would not place that onus of responsibility on animals, trees, or rocks. Only animals can even be said to behave, but these policies would not affect animal behavior in any way, and so they in no way extend to animals, much less inanimate objects and terrain features. We can and do extend legal protections to animals and, in some cases, to tracts of land and so forth, but those are not rights, and again, such protections only affect the actions of humans.

Mr. Smith concludes:

Let’s put this radical movement out of business once and for all. Utah is the fourth state — the others are Ohio, Florida, and Idaho — restricting rights to the human realm where they belong. Congress should pass similar legislation, as should the 46 remaining states. International accords should also ban rights for nature, but that might prove more difficult given the increasingly radical nature of the environmental movement.

Here's my question: Why are laws like this necessary? Don't get me wrong; it's good to see states like these forestalling nitwittery on the part of environmental activists who, as I keep saying, seldom live out in the actual environment. But how has it come to this, where so many are so poorly educated in the moral aspect of rights and obligations that they seek to apply these purely human concepts to rocks?

My inclination is that this is a result of our ever-more-urbanized population. Too many people grow up having little or no contact with wild animals and wild places, and so their concept of the natural world is flavored by activists and Disney movies. I've always said that the science of modern wildlife management, first described by the great Aldo Leopold, was damaged more by "Bambi" than by a legion of PETA supporters. I still think that. The fact that laws like this new one in Utah are necessary makes me all the more convinced that this is, indeed, the case.

Utah has done the right thing here. There will likely be challenges; it would not be in the slightest bit surprising if it ends up in the Supreme Court. In the meantime, we have a step in the right direction - towards sanity.