{"id":17274,"date":"2025-09-04T20:45:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T20:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=17274"},"modified":"2025-09-04T20:56:57","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T20:56:57","slug":"the-hills-are-alive-with-the-well-approval-of-leftist-politicians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=17274","title":{"rendered":"The hills are alive with the, well, approval of leftist politicians"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/wisconsin-rights-of-nature-law\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Republicans insist lakes are not human: \u2018We need to be protecting the rights of people, not things\u2019<\/em><\/h4>\n

If a tree falls in the forest, can it sue for physical, mental and emotional harm?<\/p>\n

Not in Wisconsin, and two state lawmakers want to make sure the door isn\u2019t opened to the possibility.<\/p>\n

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State Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) and state Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) have introduced a bill<\/a> that \u201cprohibits a city, village, town, or county from enacting a \u201crights of nature ordinance\u201d that confers \u201clegal rights to a natural resource to exist, to be protected against pollution, or to maintain a healthy ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, an ordinance that would grant to the falling tree the same rights as that of a human being.<\/p>\n

Goeben said she acted after a member of the City of Green Bay\u2019s Sustainability Commission, Alderman Joey Prestley, called on the commission to create a rights of nature resolution.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until she did a little research that Goeben realized \u201crights of nature\u201d is an international movement with the goal of granting legal standing to most anything in the name of environmental protection.<\/p>\n

In the past two decades the movement has had some success. Colombia and Ecuador have written rights of nature guarantees into their constitutions. Ecuador was first, in 2008<\/a>, referring<\/a> to the rights of \u201cPacha Mama,\u201d or Mother Earth, where \u201cevery person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before\u201d government bodies.<\/p>\n

In the United States it has been a different matter. No rights of nature law has ever been successfully used in enforcement litigation by local governments or private citizens, according to environmental law scholar Sam Bookman.<\/p>\n

That fact has prompted a pointed change in tactics among rights of nature advocates in this country, Alexandra Huneeus, a professor of international law <\/a>at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the Badger Institute.<\/p>\n

Proponents, beaten up in court, have turned to their county boards and city councils to keep the rights of nature dialogue alive by passing ordinances and resolutions that emphasize environmental protection and downplay prescriptive legal action, Huneeus said.<\/p>\n

There are at least five dozen ordinances or resolutions around the country by Huneeus\u2019 count, including Milwaukee County, which passed <\/a>the state\u2019s first rights of nature resolution in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u202f\u201cHow can a movement keep losing and keep going?\u201d Huneeus asked. \u201cA social movement uses all the tools at its disposal. It is not a litigation movement. It is the use of the democratic system to change the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like the Milwaukee County resolution, the Green Bay resolution \u2014 not an ordinance \u2014 is meant to be nonbinding and advisory, Prestley told a local TV news reporter.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody is going to be able to sue on behalf of a tree or a stream,\u201d Prestley said. \u201cMy idea with this resolution would be sort of codifying it for our city to look at the environmental impact sooner in the development process and more thoroughly in the development process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goeben isn\u2019t buying any of it. \u201cI did a little research and I could not believe this was a thing,\u201d she told the Badger Institute. \u201cI said, \u2018Are you kidding me? No way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Goeben said she also realized that most average people assume the idea that rights could or should be granted to forests or lakes or interesting rock formations was a joke.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it needs to be made clear that this would be a dangerous shift for our entire legal system,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need to be protecting the rights of people, not things.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to ask yourself, if these so-called nonbinding resolutions don\u2019t do anything, why do they want them passed? They haven\u2019t explained why they\u2019re doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The issue is serious enough that Florida, Idaho, Ohio and Utah have passed laws curbing the passage of local ordinances granting rights to nature.<\/p>\n

Wesley J. Smith told the Badger Institute that Goeben\u2019s and Nass\u2019 attention to the rights of nature movement is overdue.<\/p>\n

Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute\u2019s Center on Human Exceptionalism in Seattle, has been tracking and writing about the methods of the movement for more than 10 years.<\/p>\n

In a recent piece<\/a> for National Review about the proposed bill against such ordinances, Smith called the entire rights-of-nature movement and its underlying philosophy \u201ccrackers.\u201d Because it\u2019s so crackers, however, people have consistently underrated or ignored its danger.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s anti-human thinking, a way of thinking that humans are the enemy,\u201d Smith told the Badger Institute. \u201cIt\u2019s irrational. It\u2019s mystical. If everything in our world has rights, then nothing has rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huneeus said legal setbacks explain why nature rights advocates lean so heavily on what Native Americans have done in tribal courts.<\/p>\n

The Ho-Chunk and Menominee nations have nature rights clauses in their tribal constitutions.<\/p>\n

The Menominee in 2020 declared rights for their ancestral Menominee River, even though it is more than 60 miles northeast of the current reservation. It is just one example of why tribal law has never been successfully applied in any rights of nature case in the state, Huneeus said.<\/p>\n

In April, Mary Kunesh, the first Native American to serve in the Minnesota Senate, created an uproar with her \u201cProtection of Wild Rice Act<\/a>,\u201d a bill currently in committee. She and her supporters say the bill doesn\u2019t seek to give human rights status to the aquatic plant but preserves tribal culture and tradition.<\/p>\n

Unpersuaded, state Sen. Nathan Wesenberg said he had no intention of supporting the legislation. \u201cGiving a plant an inherent right over people is something that goes against my God and my religion,\u201d Wesenberg said during an environmental committee hearing in April.<\/p>\n

Mark Lisheron is the Managing Editor of the Badger Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n

Any\u202fuse or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written\u202fpermission.\u202fTo request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute Marketing Director Matt Erdman at\u202f<\/em>matt@badgerinstitute.org<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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