UN declares access to a clean environment a human right:
GENEVA, Oct 8 (Reuters) - The U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday recognised access to a clean and healthy environment as a fundamental right, formally adding its weight to the global fight against climate change and its devastating consequences.
The vote passed with overwhelming support, despite criticism in the lead-up from some countries, notably the United States and Britain. read more
The resolution, first discussed in the 1990s, is not legally binding but has the potential to shape global standards. Lawyers involved in climate litigation say it could help them build arguments in cases involving the environment and human rights.
"This has life-changing potential in a world where the global environmental crisis causes more than nine million premature deaths every year," said David Boyd, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, who called the decision a "historic breakthrough".
The text, proposed by Costa Rica, the Maldives, Morocco, Slovenia and Switzerland, was passed with 43 votes in favour and 4 abstentions from Russia, India, China and Japan, prompting a rare burst of applause in the Geneva forum.
[...] Critics had raised various objections, saying the Council was not the appropriate forum and citing legal concerns.
Environmental defenders had said Britain's earlier critical stance was undermining its pledges ahead of the global climate conference it is hosting in Glasgow next month.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 16 2021, @10:27PM (65 children)
Saw the headline, and read on expecting to see that the US was the lone non-signatory or in a tiny minority surrounded by its bitches. Wasn't and, at the time was, disappointed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday October 16 2021, @11:01PM (61 children)
Better to just say no to this garbage. In a democracy, we already have the tools to improve the environment. And in the US, they've been used for half a century (more like 150 years for conservation). So not only is it there no such right, there's no need to create such a right.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday October 16 2021, @11:15PM (1 child)
So you don't mind if my dog pees on your petunias?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday October 16 2021, @11:35PM
The UN is the perfect tool for keeping your dog off my petunia rights.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by corey on Saturday October 16 2021, @11:30PM (34 children)
Meh, yes you’re not really that objectively wrong but doesn’t mean you shouldn’t support it. It’s a decent initiative with human needs at its core. That’s why all the other countries supported it. At least in the US most people have access to clean air and water (most anyway), but there are other countries whose people don’t.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday October 16 2021, @11:47PM (33 children)
It writes checks that society can't cash. For example, there's no way that eight billion people can have zero environmental impact. So there's a baked in conflict between the right to a clean environment and the right to life/existence or whatever the UN calls it these days.
In contrast, regular developed world society has come up with a reasonable compromise between the two without requiring any sort of right to either.
And of course, the UN will come up with more rights that society is supposed to create and enforce without the economic power to support those rights.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday October 17 2021, @12:05AM (18 children)
No smokestacks/sewer lines discharging upwind/stream near your house, right?
Curb your dog
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @12:26AM (17 children)
Indeed.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday October 17 2021, @01:36AM (16 children)
Very "reasonable compromise", I see...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @10:58AM (15 children)
One wonders why we need a "right" when we've already fixed the problem? I wonder if there's a deeper game.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @01:36PM (14 children)
Did the US also "fix" this in every other country they have exploited/plundered over the generations ?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @05:20PM (13 children)
Looks like the US also failed to fix your broken logic. Shame on them!
But to answer the question, obviously no. But then, there would no reasonable expectation that the US should so fix this in every other country they have exploited/plundered. So no serious reason to ask the question in the first place.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @05:38PM (12 children)
They day you learn to feel shame is the day your head implodes.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @06:36PM (11 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @08:53PM (8 children)
For writing off externalities as if they don't exist? Implying that colonialism is right and good? Suggesting that the US has no responsibility to improve on it's bad behavior?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @10:22PM (7 children)
These externalities would be? I'll note that in the environmentalism game there really are imaginary externalities.
Like you just did above? See what I did there?
Or suggesting that the US has responsibility for a region once someone from the US has acted bad in the region. I guess Mongolia has a lot of environmental responsibilities, right?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @11:06PM (6 children)
Replies like that is why most people have stopped bothering with details. Khallow == wrong, and the rare sensible comment isn't worth the mountain of shit you dump inbetween. Never a you problem with conservatives though which is another reason people don't bother adding details when calling out your bullshit.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @11:26PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @02:12AM (4 children)
In other words, you're not even remotely serious. I certainly am not writing posts like this [soylentnews.org], this [soylentnews.org], this [soylentnews.org], this [soylentnews.org], this [soylentnews.org], this [soylentnews.org], this [soylentnews.org], and so on.
I bring it. You just complain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @02:19AM (3 children)
You bring apologetics and excuses why the world should continue decimating the environment. Speaking of complaining, that is all you do when someone calls out your bad logic, false information, and faith based assumptions. Get mad brah, you one selfish prick and until that bothers you you're gonna have a hard time connecting with people outside your crazy bubble.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @02:34AM (2 children)
I take it you disagree? My take is that the apologetics and excuses, such as they are, are vastly superior arguments to the claims that we need a right to access to a clean environment without regard to society's ability to fulfill that right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @06:30AM (1 child)
Exactly, because you are one of the selfish idiots that doesn't want to be inconvenienced for any reason so you swallow all the lies saying there is no real problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @03:08PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @10:27PM (1 child)
Your entire world view. I believe with the pandemic at least you aren't full rightwing, but most everything else you are a sociopathic temporarily embarrassed millionaire.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @11:28PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @03:36AM (7 children)
Everybody agrees that money are the most important thing, peoples lives be damned.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @03:56AM (5 children)
There does indeed seem to be a lot of "peoples' lives be damned" attitude in this thread - a thing I'm trying to fix. Peoples' lives will be the currency this check is written in.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @04:13AM (4 children)
If this is the result of your trying so far, make you should stop it.
[Citation needed]
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @10:46AM (3 children)
You're not the only reader on the planet. Just because you refuse to listen to reason doesn't mean everyone else does too.
Because? My take is that you already have the life experience you need to figure this out on your own. For example, consider the "money are the most important thing" that was bandied [soylentnews.org] about earlier. This is a typical fallacy to just reduce some complex problem to "it's just money". But even money gets used for things you need to stay alive and to better your life, like food, shelter, education, etc. So even if we really were just talking about money, we're talking about something that affects your life directly.
What's missed is that money is merely a medium of exchange. What's being exchanged is what's important. Among other things, it's stuff for most of the rest of humanity to thrive. When we just throw positive "rights" about what you deserve without regard for what is being taken away, then we're making a shaky situation worse. A clean environment is only part of the wants of humanity.
And we're missing one of the key demographic dynamics of the 21st Century - namely that poor people are fertile people. Unless we solve poverty, we'll always be one die-off away from environmental disaster. For example, what will happen to large animals in Africa, should there be a billion plus starving people rampaging about eating everything they can? We can fix that, but some people are more interested in chasing the rights unicorn than in solving problems.
My solution is elevate everyone to developed world status, including the whole of Africa. That's the only long term solution we have yet to come up with. But that means taking a realistic attitude towards environmental damage. The environment will need to be harmed in the short term so that we don't have a worse disaster in the long term.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @11:08PM (1 child)
"The environment will need to be harmed in the short term so that we don't have a worse disaster in the long term."
and that is why no one should bother discussing anything with khallow the industry shill
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @11:30PM
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday October 18 2021, @01:17AM
Why? What are you going to do, bring back the wood fueled steam engine?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @01:42PM
The "writes checks" phrase is a saying that merely means making promises you can't keep. It has nothing to do with money because the presence or absence of money says nothing about the ability to meet an obligation.
A common variation is "His mouth made promises that his body couldn't keep", such as describing a person starting a barfight with empty trash talk ("I know karate!").
So anyway, going back to this, we have a nebulous open-ended obligation (which, if you glance at the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights [un.org] is one of many such rights). Where's the ability to back these many promises, especially since fulfilling these obligations often results in some decline in the ability to do so further?
Once again, we find a group of people demanding that society shoulder more burdens without regard for how to improve society's ability to do so. It's magic thinking.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pTamok on Sunday October 17 2021, @07:42PM (5 children)
But it is a fine target to aim for. There's a concept in risk mitigation known as 'ALARP' - as low as reasonably possible - and it strikes me as entirely reasonable to take steps to minimise our collective (negative) effect on the environment.
It is, of course, entirely possible that in the future human ingenuity could find a way to improve the environment above a baseline of benign non-interference, but not leaving things in a worse state than we inherited them would be a good start.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @10:36PM (4 children)
My take is that we're already near that limit. Sure, I can see ways to improve (such as more set aside of wilderness and partial wilderness), but I can also see areas where more environmental allowance now means a better environment in the future - such as pushing for near 100% developed world globally.
And I would elevate the statement "It is, of course, entirely possible that in the future human ingenuity could find..." to "Human ingenuity will find..."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @02:24AM (3 children)
"Who cares what we do now, humans will figure a way to fix our mistakes in the future so whatever!"
Yeah, peak khallow right there. Can you go away? You have literally nothing useful to say, ever. Just constant cheer leading for the status quo destroying our home.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @04:18AM (2 children)
I think that more accurately characterizes the viewpoint of the environment rights people. They want their rights now, the future will somehow figure out how to pay off that obligation. I guess they'll never figure that people will fix those mistakes by reversing them.
My model of thinking here is space development which like other sorts of human progress is somewhat alien to normal ways of behavior. When we go out and run a bunch of errands, we start by gathering everything we need for those errands. We don't typically think "Oh, I'll learn how to cook lasagna" on the way to pick up lasagna supplies from the grocer. In space development, a lot of people and organizations are starting even though they haven't worked out most of what they plan to do yet. Go to Mars? They'll figure out how to live on Mars, manufacture methane/LOX fuel, and a variety of other needs on the way.
That strange sort of thinking applies here as well. We don't need to halt any human progress until we perfect some later technology or system. It's rational to assume that we'll have it worked out by the time we need it. We have the time and brainpower. It's time to delegate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @06:34AM (1 child)
"It's time to delegate."
Yeah, so sit down and stop trying to make things worse.
"My model of thinking here is space development"
Space will not help humanity if the planet falls to pieces. You truly are a useless lump with more dreams than brains.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @03:14PM
Good advice. When are you going to follow it?
Unless, of course, it's well enough established to do just that. Diversification is a real thing.
And of course, you ignored my main point which is that the mode of thinking is ideal for environmentalism and such which have long time lines. It's rational to expect that future generations with more knowledge and better technology will have solved problems that we find difficult today.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @12:47AM (16 children)
It is simple. Everyone gets a clean environment (free from lead, etc.) with safe clean drinking water.
The standards for what counts as safe have already been established. Here are water regulations for the US. Similar standards exist for other known toxins. Our issue is that you only get a safe clean environment if you can afford it. And, even then, the multi-million dollar houses in West LA turned out to be sitting on toxic waste that seeped over from the 'other' side of town / the toxic dumping predated turning formerly industrial areas into residential areas.
https://www.epa.gov/dwreginfo/drinking-water-regulations [epa.gov]
The US isn't a good example of things working well.
Folks who can light their tap water on fire because fracking nearby their property, and nothing they can do about it.
https://www.propublica.org/article/scientific-study-links-flammable-drinking-water-to-fracking [propublica.org]
Half a million barrels of DDT waste dumped just north of Catalina Island in CA, by the same company that dumped around the same amount into the LA city sewers creating another toxic plume right off the coast. Dumping toxic chemical waste in this industrial city has been so widespread that 40% of drinking water wells in the LA area are contaminated. Due to the drought, LA Water and Power says they will start drawing from contaminated wells that had previously been abandoned. The story is similar across the country.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/forever-chemicals-are-widespread-in-u-s-drinking-water/ [scientificamerican.com]
When San Diego dredged S.D. bay, the plan had been to distribute the sand on area beaches that had sand washed away by storms. But, it was found that the material being removed was filled with toxic waste that the US Navy had dumped into the bay.
There are superfund sites (massively polluted sites where the government has stepped in to do the cleanup after greedy capitalists externalized the costs of doing business by dumping waste into the environment either intentionally, or through negligence (often negligence was associated with cost cutting).
https://www.epa.gov/superfund/search-superfund-sites-where-you-live [epa.gov]
And, of course, the rich who create the pollution don't want it near themselves or their families, so areas near oil refineries, chemical plants, etc. are only places people live if they cannot afford to live anywhere else.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-poor-neighborhoods-breate-more-hazardous-particles/ [scientificamerican.com]
https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/study-low-income-neighborhoods-disproportionately-feel-environmental-burde/543498/ [smartcitiesdive.com]
And, we export our pollution to other areas. Either in production of goods we import, or waste that we export.
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/how-pollution-affects-the-poor/ [globalcitizen.org]
Keep in mind, one of the worst offenders is a US oil company, but rich western European nations like the Netherlands are also guilty.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/niger-delta-oil-spills-decoders/ [amnesty.org]
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nigeria-exxon-mobil-spill/exxon-mobil-oil-spill-hits-communities-in-southeast-nigeria-local-leader-idUSKBN14A1RC [reuters.com]
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @03:06AM (9 children)
That is the rub. Without the economy to deliver these promises, you're just adding an unproductive lawsuit step to the mess.
The US was much worse off in the 1960s. It is indeed a good example of things working well.
Or rather because their ground water naturally has natural gas in it. You've now gone from a right to have access to a clean environment to a right to live in a particular, hazardous place. My take is that choice waives any right to a clean environment provided by others.
And the problem is supposed to be? Are we going to have a right to live in the rich parts of the world?
My take on this is that it's way too open-ended a promise. You're all over the place as to what people deserve and where they should live. I think this all is a solved problem. The nuisance businesses you mention are all regulated. Just enforce the regulation - no need for rights we can't afford.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday October 17 2021, @03:39AM (5 children)
No, just the clean parts of the world, uncontaminated by the rich.
Curb your damn dog!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @10:54AM (4 children)
I think we have a bit of insight into the fustian mind here. That dog started as your dog [soylentnews.org]. Then it became somehow my dog rhetorically. I think it's a typical pattern of yours: create a problem and then blame it on someone else.
Well, there's an obvious solution. Stop creating your problems. Curb your damn dog!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Monday October 18 2021, @12:02AM (3 children)
Yeah, your sewer pipes and smokestacks are the "dog", crapping on everybody's yard. We expect you to at least clean up, and then, one more time, curb your dog
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @02:05AM (2 children)
Fusty, I need you pull your head out of your ass for a moment.
*POP*
That dog has been curbed through half a century of law and regulation. You may now shove your head back up your ass.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday October 18 2021, @02:54AM (1 child)
Only the chihuahuas
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @04:04AM
No other dogs.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @06:47PM (2 children)
So. you are suggesting that we have dead toxic wastelands so we don't interfere with the ability of the rich to get richer?
Yes, the US used to have rivers catching fire. And, we are headed back to that because of corrupt politicians who gutted environmental regulations
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/12/15/the-trump-administrations-major-environmental-deregulations/ [brookings.edu]
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks-list.html [nytimes.com]
You are wrong. Read the reference in the GP post. It begins, "For the first time, a peer-reviewed scientific study has linked natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing with a pattern of drinking water contamination so severe that some faucets can be lit on fire."
The problem is that we are allowing rich parasite capitalists to poison the planet so they can get richer by offloading the costs of their actions on the rest of us. By not allowing the rich parasites to externalize these profound costs, there will be no horribly polluted dead zones where the poor are forced off to live until their early deaths from cancers. etc.
It is simple. Rich parasite capitalists must pay the full costs for their actions. Their polluting of the world would stop overnight. Better, make them pay, fully, for the cost to cleanup existing pollution. The richest might suddenly find themselves reduced to wealth similar to the plebs they have been poisoning all these years-- another benefit for society.
Both of us our consistent.
I want to see the rich parasite capitalists held responsible for their actions, so there will not be a poisoned planet. Everyplace would (after 10s to 10s of thousands of years) be a safe clean environment after that. A universally recognized right to a clean environment would be a start toward this goal.
You, are acting as a sycophant for the rich parasite class supporting policies that are against your own interests, and those of your family, your neighbors, and strangers all around the globe.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @01:39AM
Of course, you could find no such examples.
Sorry, I don't see the alleged gutting. For example, anyone in the US should applaud the Trump administrations rollback of the Obama administration's expansive interpretation of "waters of the US" rule. This is very similar in scope and abuse to the US Border Zone [aclu.org].
Notice also how so much of these rules are just reversing fiat decisions by a previous administration? There's a process by which we can prevent such rollbacks - legislation. If these had been passed as laws by Congress instead, then rollbacks would also require legislation.
That's what laws and regulation are for. Just because there were rollbacks of mostly bad regulation doesn't mean that the rich parasites are suddenly unregulated.
I completely disagree. A right to a clean environment is not a clean environment. What are missed here are the unintended consequences. Mandating said right without providing a means by which the right can be realized by society is worse than useless. It undermines real rights both because it's now a game of rights against rights, and because it creates a precedent where the government can fail to provide any rights without consequence.
I wish people would actually read my arguments rather than shoehorn me into some awful morality play. I assure you, I know quite well what the interests are of all those people. It doesn't change my views.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @01:53AM
On this, I read:
That statement also comes from your peer reviewed scientific study. So in other words, they didn't actually find evidence that the drilled oil/gas wells were leaking. After all, how does natural gas leak out in such high concentrations, but these other chemicals do not? At the least, the leaking natural gas would act as a transport mechanism to push these chemicals towards the surface.
There's a simpler explanation. Both the high concentrations of natural gas in ground water and the wells are near the underground natural gas. That strikes me as the likely cause of this correlation.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @03:39AM (5 children)
For a starter, move khallow there. Morally bankrupt as he is, we can't afford let him pollute Yellowstone.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @04:26AM (4 children)
<sarcasm>With what? Thoughtcrime?</sarcasm>
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @08:13AM (3 children)
You jest, but yes your thoughts encourage pollution and industry over the environment. Defending morally bankrupt capitalists seems to be your only real passion.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @10:26AM (2 children)
The thing that keeps getting lost are the eight billion people. There is no way that they'll come with zero pollution and industry.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @02:26AM (1 child)
You really are thick huh? At least you have company modding you up, or are you one of the sock puppeteers?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 19 2021, @12:18PM
I think it more likely that there are other non-idiots on the internet. I wonder if you've said anything substantial in this discussion or is this post your best one to date?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @12:48AM (2 children)
Giving freedom to all deprives property from some... Guaranteeing the safety of the majority often calls for imprisoning a few... All rights are in utter conflict with each other. The law is there to navigate those issues.
The people of Flint, Michigan would like to have a word with you. Preferably, over a drink.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @03:52AM
The problem here is that we're talking about conflicting rights on the same people.
Actually, that's usually false. Conflicts happen, but it's not the normal state of things. For example, there's little conflict in the basic US Bill of Rights. My speech or choice of religion has almost no effect on anyone else's rights.
The whole point of rights is to constrain the law and in practice the law frequently fails to navigate the relatively mild negative rights constraints of modern democracies. My point here is that you can easily get into impossible situations when you treat benefits and entitlements as if they should be rights. No amount of navigation can get you out of a situation where you're mandated to provide things you can't afford to provide.
To the contrary, this is a situation where things worked. First, the mess happened because the authorities decided to make a dangerous change to the Flint water system and then hide the problem by falsifying water tests (which were intended to find the very problem of too high acidity that was being hidden) - which was a serious breaking of the law. Explicitly having a right to clean water or whatever would not have changed the incentive or the tricks that were used to break the law. Nor would it have changed the activism that tested for lead, uncovering the scheme, or the resulting legal changes that restored Flint to compliance with water regulations.
The system worked without that right.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @11:19AM
It wasn't the greedy capitalists that did that to Flint. It was the state government that did that. Keep that in mind, statist.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Sunday October 17 2021, @01:41AM (3 children)
Sorry, khallow is on the wrong side here, the US side, against human rights and in favor of poisoning for profit. As usual.
(Score: 2) by corey on Sunday October 17 2021, @11:08PM (1 child)
Looks like khallow is busy on this story, so many comments.
From my perspective, the lack of a clean environment is partly to do with the world’s population, but mostly to do with capitalism, which the US is a major influencer/promoter of over the past 70 years. Pollution is a major part of the externalised costs of products. Most stuff is made in China and developing nations where factories dump or leak environmental waste next to or over people living there. That cost is not borne by the consumers in the US or other developed nations.
So the system is broken, not the UN who are trying to fix it. The Uzn are trying to set up the groundwork for a system to get the product manufacturers to build in the cost and stop putting as a result.
If every plastic container you could buy was $20 instead of the now (say) $2, then people would reuse them more, so the companies would produce less, meaning less pollution. Or they could make them more environmentally tidier and then they could sell them for $15 as their cleanup bill would be less.
We basically need to go back to the old days where people consumed much less shit and fixed/reused stuff, especially because there’s heaps more people in the world nowadays.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @02:22AM
I see this as one of the worst environmental ideas out there. Elevating environmental regulation to the highest status in the land (at least for the countries that honor human rights, that is), and screw everything else.
Who has the lack of a clean environment? You mention the US. While people have talked about burning water from water wells and a temporary lead problem with Flint's water system, they haven't yet mentioned a big environmental problem that would require a US-level right. That's because there is no such environmental problem.
My take is that all of the cleanest countries environmentally are all strongly capitalist. There might be a reason for that.
Why shouldn't plastics cost $2 per pound. What are we missing that costs $18 per pound?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 20 2021, @11:15AM
You should have just ended your post right there. Ignant moran.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @12:01AM
> Wasn't and, at the time was, disappointed.
dropped a word. Should have been:
Wasn't and, at the same time was, disappointed.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday October 17 2021, @02:05AM (1 child)
So, what do they plan to do about... oh, say, Bangladesh??
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Mockingbird on Sunday October 17 2021, @02:36AM
Same as they did about Benghazi?
(Score: 1, Troll) by Gaaark on Saturday October 16 2021, @10:42PM
Let the lawsuits begin.
Yeahhhhhhhhhh......
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 16 2021, @10:48PM (2 children)
END OF LINE
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 16 2021, @11:16PM (1 child)
Right to security (safety) trumps your right to privacy. Get surveilled.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @02:54PM
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 16 2021, @10:53PM (1 child)
Oh, a Generic Politics post, with no technical aspects, on a Technology blog...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 16 2021, @11:23PM
Eh, the people S/N is made of.
Are you sure, dough, you know the difference between a blog and forum?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @12:04AM
Clean and healthy environment you say? That'll require all H1Bs to be rounded up and deported.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @01:41AM (2 children)
A clean and healthy environment requires a mix of natural resources and the ability to work together to provide some common good.
Making that happen seems a responsibility, not a right.
To call it a right asks others to take the responsibility to make a life for you.
Great deal if you can get it, but more likely to have a cost that is far worse than just doing it for yourself.
See afganistan, where a somewhat stable environment costs around 2 centurys of civility.
Perhaps one should arm the ladys?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @03:42AM (1 child)
Every right comes with a responsibility. Only those stupid mah freedumbs Americans don't realize it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @04:16AM
Like the freedom to speak your mind comes with the responsibility to heartily agree with the latest government propaganda? To the contrary, there is no such responsibility because it would be gamed.
What responsibilities do you so vaguely speak of? For example, the alleged right to "access to a clean and healthy environment". What happens if you choose to live somewhere that doesn't have a clean and healthy environment? Shouldn't that create a responsibility on your part to fix your own rights rather than have a poor choice subsidized by the public or some hapless businesses?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @02:40AM (22 children)
A right is a thing that you are entitled to do, or refuse to do, at your option.
A right can also be a thing that the government is prohibited from doing.
A "right" that cannot be expressed in this way is not a "right." It is an excuse for the government to ignore actual rights in the pursuit of something they want to do, or to force others to do. In most cases, it is in fact the exact opposite of a right.
Even if this might be a good mission statement, even if it leads to good policy, it is not a "right."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by helel on Sunday October 17 2021, @03:04AM (20 children)
If I pull a gun and shoot you you cannot chose to live or refuse to die. Therefore living is not a right that you possess?
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @04:23AM (19 children)
Indeed, that is correct. But you do have a right to not be murdered by others. The difference is that you can't mandate that society expend considerable resources to keep you alive for a million years. But we can and do pass laws to keep people from artificially shortening each other's lifespan via murder.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Sunday October 17 2021, @05:22AM (5 children)
Pollution is murder
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @10:50AM (4 children)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday October 17 2021, @10:49PM (3 children)
So, that's what you need poor people for, to blame them for your pollution, and a place to pollute. Exactly what is the sequence of events?
Pollution is still murder, especially when you refuse to clean up your mess
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @02:03AM (2 children)
Yes, your poor people are responsible for your pollution. A glaring example of this is "exporting the pollution". If there weren't poor places in the world, there wouldn't be a place to export that pollution to.
Well, when are you going to clean up your pollution and stop murdering people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @05:45AM (1 child)
Here we have a khallow in the wild demonstrating that he does indeed understand the situation but once people call for regulating industry suddenly he can't fathom the harm, and when he can't weasel out of reality he goes back to denying the problems are serious or worse just assumes future humans will clean up his mess.
What an entitled fool.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @06:15AM
In the developed world, industry is heavily regulated. As a result, this is a ridiculous premise to start from.
Like when? Funny how people never back these sorts of claims up. When you weasel, I'll quote the very sentence where you do it.
My way future humans will be in a high wealth, developed world society with plenty of capability to handle environmental problems. It's a damn good mess to be in.
(Score: 2) by helel on Sunday October 17 2021, @01:12PM (12 children)
How it artificially shortening your life by dumping lead in your water any different than artificially shortening your life by dumping my lead directly in your chest? You're just as dead either way, it's just a question of speed.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @01:52PM (11 children)
Are you dumping lead in my water or simply providing a water system that happens to have lead in it? The former is indeed an act of harm against me. The latter is not. Unlike some people, I recognize that the world isn't able to be perfect and infrastructure may be flawed.
For example, the Flint, Michigan example was mentioned earlier. In that case, the underlying problem was that there was a bunch of lead piping that couldn't be economically replaced. The city would go bankrupt trying to replace it. So the next best thing was to provide a system that was low acidity so that the lead wouldn't disolve/flake into the water supply. They failed to do that and hid the evidence that they were failing.
(Score: 2) by helel on Sunday October 17 2021, @02:12PM (10 children)
You seem to be all over the place here. Providing a water system with lead in it is fine, except when it actually happened in the real world you think it's bad? Why is it only bad in practice but not in theory?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 17 2021, @05:15PM (9 children)
You're missing a considerable part of the story. First, all real world water systems have lead in them - dose makes the poison. Second, the agency running the Flint water system deliberately ran the water system at a more acidic PH, resulting in a predictable, increased level of lead dissolving into the water. They also faked the PH tests that would have shown this was a problem. It's not merely providing a water system with lead in it. It's deliberate deception harming their customers.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday October 17 2021, @10:52PM (8 children)
It was a simple business decision. The poisoning and deception were motivated by finance.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @11:12PM (2 children)
You're arguing in circles, how possibly could a UN declaration have changed that?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday October 17 2021, @11:44PM (1 child)
Does making murder illegal reduce its occurrence? What about littering? Why bother with any written statues? You all want to make lots of things illegal, why not pollution?
Granted, the UN is silly, But since pollution has no respect for bullshit human politics (California catches a lot of Chinese smog), a UN directive makes it easier to resolve disputes peacefully, in theory, still kinda needs planetary agreement
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @02:09AM
No, [nytimes.com] repercussions reduce occurrence.
Then the UN should work to prohibit pollution. The entire concept of positive rights is a wrong, compulsion is not a right.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @02:00AM (4 children)
It wasn't a business. Stupid shit like this happens in non-finance systems too. You're blaming the wrong devil.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday October 18 2021, @02:24AM (3 children)
It was purely business, going on the cheap, failure to properly maintain the system is a business decision.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @04:02AM (2 children)
Sorry, that's a circular argument. In the real world, we only define bad decisions as "business decisions" when they're made by a business or an entity that closely resembles a business. Going on the cheap and failing to properly maintain the system are very widespread failure modes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @06:36AM (1 child)
So you're completely deluded and don't even bother paying attention to major headlines? Shocked I am not. Anyone else tired of khallow's bullshit?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @03:09PM
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Sunday October 17 2021, @07:50AM
The word 'access' makes this a reasonable statement for me. Saying "access to a clean environment is a human right" means the government can't cut off your access. So as long as a clean environment exists and you are allowed to go there, or a clean environment can be created and you are allowed to create it, then your right remains unviolated.
Similarly, I would support the idea that "access to healthcare is a human right" even though I do not support the idea that "healthcare is a human right". Government shouldn't impede your healthcare. (In reality they do, and they should stop this.) But healthcare itself is clearly a service, the same as having your house painted or your car repaired, and not a right.
Of course the problem will come when someone tries to twist this around and equate any action that impacts some vague notion of 'cleanliness' of some subset of 'environment' with a violation of human rights, as an excuse for some type of mandate.
Then again the UN has declared a lot things to be so, and national governments have simply ignored them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @03:27AM (3 children)
Did these guys all make a big golf clap and pat themselves on the back after the vote?
Wow!
The Planet is SAVED!
Oh and in other news...the Queen is "irrittated"
Irritated I tell you!
What a show, The irritated Queen, France wants Green Nukes and the UN is declaring rights.
Oh Boy!
[ trying to catch my breath here ]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @03:47AM
In other news India set aside a whooping 17.42% of its area for conservation [soylentnews.org]. The 82%+pennies rest of it is fair game.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @06:03AM (1 child)
Johnson and Johnson is compensating people for advising that they put talcum in their genitalia. Maybe they'll pay the queen double?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Mockingbird on Sunday October 17 2021, @07:41AM
Are you perchance suggesting the Queen has double genitalia? That would explain so much.