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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: 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?