According to Olivier De Schutter “We can overcome the problems of delivering collective action on climate change by treating mining, deforestation, ocean degradation and more as violations of human rights”
Global climate-change talks often resemble the scene of a traffic accident. Multiple voices shout each other down in a bid to tell their own version of events. What is the real damage, how quickly must it be repaired, and who should foot the bill?
But the real concern is not that the debate is congested and gridlocked; it is that the current clamour masks a deeper failing, namely to identify an honest starting point. In Prosperity Without Growth, the economist Tim Jackson convincingly expounds the myth of “absolute decoupling” of emissions from economic growth. The growth of emissions can be slowed, relative to the growth rate of the economy. However, emissions cannot conceivably be stalled or reversed while the economy continues to expand, however great the carbon-saving technologies of the coming years.
If our political processes cannot conceive of a non-growth future, and yet a fundamental rethink of growth is the only honest starting point for the fight against climate change, then those political processes are clearly not fit for purpose.
Does this mean that democracy has failed, and must be sacrificed for authoritarian solutions? The solution may in fact be the polar opposite. A system where failing governance procedures are forced to think long-term does not necessarily require anti-democratic “climate tzars”. Instead, this revolution can be hyper-democratic and guided by human rights.
“Climate change represents an enormous threat to a whole host of human rights: the right to food, the right to water and sanitation, the right to development.”
What? I have a right to food? I must print
this out and take it to my grocery store.
Does De Schutter think I should be able to
use my neighbor’s toilet? What is this
right to sanitation?
De Schutter suffers from the same delusion
as the “right to health care” crowd. Anything
that demands the action or property of others
cannot be a right, as the others have rights
to their labor and property.
The major intellectual crimes of this age are equivocation and concept stealing.
Equivocation:
The words morph in their meaning depending upon the context of the discussion. For example, “global warming” means variously that the global temperature is rising, that some of the rise in global temperature is caused by man, and that the man caused warming will continue to the point of catastrophe. The pretense is that rejection of the last so called meaning, is denial of the first. Similarly consider “climate change”. It too has a similar three levels of so called meaning with the associated rejection of the last implying denial of the first.
Concept stealing.
Rights are a concept that pertains ONLY to individuals and consist only of freedom of thought and action limited only by the self same right of all other individuals. The only obligation that individual rights places on others is they must refrain from violating the rights of others. It is derived from the fact that for man to live, he must think, act upon his thoughts, and posses without question the results from his action. To think, he must be free of coercion from others. Otherwise the link between thought, action, and possession is broken and the rights violation is total.
“Human rights” is an improper collectivization of the concept of individual rights. It might be innocent except for the tendency to ascribe to human rights something not pertaining to individual humans. Especially when you include the right to food, clothing, shelter, medical care and the like. All of which must be produced and provided by other individuals who’s right to freedom of thought and action are thereby destroyed. Oh, you have the right to pay for such things if someone else is willing to trade but you do not have an undeniable claim.
The stealing part here is the concept is severed from its connection to reality with only the undeniable claim remaining. Hence the so called human right to food, shelter, etc now becomes an undeniable claim on others who must stand and deliver in total contradiction to the concept of individual rights.
Lionell,
Well put sir.