37
deeply challenged to account for a symbiotic biosphere of individuals with looming
legal standing. It was Christopher D. Stone, in 1972, who published his groundbreaking work to this effect, Should Trees Have Standing? Law, Morality, and the
Environment.
29
For 75 years, the United Nations has modeled itself upon the broadest evolutionary principles of non-violence, non-friction, and of perpetual peace, as Immanuel
Kant enshrined the phrase in the late 1790s, in the tradition of lawmaker Hugo
Grotius, or Huig de Groot (1583–1645), the father of the first international peace
treaty in the world. That was, of course, the 1648 Peace of Westphalia ending the
Eighty as well as the Thirty Years’ Wars and based upon his brilliant vision of natural law. Grotius was a neighbor of two of the greatest Dutch naturalists: the painter
Vermeer, whose “View of Delft” has long been prized as the most perfect rendering
of a resilient, urban landscape, and the microscopist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek,
whose astonishing optic epiphanies paved the way for the application of outstanding
earth science to the notion of a biosphere and noosphere, as centuries later envisioned by Vladimir Vernadsky and Eduard Suess. Westphalia engendered European
self-determination and the first concept of balance of power. It also guaranteed
Dutch independence. Grotius’ insistence on nonviolence was a true precursor of
John Ruskin’s book Unto This Last (1860) and Gandhi’s consequential reading of
those four political economic essays.
In his seminal work De jure belli ac pacis (On the Law of War and Peace, 1625),
Grotius envisioned what today we call the Geneva Convention, and the rule of law,
among all nations. To grasp that challenge, as ambassador to the Soviet Union,
George Kennan, in his somewhat legendary “A Modest Proposal,” (July 16, 1981)
stated, “Adequate words are lacking to express the full seriousness of our present
situation.”
30
Applied ecologically, this is no longer the case. We have words and we
have the data. What we continue to lack, however, is a complete philosophical and
global method of peace-making in the manner of a Hugo Grotius that is sufficiently
comprehensive to impede the biological unraveling in this epoch, the Anthropocene.
31
Kennan described what he believed to be a basic flaw of US foreign policy, and by
implication, foreign policies from nation to nation; namely, public opinion, “a
force,” as he enumerated it, “that is inevitably unstable, unserious, subjective, emotional and simplistic.”
32
We first presented these ideas—linking conservation biology and global protected area data, to the history of legal and public responses to
increasing demographic pressure—at the UN 70th Anniversary conference in
29 See http://www.environmentandsociety.org/mml/should-trees-have-standing-law-morality-andenvironment, Accessed July 29, 2020.
30 See http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1981/jul/16/a-modest-proposal/
31 See “Anthropocene: the human age,” by Richard Monastersky, Nature, March 11, 2015, http://
www.nature.com/news/anthropocene-the-human-age-1.17085
32 George Urban, September 1976, “From Containment to Self-Containment: A conversation with
George Kennan”, Encounter, p.17.
4.4 Legal Standing for Nature
deeply challenged to account for a symbiotic biosphere of individuals with looming
legal standing. It was Christopher D. Stone, in 1972, who published his groundbreaking work to this effect, Should Trees Have Standing? Law, Morality, and the
Environment.
29
For 75 years, the United Nations has modeled itself upon the broadest evolutionary principles of non-violence, non-friction, and of perpetual peace, as Immanuel
Kant enshrined the phrase in the late 1790s, in the tradition of lawmaker Hugo
Grotius, or Huig de Groot (1583–1645), the father of the first international peace
treaty in the world. That was, of course, the 1648 Peace of Westphalia ending the
Eighty as well as the Thirty Years’ Wars and based upon his brilliant vision of natural law. Grotius was a neighbor of two of the greatest Dutch naturalists: the painter
Vermeer, whose “View of Delft” has long been prized as the most perfect rendering
of a resilient, urban landscape, and the microscopist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek,
whose astonishing optic epiphanies paved the way for the application of outstanding
earth science to the notion of a biosphere and noosphere, as centuries later envisioned by Vladimir Vernadsky and Eduard Suess. Westphalia engendered European
self-determination and the first concept of balance of power. It also guaranteed
Dutch independence. Grotius’ insistence on nonviolence was a true precursor of
John Ruskin’s book Unto This Last (1860) and Gandhi’s consequential reading of
those four political economic essays.
In his seminal work De jure belli ac pacis (On the Law of War and Peace, 1625),
Grotius envisioned what today we call the Geneva Convention, and the rule of law,
among all nations. To grasp that challenge, as ambassador to the Soviet Union,
George Kennan, in his somewhat legendary “A Modest Proposal,” (July 16, 1981)
stated, “Adequate words are lacking to express the full seriousness of our present
situation.”
30
Applied ecologically, this is no longer the case. We have words and we
have the data. What we continue to lack, however, is a complete philosophical and
global method of peace-making in the manner of a Hugo Grotius that is sufficiently
comprehensive to impede the biological unraveling in this epoch, the Anthropocene.
31
Kennan described what he believed to be a basic flaw of US foreign policy, and by
implication, foreign policies from nation to nation; namely, public opinion, “a
force,” as he enumerated it, “that is inevitably unstable, unserious, subjective, emotional and simplistic.”
32
We first presented these ideas—linking conservation biology and global protected area data, to the history of legal and public responses to
increasing demographic pressure—at the UN 70th Anniversary conference in
29 See http://www.environmentandsociety.org/mml/should-trees-have-standing-law-morality-andenvironment, Accessed July 29, 2020.
30 See http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1981/jul/16/a-modest-proposal/
31 See “Anthropocene: the human age,” by Richard Monastersky, Nature, March 11, 2015, http://
www.nature.com/news/anthropocene-the-human-age-1.17085
32 George Urban, September 1976, “From Containment to Self-Containment: A conversation with
George Kennan”, Encounter, p.17.
4.4 Legal Standing for Nature