Yes the right wing press may well rag on courts giving legal rights to chimpanzees and now rivers but as this yes magazine article argues the quicker courts start thinking like this it gives humanity the faintest possibility of not destroying itself.
Well wort a read,,
It was a stunning breakthrough in a rights issue that could be a crucial step toward ensuring a human future. In March, New Zealand passed the Te Awa Tupua Bill making New Zealand’s Whanganui River the first river in the world to hold the same legal rights, responsibilities, and liabilities as a human person. For the Maori people, it was the culmination of a 140-year struggle to gain recognition of the river as an ancestor of the tribe.
The victory quickly had a major consequence far beyond New Zealand’s borders.
Only two weeks later, citing the New Zealand law as precedent, a court in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand gave the Ganges River and its main tributary, the Yamuna River, the status of living human entities. Henceforth, polluting or damaging these rivers will be a legal equivalent to harming a person.
