It's Not Nice To Fool Mother Nature - UN Treaty to Give Mother Earth her Rights

Mother Nature is asserting herself quite a bit these days, and the tree huggers are having their day in the UN. Bolivia has proposed a United Nations (UN) treaty to recognize the "rights" of Mother Earth. If the UN agrees to Bolivia's draft treaty, "Mother Earth" - including bugs and trees - are to be afforded an equal degree as that of humans! A Ministry of Mother Earth would be established. This would give Mother Earth her own special public official, an ombudsman, who is responsible for investigating citizens' complaints against government agencies, that might be infringing on the rights of any individual .. in this case "Mother Earth".

Balancing proper perspectives on things is a crucial determining factor, when judging the sanity, or lack thereof in individuals, whose judgment may be way off in their ability to judge the value of one thing over another. I knew a woman who began giving special attention to all packaging materials, such as egg cartons, paper towel rolls, meat containers etc., while neglecting to care for her own person. Her small apartment was cluttered to the ceiling, with carefully organized and stacked cardboard and Styrofoam containers, while she herself was poorly bathed and cleansed. She had developed such an imbalanced obsession over the value of these items, to the point where she was unable to discard any of them, resulting in her own human living space becoming more and more constricted. Her home was rapidly becoming a fire hazard, with inadequate exits in the event that a fire might occur.

And of course, we all know the worst example of unbalanced perspective, with Adolf Hitler, who cherished his German Shepherd, while he slaughtered his fellow men.

Pablo Salon, Bolivia's UN ambassador stated, "If you want to have balance, and you think that the only (entities) who have rights are humans or companies, then how can you reach balance?" The word "who" is the problem here with this whole approach. Who is the Who we are speaking of exactly? Is a Styrofoam container a who? Is a tree a who? Is Mother Earth, no matter how precious and sacred, a "Who"? Here is the problem. Giving human equality to bugs and tree.

We are to be good stewards of the earth, as well as all creation, which the good God has blest us with. There is no doubt that the earth needs to be sustained, through proper care and the containment of the blind destruction of it's resources; especially through mankind's greed and indifference of earth's gifts. But is giving the earth the quality of personhood, a rational approach? Does that mean that we ascribe an inanimate entity with the same qualities and state of being, as that of people? Anthropomorphism is a creative or lyrical and poetic style of writing, which endows inanimate objects with the same qualities as human beings. This is "creative license", where the author is free to transfer human qualities onto something which is not human. So, should UN Treaties be based upon anthropomorphism ... or creative license? I think there has been a bit too much creative license these days with the UN.

In Genesis Chapter 1, we read, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let him rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." This does not sound to me like God was equating the earth and all it's creatures with mankind! Man was specifically made in the image and likeness of God, while all the rest of creation was made to serve man. So, whose rights or needs are diminished, if earth is misused or destroyed? If we do not take care of our car ... who suffers? The car? The car is an inanimate object which serves me. If I ruin it through abuse and neglect, it will no longer be of service to me. I will be the one whose rights and needs are taken away, through my own ignorance and lack of moderation in the use of something that was designed to serve me. This does not mean that the UN should pass a treaty which endows my car with the same rights as myself.

Where is the proper balance and perspective here? We are giving rights to inanimate objects and animals, while the rights of the unborn are still denied across our planet. The rights of Mother Earth are now expected to supersede the rights of those beings, whose very lives she was created to serve and sustain. Yes, if we abuse and or neglect our earth and her resources and creatures, we will suffer. This is about human need and human rights, which should monitor how we treat our earth and it's resources. And of all the earth's resources, human life is it's highest and most precious resource. For if all human life were to vanish from earth's surface, I would venture to say, that Mother Earth herself, would not thrive for long .. at least in any advanced type of way. Perhaps that is why the dinosaurs died out, because there were no humans to keep things in their proper balance. The United Nations needs to get a proper balance on things here as well, and not place the rock upon which we exist, above we human beings whose lives God created it to serve and sustain, or we will be the next dinosaurs.