Becoming Us
| Date | 01 May 2015 |
| Author |
45 ELR 10398 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 5-2015
Becoming Us
by Carter Dillard
Carter Dillard is Director of Litigation at the Animal Legal Defense Fund and Steering Committee
Member of the Population Ethics Research Project at the University of Oxford.
I. Introduction
Is there a human right to a particular env ironment, one
that overrides conic ting human interests? Given that
all humans require a partic ular environment in order to
survive and thereby have interests, the question seems
to answer itself. Assuming, then, that there is a right to
a particula r environment, what does that environment
look like?
In this Dialogue, Prof. Jan Laitos, Juliana E. Okulski,
and I join the growing number of voices urgently trying
to describe the human right to a par ticular environment.1
Human rights are particularly weighty interests that we all
share by virtue of being human, and that can be articulated
in ways that outweigh conicting and lesser interests and
even the wil l of strong majorities. For example, someone’s
right to speak freely generally outweighs the public’s inter-
est in not being oended, even when a strong majority of
people wish it were otherwise.
We need to comprehend our human right to a particular
environment so that it can be used to outweigh conicting
interests that harm the environment, regardless of whether
most people favor those conicting interests. Doing so will
change the current disastrous course of human behavior, in
the same way that recognition in the past of the rights to
vote, speak freely, and not be a slave each outweighed con-
icting interests and misguided majorities, and drastically
changed the course of human behavior.
For Jan and Juliana, the right becomes clear when we
correct mistakes we are mak ing in the way we perceive the
environment and ourselves.2 For me, the right best emerges
when we examine one of the premises underlying the idea
of human rights itself, and related political concepts like
political liberalism and democracy.
e idea of human rights is rst premised on a collective
“we,” as in the phrase “We the people” that begins the U.S.
1. For articulations of other human rights to particular environments, primar-
ily based on human health and safety, see, e.g., James Nickel, e Human
, 18 Y J. I’ L. 281 (2003); T H, C
E R 1 (2005); Luis E. Rodriguez-Rivera, Is the Human
, 12 C. J. I’ E. L. P’ 1, 19 (2001).
2. Jan Laitos & Juliana E. Okulski, 45 ELR 10391 (May 2015).
Constitution.3 at “we” is based on a normative model that
posits a world where free and equal humans voluntarily or
consensually come together in a group, articulate shared val-
ues, and use those values to collectively form and reform the
rules they will live by, but also remain able to leave the group
and its power—to have a way out—if they wish.
But whi le other parts of the concept of huma n rights
have been developed over the past few centuries, the ini-
tial “we” premise has remained virtually untouched. I
believe the hum an right to a particular env ironment lies
in nal ly unpacking the va lues and logic inherent in that
premise, and going in the direction that t he values and
logic point. In short, t here is no such th ing a s a consen-
sual human “we” wit hout a distinctly nonhuman envi-
ronment or natural background against which the former
can be distinguished and made coherent. e premise
therefore requires us to restore Nature or the nonhuman
background around u s. We have a fu ndamental human
right to t he restoration of the nonhum an world, one that
outweighs conicting interests.
Recognizi ng and implementing that right will help
complete a form of political evolution that we bega n in
the 17th centur y but never nished,4 a form of politica l
evolution actually designed to prevent our species from
degrading its own environment. Environmenta l prob-
lems are a c onsequence of the incomplete development of
democratic theory and the systems that implement it, and
completing that development is the rst step toward solv-
ing those problems.
My claim is simple: Jan and Jul iana’s argument is pre-
mised on a normative “we,” and the va lues and logic of
that premise suggest and dene a human right to a par-
ticular environment that is dierent from the one Jan and
Juliana propose. at right to a particular environment
must be understood in the context of another human
right that the “we” premise rst suggests and denes: the
right to have children.
is Dialogue rst describes the normative “we” prem-
ise and provides an overview of the arguments to follow,
then unpacks the normative “we” premise by proposing
3. U.S. C., pmbl.
4. Jürgen Habermas, Modernity: An Incomplete Project, in M/
P (P. Brooker ed., 1996).
Copyright © 2015 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.
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