4 ms·
Quebec town recognizes trees as living beings with rights
- wiseowise 4mo agoFinally. There should be major repercussions for destroying trees, especially within the cities that look increasingly like concrete blocks.
- koolba 4mo agoMost cities already have strict rules for removing existing trees. Usually anything over 6 inch diameter at shoulder level is off limits without getting specific approval.
- jimbokun 4mo agoAnd they were able to do that without declaring trees to have equal rights with people???
- MisterTea 4mo agoLiving in Queens NYC I can see the large disparity between the greenery prevalent in the tax photos present on 1940s.nyc. After my grandparents passed we sold the house that had three nice shade trees, patio, a garden, grass along the side and a front lawn. Only the front lawn remains. The rest was entombed in concrete. Houses around the area suffer the same fate - yards completely devoid of green life and instead concrete. When it rains water pours down driveways into the gutter leaving the combined sewer system to deal with water that should be in the earth.
- jimbokun 4mo agoWe make cities look like concrete blocks in order to have dense housing and protect the little forest land we have left.
- meristohm 4mo ago...and a consequence of living in dense concrete "jungles" is increased energy consumption to cool ourselves, further increasing average global temperatures. What might the consequences be of living amongst trees (and plants in general) and spending much more of our time meeting our basic needs by moving around on the earth under our own power?
- jimbokun 4mo agoLiving in dense cities requires LESS energy consumption than spread out over rural areas. And those people in those rural areas spend LESS time moving under their own power because the places they need to get to are so far away they have to drive cars to get there.
- frrlpp 4mo agoNo and no. Rural != suburban
- cucumber3732842 4mo ago>We make cities look like concrete blocks in order to have dense housing and protect the little forest land we have left. Akshually we don't. We used to do that but not anymore. Unless you have obscene cash to buy offsets and credits and whatnot you can't get approved for anything even remotely close to an old school 1970s concrete jungle site plan.
- moltar 4mo agoInbefore extreme NIMBY
- neonihil 4mo agoFinally! Trees are fantastic creatures. (I'd happily go as far as calling them Beings, but I'm afraid it would sound like some kind of a new age esoteric bullshit, even so I'm borderline convinced they are sentient.) The important thing that fascinates me is how Tree actually work. They are generally perceived as growing from the soil to the atmosphere. However, the opposite is true. About 98% of the material of a tree is originated from the air, namely the carbon extracted from the CO2 content of the air. Trees are literally growing from the air, and piercing down into the soil to get water to run their Calvin cycles to extract the carbon and produce the ATP. Knowing this, I'd be more than surprised if Trees - or plants in general - haven't had any methods to control their food source: the atmosphere. I believe they do. And by destroying them, we are limiting this control. Looking from this angle, there is very little surprise in the onset of weather extremes. I summary, I'm very happy with this legislation. I hope this a first step in many that is actually going to help us taming the climate of our planet again. With more trees. Because trees are awesome.
- MisterTea 4mo ago> Knowing this, I'd be more than surprised if Trees - or plants in general - haven't had any methods to control their food source: the atmosphere. I believe they do. Recently there was an article posted here that claimed trees do have some ability to control the weather. The claim is trees simultaneously release water vapor into the atmosphere influencing rains.
- meristohm 4mo agoYep! Evaporation through leaf stomata creates the internal pressure drop that pulls water from the earth into the roots.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- bloppe 4mo agoI love trees, but I wonder where this legislation is headed. It sure sounds like it's creating the conditions for regulating trees on private land. This could have some perverse incentives. A tree on your land could become a liability. It could lower the value of your property, because you won't be able to sell it to someone who wants to build something that might interfere with that tree. Would that actually discourage people from planting trees in the first place?
- sublinear 4mo ago[flagged]
- bloppe 4mo agoI'm pro-tree, but I feel like you can protect them without sounding this ridiculous
- kgwxd 4mo agoThe goal is definitely not to protect trees.
- enraged_camel 4mo agoOh yeah? What is it then? Please enlighten us.
- I-M-S 4mo agoThis will be weaponized by NIMBYs to further limit construction of housing and infrastructure.
- boomboomsubban 4mo agoCynically, to make a documentary and get articles written. None of the rules they mention seem that extreme, they're just wording it in an unusual way.
- kgwxd 4mo agoSame nefarious reasons corporations were given "personhood". Is it illegal to "assult" trees now? If someone pisses on a tree, are they going to call in the SVU? The legal system isn't a toy. Trees, in the general sense, don't need extra laws, the ones that need protecting are already covered by property law.
- bloppe 4mo agoFeels like the primary concern was virtue signaling, with protecting trees being a close second
- tsimionescu 4mo agoSuch a weird idea. Do they recognize the right of cockroaches to life as well - as they are much more clearly living beings with some realistic chance of being sentient and feeling pain? What about tomatoes or roses or other plants? Note that I'm all for the protection of trees - for pretty obvious environmental, esthetic, and human usage reasons. I just don't think recognizing trees as having their own rights as living beings makes any sense whatsoever.
- nemomarx 4mo agoWe kinda draw arbitrary lines? I mean we do animal rights and animal welfare, so what really is the difference between a mouse and a tarantula in those terms
- tsimionescu 4mo agoWell, I don't think we recognize a general right to life for animals, even for those protected under the law. Euthanizing a cat or a dog is allowed virtually everywhere, unlike a human, for example. We certainly don't recognize any right to bodily integrity for animals, as even cats and dogs are routinely sterilized. Generally, we instead have animal welfare laws that protect various animals to various extents for various reasons, based on human interest in said animals (e.g. You can sterilize any cat you find, unless it's owned by someone else, but you can never shoot a cat; you can shoot many wild animals within certain limits, but you can't sterilize them outside very special circumstances).
- fl4regun 4mo agoIn Ontario we have MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying), not sure if Quebec also has something like this, but it's not unprecedented in Canada.
- nemomarx 4mo ago> Bourdeau says the new resolution means the town will review its existing rules and bylaws to ensure that trees are protected or replaced if they must be cut down. He also plans to implement measures to further increase the canopy, including offering trees for residents to plant. This seems roughly in line with how we treat certain wild animal populations though.
- swader999 4mo agoI wonder if they adhere to Quebec's language laws.
- andy99 4mo agoIf we start letting trees communicate by underground signalling though a network of mycorrhizal fungus, it’s going to be the death of French. It’s important that every living being learns to adopt the culture.
- I-M-S 4mo agoThis will be weaponized by NIMBYs to further limit construction of housing and infrastructure, leading to a situation in which trees have more human rights than people.
- jimbokun 4mo agoIt already says in the article they won’t be building anymore housing because they are forbidding cutting down trees to clear land to build, and they’re already out of open lots to build on. This is 100% NIMBYs finding new ways to protect their property values.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- cucumber3732842 4mo agoDoes this actually do that thought? I would be very surprised if Quebec doesn't already have some longstanding clean water act type law that accomplishes the same "can't clear let alone develop land without our discretion and paying $$" type restriction that the NIMBYS are getting here.
- kyleee 4mo agoAnd that is for the best generally. There is more than enough room for infill development
- derwiki 4mo ago.. coming soon to San Francisco I bet
- cwillu 4mo agoQuebec law is not based on common-law, so I'm not sure how that would be managed…
- DonsDiscountGas 4mo agoThis is like saying guns will be weaponized. The entire point of this is to be a NIMBY weapon.
- seizethecheese 4mo ago> Bourdeau says the new resolution means the town will review its existing rules and bylaws to ensure that trees are protected or replaced if they must be cut down. He also plans to implement measures to further increase the canopy, including offering trees for residents to plant. It’s unclear whether the reporter failed to describe the real impact of this or whether it actually has no teeth. Regarding tree rights, I do think cities cut down trees too lightly. For example, the city where I live recently rehabbed a large park and cut down a mature tree to make a new path, where it could have easily made the path a few meters away. (Of course the tree may have been diseased, but it seemed quite healthy.) I’m not sure my argument would be that trees have rights so much as that trees take a long time to grow, and a replacement tree is not as good as a mature one for a long long time.
- crunchiepooker 4mo ago[flagged]
- tsimionescu 4mo agoThis definitely qualifies as a weird legal hack.
- jimbokun 4mo ago> "We know corporations have legal personhood and rights and they are definitely not living," she said in a phone interview. "So if some nonliving things can have legal personhood, what's stopping living beings from equally getting legal personhood?" Let’s take one dumb idea and use it to justify another dumb idea!
- erelong 4mo agoWe probably need to plant more trees or be diligent about ones we remove, but this seems to proceed from an erroneous worldview
- NSUserDefaults 4mo agoDo they pay taxes?
- gchamonlive 4mo agoFor something to be recognized as a living being with rights does it need to pay taxes?
- roughly 4mo agoOn every penny they make. The property taxes are largely offset by the carbon credits, though.
- dudeinjapan 4mo agoYou're forgetting about property taxes (adverse possession / squatter's rights.)
- dudeinjapan 4mo agoNo, they are tax cheats. It has been notoriously hard to arrest them and send them to jail however.
- ReptileMan 4mo agoCan we send them end grain cutting board as a gift?
- skybrian 4mo agoWho represents the trees and what are they able to do with these rights?
- zuzululu 4mo ago[flagged]
- cwillu 4mo agoQuebec's legal system is not based on common-law like the rest of the provinces.
- kgwxd 4mo ago> We know corporations have legal personhood and rights and they are definitely not living. So if some nonliving things can have legal personhood, what's stopping living beings from equally getting legal personhood? If this is an attempt to demonstrate the stupidity of that law, great. If it's an honest attempt to build more stupid laws on top of that already stupid law, these people are awful.
- chingabazinga 4mo agoImagine trees having more rights than fetuses because "A tree is like a human being," Bourdeau said. "It breathes, it lives, it takes in water. It protects us from all sorts of things."
- malcolmgreaves 4mo agoDoes a tree have a direct blood connection to a person? Does a tree die if that connection is severed?
- dudeinjapan 4mo agoIn rare cases, yes. https://nypost.com/2009/04/16/small-tree-found-growing-inside-russian-mans-lung/ https://nypost.com/2009/04/16/small-tree-found-growing-insid...
- UrineSqueegee 4mo ago[flagged]
- cwillu 4mo agoIf you don't know anything about the difference between civil law and common law in Quebec, you should be reading wikipedia articles on the topic and such rather than asserting nonsense in comments on hn.
- superultra 4mo agoI just finished Michael Christie’s Greenwood, a generational epic on family and, well, trees. Part of the book takes place in a future where the only trees left in the world are on a remote island off the coast of British Columbia where the rich go to replenish. It’s eco-dystopian science fiction (by a Canadian no less) but I wonder if the people in that future would’ve supported something like this now. I imagine probably.
- balozi 4mo agoThis is what lawmakers that don't want to deal with the real life issues do. They work on nonsense laws while citizens live in squalor.
- esbranson 4mo agoCalling a sentient living thing "a common good of humanity" is pretty dark. Putting those concepts together like that is an oversight.
- ClarityJones 4mo ago> the town will ... ensure that trees are ... replaced if they must be cut down. I'd hate to speculate about what this means for people that might stand in their way.
- beej71 4mo agoThis might seem silly on the face of it, but I live in a town where native forest is regularly leveled to bare earth, built on, and non-native trees planted in its stead. It's dumb and ugly. But profitable!
- tamimio 4mo agoSo when they plan to cut it for whatever reason, they will have to submit a MAID request for the tree to be legally taken down?
- nekusar 4mo agoWell, maybe we SHOULD consider all life sacred, and approach from that way. The current "humans matter and others not so much" spawns from Abrahamic ass-backward beliefs, primarily from Genesis 1:26-28: Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” And, from a warlord petulant child-god, this is rich. Basically its license to disregard all of life since "We" are it's ruler. And I think that view is horrible. Science is even backing that up. Multiple corvids can solve puzzles, share descriptions of mean people, and more. Lots of animals are similar. We even mapped prairie dogs language and dialects. They have words for child, man, woman, man with gun. Plants also communicate with chemicals and other things. And even though plants don't have neurons like mammals, SOMEHOW anesthetic drugs anesthetize them and prevent them from giving pain stimuli. Yet, we say they can't think... But respond as if they do. And at the world level with climate devastation, protecting our biosphere should he the utmost importance, and working WITH biotics, not against. But its that judeo-chriatian-islam human centrism that says "Naw, we humans are the only species that matters". That will be our undoing, with a front seat (for those who live) to our planet's destruction.
- euroderf 4mo agoI got a quick tree education. When my buddy and I were in grade school his family moved into a new housing development with streets lined with puny new trees surrounded by the usual wires and rubber guards. They were frail and we were growing faster than they were. Fast forward about forty years. The trees are TALL and HUGE! So, so cool. We hoominz top out at our own heights. But trees just keep treein' on.
- cagey 4mo agoObligatory: Rush - The Trees (Live From The Montreal Forum / 1981) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H0lwRqNF5I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H0lwRqNF5I
- profdevloper 4mo agoNice -- now can they do fetuses?
- scoofy 4mo agoCorn, soybeans, and wheat would like a word… that is, unless this isn’t actually about “plant rights” and is really about faux-environmental NIMBYism.
- adjejmxbdjdn 4mo agoSo they’re all vegan right… Right… Right…????
- la64710 4mo agoJainism