Voters Grant Rights to a River in Everett, Wash.

More than 30 U.S. cities have adopted nature rights ordinances, mostly to prevent fracking. And now in the recent election, 57 percent of voters in Everett, Wash., granted rights to a geological feature, specifically, the Snohomish River watershed. From the initiative:

The Snohomish River Watershed possesses the rights to exist, regenerate, and flourish, which shall include the right to naturally recharge, the right to naturally flow, the right to water quality necessary to provide habitat for native plants and animals, the right to provide clean water, and the right to restoration. The Snohomish River Watershed shall also have the right to be free from activities.

This is anti-enterprise — and anti-human — since it waters down (pardon the pun) the crucial legal principle of rights to a ridiculous degree. Indeed, with a river granted rights, we re-dignify rights into a concept that thwarts, rather than protects, human freedom.