view-of-mount-taranaki-taranaki-maunga-from-lake-mangamahoe-596280750-stockpack-adobe_stock
View of Mount Taranaki (Taranaki Maunga) from Lake Mangamahoe, Egmont National Park, on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island.
Image Credit: Luis - Adobe Stock
Humanize From Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism
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New Zealand Mountain Named a “Person” with “Rights” and “Responsibilities”

Originally published at National Review
Categories
Nature and Conservation

A mountain sacred to the indigenous people of the island has been named a “person” with “rights” and “responsibilities.” From the AP story:

The law passed Thursday gives Taranaki Maunga all the rights, powers, duties, responsibilities and liabilities of a person. Its legal personality has a name: Te Kāhui Tupua, which the law views as “a living and indivisible whole.” It includes Taranaki and its surrounding peaks and land, “incorporating all their physical and metaphysical elements.”

A newly created entity will be “the face and voice” of the mountain, the law says, with four members from local Māori iwi, or tribes, and four members appointed by the country’s Conservation Minister.

This is irrational and illustrates how environmentalism is going off the rails. A geological feature has been declared to be a living person! Again!

Continue Reading at National Review

Wesley J. Smith

Chair and Senior Fellow, Center on Human Exceptionalism
Wesley J. Smith is Chair and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. Wesley is a contributor to National Review and is the author of 14 books, in recent years focusing on human dignity, liberty, and equality. Wesley has been recognized as one of America’s premier public intellectuals on bioethics by National Journal and has been honored by the Human Life Foundation as a “Great Defender of Life” for his work against suicide and euthanasia. Wesley’s most recent book is Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine, a warning about the dangers to patients of the modern bioethics movement.