Fun facts: the UK has crazy laws protecting trees and hedgerows. There’s a national tree registry for old boys.
The story of the Tree That Owns Itself is widely known and is almost always presented as fact. Only one person—the anonymous author of “Deeded to Itself”—has ever claimed to have seen Jackson’s deed to the tree. Most writers acknowledge that the deed is lost or no longer exists—if in fact it ever did exist. Such a deed would have no legal effect. Under common law, the recipient of a piece of property must have the legal capacity to receive it, and the property must be delivered to—and accepted by—the recipient.[6] Both are impossible for a tree to do, as it isn’t a legal person.
[…]
“However defective this title may be in law, the public recognized it.”[11] In that spirit, it is the stated position of the Athens-Clarke County Unified Government that the tree, in spite of the law, does indeed own itself.[12] It is the policy of the city of Athens to maintain it as a public street tree.[13]
[…]
Although the story of the Tree That Owns Itself is more legend than history, the tree has become, along with the University Arch and the Double-Barreled Cannon, one of the most recognized and well-loved symbols of Athens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_That_Owns_Itself
In reality, the tree is not protected by law, but by the will of the people. Kind of symbolic if you ask me.
Nothing is protected by law, everything protected is by the will of the people
We should really have representatives for non humans in government that are meant to function at an economic loss/investment as a way of giving back. Too often these departments get pushed to deliver ecosystem services. We need to learn to give back without it being transactional. Make gift culture great again. Elect a Lorax.
It’s called environmental protection groups, animal rights groups, etc. Plenty don’t want to listen, though
I mean literally representatives like senators not interest groups.
Who is going to keep them accountable? Trees have a record high abstention rate, and if these representatives are elected by humans that’s just proportional voting with veneer on top.
Democracy is about balancing levers, and that’s why there is more than one branch of government. Special interest groups do have power, and so does the judiciary (who may sue the government for unlawful cutting down of trees) and the executive (who may have power to declare certain government-owned land to be Protected).
The real ecologist move would be to write a duty to protect the environment into the constitution, so that the judiciary can strike down any law that does anything to the contrary.
I believe at least one state—Wyoming, maybe—has a guarantee in its constitution that citizens will have a clean and healthy environment, or something along those lines. It effectively creates a duty to protect the environment.
Edit: it’s Montana.
I was going to say, definitely not Wyoming. Too many oil and gas companies absolutely destroy the areas they are in. I lived in Edgerton for a bit, there is literally no potable water in town, you will make yourself incredibly sick drinking out of the tap because of the drilling in the area. That’s just one of very many examples.
I would argue most things in government should be ran in the black or red. There’s just a certain type of person who wants to turn everything Into a for profit.
You may like Bruno Latour and his rather philosophical book Politics of Nature. I read it in a philosophy seminar and it seemed fascinating how the author tries to completely overthrow the view we have on “nature” and give it agency.
Yes thank you. This is more helpful than you realise.
Can I just get Danny DeVito?
and everyone just went with it.
Technically, how all law really works at its core.
Someone thought me the concept of a legal fiction and I still think about it.
Land ownership, companies, nation states, citizenship: all exist because we agree that it does.
And money.
This crooked little vein of logic is what gave us sovereign citizens though, so be careful. Time may be an illusion and all, but schedules still exist.
I mean they aren’t technically wrong some of the time, we shouldn’t have to pay to exist it’s fucking crazy.
I honestly agree with them about how dumb a lot of our legal system is. Their response is to try and make it dumber, though
Technically, how all law really works at its core.
Well, that and the threat of overwhelming unilateral violence
Which usually does cause one to just go with it
People could fight back if they cared enough.
The trees owned the lands until the humans took it from them.
Humans:
The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist only of a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing?
-Tuck Everlasting
Dude’s lived how ever many hundred years and never even heard of mineral rights, smh.
Well, at least in my country, only what’s above the ground.
Nah, more like rented their place until they could give back to the earth with the ultimate sacrifice.
when the people who make the rules say “Sorry, the rules are the rules, there’s nothing we can do” remember that they literally gave a tree human rights just because they felt like it.
In this case “they” is a fairly small city and its sense of tradition, so you will find “they” is actually “because the people wanted to.”
You’re not totally wrong, but an important distinction is that some rules aren’t there just to be arbitrary. They’re linked into a larger system, and you can’t change one without affecting thirty other things. It usually needs more than ten seconds of thought prior to posting on the Internet.
trees having human rights would shake up this whole system, what with us having entire economic sectors based on slaughtering them wholesale. so either you can just do things as a one-off without generalizing them or you can just shake up the whole system. obviously, this case was the former, which means that other cases can be too. way to end it by being a dick, though.
Sorry, I see how that last sentence can be read as being directed at you. I was thinking more of people in general who say “we should just change the rule"l because it doesn’t work in this one instances” without thinking of impacts beyond the immediate problem. Making the environment part of our economic and social systems is a good idea.
A tree owning itself and it’s a white oak tree, who would have guessed. You can be victim of specicism and still a white supremacist. Think about it.
Well, fuck.
Much worse. This tree was given freedom in the Southern US. Slavery was still ongoing. The University of Georgia leased out it’s slaves.
So this tree was more important than actual people.
Are they sure the original Tree that Owned Itself was the mother of the Son of the Tree that owned itself? Or did some whore squirrel just deposit the acorn near the stump?
Have they done a DNA test to confirm that the son has a legal stake in the property?
Now the son is young, dumb, and full of pollen. He’s gotta be spreading it as far as the wind will take it. What will happen when he inevitably dies and his estate has to be settled??
wait so, can i just deed the title of my land to my land upon my death? Is that something i can just fucking do?
As long as enough of town decides to go along with it. If the town decides you were a coot and would rather have a gas station, the tree is fucked.
i see. So basically i just gotta convince the local government that my land is now community land dedicated to third space activities, and owned by itself. I can troll generations for generations to come. Wonderful.
Trees now have more rights than women in the State of Texas
What if the tree falls on them? Might they become governor?
Okay curious question. There’s a legal movement arguing that nature should be protected by law/be considered when undertaking things that might affect it (esp. resource development).
Does anybody with any legal knowledge know if this would create some kind of legal precedent? Obviously it’s not enshrined in written law, but a tree that owns itself (even by mutual agreement) seems to suggest it’s somewhat plausible, and it’s not like laws always make sense lol. Or am I just reading too much into this?
Obviously, it would vary from country to country. But some countries do give legal status either to nature as a whole, or to rivers, mountains, etc. In practice, this means that the state / a citizen can sue anyone who pollutes or otherwise harms the river / mountain / nature, without needing to prove that the pollution is bad for other people.
Tree law continues to be the wildest
Emotionally sensitive people make life worth living
Is this outrage bait from other outrage bait forming an outrageception or ragechain or am I too long online today?
Besides where are the scientists
We all need grass time, sometimes. :)
How dose inheritance work for trees that are people?
You love to see it.
Land shouldn’t be owned by humans. Period.
Based Georgia!
