Jeremy Waldron

‘The day will come, and perhaps it is not far off, when John Locke will be universally placed among those writers who have perpetrated the most evil among men.’ If Locke has a competitor in this, it is David Hume, ‘the most culpable of these fatal writers who will not cease to damn the [18th] century in the eyes of posterity, the one who has used the most talent with the most composure to produce the most evil.’ Europe is in chaos because intellectuals like these have forgotten their place: ‘They detest without exception every distinction they themselves do not enjoy; they find fault in every authority; if they are allowed, they will attack everything, even God, because he is master. They should be hung like housebreakers.’

Do trees have rights? Radical conservationists who oppose the logging of redwoods in the American North-West, or the destruction of the tropical rain forests, sometimes claim that they do. The forests, they say, have been here much longer than we have, and have as much right to exist as the rapacious human species that is destroying them. Arguing that trees have rights is their way of insisting that there is something to be said on the trees’ behalf in environmental disputes, quite apart from what we say on behalf of the humans involved (who may or may not have an interest in letting the trees live).

By instinct and by reputation, environmentalists tend to be socialists. They are hostile to private industry, they scorn the profit motive, and they are profoundly suspicious of any claim that societies work best when economic decisions are made in the medium of unregulated markets. By emphasising the dire consequences for the environment of unrestrained industry, they present themselves as champions of big government, large regulative agencies and strict legal controls.