Avian Intelligence Ops
[ by Charles Cameron — with a sideward glance at the rights of dolphins and trees ]
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For your refreshment and edification:
— while:
I fully agree with Ohad Hatzofe who says in that second clip:
Birds and other aninmals, but especially flying animals, don’t know political boundaries, and if there are fences on the ground, to them it’s not a barrier, and we’re to protect them and to treat them as such. The birds are not Israeli birds or Lebanese birds, or European birds passing over our skies; these are this earth’s birds..
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Sigh:
We are asked to decide whether the world’s cetaceans have standing to bring suit in their own name under the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the National Environmental Protection Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. We hold that cetaceans do not have standing under these statutes.
It looks as though it is past time for birds, dolphins and other creatures to have international legal standing of the kind suggested by Justice Douglas in his dissenting opinion, Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972):
The critical question of “standing” would be simplified and also put neatly in focus if we fashioned a federal rule that allowed environmental issues to be litigated before federal agencies or federal courts in the name of the inanimate object about to be despoiled, defaced, or invaded by roads and bulldozers and where injury is the subject of public outrage.
—and further discussed by Christopher Stone in what is perhaps the only law book I have found it a pleasure to read, Should Trees Have Standing?
February 7th, 2016 at 12:15 am
Charles,
Have you ever read David Brin’s Uplift books? Dolphins, monkeys, dogs, are all genetically modified to human intelligence levels and thus become “client” races. The responsibilities of the “clients” to the Uplifters and vice versa are explored.
February 7th, 2016 at 7:23 am
No, never. My SF period really ended with Zelazny and Delany. Brin said kind things about one of my stories, though — as mentioned here.
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I do have great admiration for Cordwainer Smith’s stories, though, The Dead Lady of Clown Town, The Ballad of Lost C’Mell and so on, with the “underpeople” derived from animal stock, C’Mell being one (cat-derived) example. Stunning. Among the greatest SF of all time, IMO.