The day after Christmas, the Orlando Sentinel published an opinion piece by Elizabeth Drayer. She is a lawyer and, as her byline states, a longtime environmental advocate. I haven’t read another word that Ms. Drayer has written outside of this article. To be clear: I appreciate her passion for protecting our natural resources. I believe that Ms. Drayer does care for the environment in Florida and beyond. I also think that her approach is misguided, dangerous, and untenable.

I think this because Ms Drayer suggests granting legal personhood to natural wonders. Or, to put it much plainer: calling things that aren’t people people.

Please entertain a quick reducio ad absurdum, taking this suggestion to its logical conclusion in order to demonstrate the short-sightedness of such a position. If we are consistent, what other personal values should we confer onto nature? Consent? Tolerance? Reciprocity?

No matter how hard you try, a fish, a river, or a patch of soil can’t grant consent. It is impossible to ascertain if a streambank wants your trespassing footsteps. Even more so, you can not arrive at any sort of reasonable certainty that each and every fish you tempt is game for your angling.

Culturally speaking, this whole notion is very troubling when it comes to tolerance. If you give one particular natural wonder the legal rights that grant personhood, you are effectively denying every other natural feature personhood. Consequently, you are discriminating based upon external, subjective criteria. The river matters but the cornfield doesn’t. The beach has rights but the highway median doesn’t.

If nature has personhood, how will a mountainside be punished when a mudslide kills dozens of humans? Or, to be consistent, would the trees on the mountainside get a prosecutor while the soil is granted a public defender? If all nature has equal rights, what right does a human have to plant a tree – let alone cut one down? What right does a human have to drink water or breathe air?

If you see the absurdity of these questions, hopefully you see the absurdity of the premise.

A core concern of this article is the matter of category confusion. For millennia, western civilization has maintained that humanity is the only entity within the person category. Come from another perspective, and you must contend with all the capital that you’re borrowing from western civilization to even stand on the basic presuppositions of your argument: epistemology, democracy, dignity, basic tenets of the scientific method, etc. Deny any one of those, and the conclusions become problematic.

In the entirety of the article, this quote is perhaps the most offensive: “There will surely be legal hurdles along the way, but our most important societal milestones faced similar challenges. Giving women and minorities the right to vote required constitutional change that was years in the making.” Yes: women and minorities are being compared to swamps and deserts. Not only is there equivocation of people and land features, but historically marginalized people groups are being exploited for an inequivalent argument.

True conservation doesn’t arbitrarily make the water or the land equal to people. True conservation is stewardship. People have intellect and discernment. We have an ability which no animal, plant, or mineral possesses. We ought to be respectful stewards. We don’t absolve ourselves of stewardship because of grave missteps. A swinging cultural pendulum  can’t absolve us of stewardship. Dolphins, aspen groves, and impressive granite outcrops will never step in and manage resources for us. And we shouldn’t pass the buck by calling a lake a person and treating its trillions of gallons as anything more than very important water worthy of our care.

We should take care of nature because it is our job. Conferring personal rights onto nature is a self-refuting exercise. Even in the act of conferring rights we acknowledge that we are the ones who indeed have that authority. If the natural world possesses personhood, why would it need us to say that it does? The truth is that it doesn’t. We know that. I am aware that the premise of the aforementioned article is the kind of legal hyperbole used to move the ball down the field. The concern is that the playbook is indicative of a dangerous worldview. A dehumanizing worldview.

Humans of all times and cultures have abused the natural world. Presently, our ecological awareness and sympathy is at a high-water mark. This doesn’t eliminate the need for vigilance, because our cumulative potential for damage is also severe. Often, radical measures are necessary. Ecological crises that stem from human impact occur frequently. Resources get diverted and people get impacted. Awful as these scenarios are, the ontological reality that there is still a hard line between people and nature which cannot be disregarded.

The individual, as a member of a community, ought to take the initiative to do our part and speak our peace. The voices of people stand on the authority of their roles as stewards and rightly say what needs to be said. A stream, regardless of legal status, will never speak for itself. It depends upon its stewards. It depends on the cumulative potential of stewards who come together to protect and to educate. That same community will also use and enjoy. This balance – this relationship – is how people are intended to interact with the wonders of nature.