Switzerland Loses It

Switzerland Loses It

At first glance, it reads like a really, really deadpan parody of animal rights. But it seems to be deadly serious. From the Swiss government's Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH), The dignity of living beings with regard to plants: Moral consideration of plants for their own sake:

The Federal Constitution has three forms of protection for plants: the protection of biodiversity, species protection, and the duty to take the dignity of living beings into consideration when handling plants.

Huh? The dignity of animals? No, they mean the dignity of plants.

It became clear, however, that for plants – unlike animals – it was almost impossible to refer to moral intuition. There is no social consensus on how to deal with plants. Even within the ECNH, the intuitions relating to the extent and justification of moral responsibilities towards plants were highly heterogeneous. Some members were of the opinion that plants are not part of the moral community, because they do not satisfy the conditions for belonging to this community. Others argued that plants should not belong to it, because otherwise human life would be morally over-regulated. A further group felt that there were particular situations in which people should refrain from something for the sake of a plant, unless there are sufficient grounds to the contrary. This opinion was justified either by arguing that plants strive after something, which should not be blocked without good reason, or that recent findings in natural science, such as the many commonalities between plants, animals and humans at molecular and cellular level, remove the reasons for excluding plants in principle from the moral community. The only criterion on which all the members could agree, despite their very differing intuitions, was that we should not harm or destroy plants arbitrarily.

G. K. Chesterton is often credited (perhaps incorrectly) with the saying, "When men stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing. They believe in anything." The proof is visible above. What next? Should we be concerned about mistreatment of rocks? Rocks might "strive after something" also.

I found this astonishing indication of where Europe is heading over at Volokh Conspiracy, where the winning comment has to be:

Can ‘Mineral Rights’ be far behind? I don’t know about moral equivalence, but this panel has clearly demonstrated that they are intellectually inferior to a box of rocks.

UPDATE: Oh yeah: here's the music video by the Arrogant Worms: "Carrot Juice is Murder."