Fun facts: the UK has crazy laws protecting trees and hedgerows. There’s a national tree registry for old boys.

  • @napoleonsdumbcousin@feddit.de
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    1212 months ago

    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.

    • Match!!
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      1022 months ago

      Nothing is protected by law, everything protected is by the will of the people

    • @fossilesque@mander.xyzOPM
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      2 months ago

      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.

      • @Natanael@slrpnk.net
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        82 months ago

        It’s called environmental protection groups, animal rights groups, etc. Plenty don’t want to listen, though

          • @azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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            52 months ago

            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.

            • @lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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              2 months ago

              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.

              • Almrond
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                12 months ago

                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.

      • @Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        72 months ago

        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.

    • @wizzor@sopuli.xyz
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      322 months ago

      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.

        • The Snark Urge
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          102 months ago

          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.

          • @Madison420@lemmy.world
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            42 months ago

            I mean they aren’t technically wrong some of the time, we shouldn’t have to pay to exist it’s fucking crazy.

          • @idiomaddict@feddit.de
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            22 months ago

            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

    • Alien Nathan Edward
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      122 months ago

      Technically, how all law really works at its core.

      Well, that and the threat of overwhelming unilateral violence

    • @einlander@lemmy.world
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      252 months ago

      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

    • @fossilesque@mander.xyzOPM
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      72 months ago

      Nah, more like rented their place until they could give back to the earth with the ultimate sacrifice.

  • @Akasazh@feddit.nl
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    352 months ago

    I do like the info, I’m failing to see the science aspect, and even the meme aspect of this post. But I’m in the ‘microblog doesn’t equal meme’ camp.

    • @doubtingtammy@lemmy.ml
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      72 months ago

      I think conservation techniques can count as science. If it was a rare species, the science connection would be more obvious

      • @Akasazh@feddit.nl
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        52 months ago

        The ‘not science’ part is what irked me and I tagged that on for laughs and irrelevant discussion (as is the following I’m not mad, but like to dabble in pedantry today):

        But on that part, in the old days the dawkinsian meme was misappropriated to denote a specific image format. Of course it is a Dawkinsian one, too as it is a vector of ideas.

        Then it got misappropriated again as ‘any funny image on the internet’, including microblogs, like you seen to defend. You then use the argument that it’s a meme in the Dawkinsian manner (and you’d be technically correct).

        But using that logic anything in any medium is a meme. I could upload a Gilbert Gottfried narration of Atlas Shrugged, a clay tablet or the transcripts of all of money pythons movies and sketches. That would all be Dawkinsian memes, and debatebly funny, however not the kind the people here are interested in seeing.

        So in in the camp ‘a meme means an image with caption’ and not micro blogs, otherwise anything goes.

        Thanks for entertaining my diatribe.

      • Cethin
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        12 months ago

        Dawkin’s definition had nothing to do with humor. His definition was an idea that is spread through society. Its the intellectual equivalent to genes.

  • Alien Nathan Edward
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    302 months ago

    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.

    • @DragonTypeWyvern
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      142 months ago

      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.”

    • @frezik@midwest.social
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      -12 months ago

      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.

      • Alien Nathan Edward
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        2 months ago

        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.

        • @frezik@midwest.social
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          12 months ago

          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.

  • @JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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    292 months ago

    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??

  • @lugal@sopuli.xyz
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    272 months ago

    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.

      • @Grellan@lemm.ee
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        132 months ago

        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.

  • KillingTimeItself
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    192 months ago

    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?

    • @Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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      352 months ago

      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.

      • KillingTimeItself
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        12 months ago

        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.

  • @NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I don’t think it’s crazy at all to protect trees. We need them. What baffles me is how much we rely on them and still cut whole swaths of them down anyway without a thought.

    • Deebster
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      112 months ago

      Study after study has shown that trees in cities offer huge benefits: offering shade and cooling (reducing energy consumption), draining storm/flood water (very useful in our more extreme climate), cleaning the air and emitting oxygen, homing wildlife, improving mental health by reducing anxiety and depression, being nice to look at.

      Every city tree should be treasured and protected.

    • @fossilesque@mander.xyzOPM
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      2 months ago

      It boggles my mind we feel the need to box ecology and not consider agency for any of the other parts that make life itself possible.

  • @spankinspinach@sh.itjust.works
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    122 months ago

    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?

    • @emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
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      102 months ago

      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.

  • nifty
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    42 months ago

    Emotionally sensitive people make life worth living

  • @Emmie@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    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

    • @Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      It generally doesn’t. You can create a trust for non-persons, but there are a bunch of rules about how it can be established, how long it can exist, etc.