America’s legal system proclaims that even lifeless man-made, paper entities called “corporations” are endowed with the human rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.But if a fabricated, inanimate, corporate thing can have enforceable rights to legal protections and life privileges – why not natural beings like… well, nature? Not just favored animals, but all complex, living, breathing, sentient, cooperative, reproductive beings. Trees, for one obvious example. Or rivers, prairies, marshes, and other organic bodies that have a life of their own and a reason to exist beyond our exploitation of them.Back Jim, back the trees →That’s why the [...]