When we understand human rights as reflecting basic laws of social interaction, we may notice that these fundamental rights can help us solve our most serious problems. We might come to recognize that respecting basic rights is necessary for the healthy functioning of society.
If human rights are a kind of natural law, then moral claims that citizens might make (such as a claim of a right to share in deciding limits to pollution and limits to rates of taking of natural resources) can be seen as manifestations of a natural phenomenon. We might recognize that, to ensure the healthy functioning of society, citizens must assert their claims to natural rights, and must act in a way so as to create systems of government that assure these rights are respected in practice.
Presently, our system of government does not embody all natural rights in its functioning. The idea that natural wealth (what we might call commons or public property) ought to be shared equally is reflected in the writings of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Paine, Adam Smith and others. Yet our society does not manifest this idea in practice. Natural wealth (or a monetary representation of that wealth) is not shared. Rates of putting pollution and depleting resources are not being held to limits acceptable to most people. We lack even a formal process for discerning what most people would find acceptable regarding various kinds of impact on the environment.
This systemic flaw, this failure to embody a basic moral precept in practice, means that harm is done to the environment by industries without a direct and proportional economic cost being incurred. A consequence of this moral defect is that prices of things do not reflect environmental impacts such as pollution, resource depletion and habitat destruction. Prices lie to us about true costs, so we make bad decisions directly related to what kind of harmful impact is being hidden.
A visceral example of harm related to this lack of transparency is the intense crowding of animals in what has been called the 'animal exploitation industry': By crowding animals together more and by feeding antibiotics to them, expenses can be reduced and profits increased, but at potentially very high cost. More crowding means more stress and suffering of animals held captive; Routine use of antibiotics means more rapid loss of effectiveness of antibiotics for fighting disease in human beings (as pathogenic bacteria are given ample opportunity to develop resistance).
Animals are more stressed, the environment is more polluted and antibiotic resistance develops faster because industries are allowed to externalize their costs. These adverse impacts--the costs imposed on society and on animal captives--are not reflected in prices.
Living systems, including human society, are delicate, intricate phenomena. The fact that it is always easier to tear down and destroy something than it is to build and create reflects the nature of the underlying enabling conditions that make complex and intricate systems possible: Enabling conditions must be stable over time. Stability is necessary in order for any creative or developmental process to unfold.
The conditions necessary for maintenance of a healthy society require order and structure rather than chaos or randomness. Order and structure are necessary whether we are talking about making a tower of blocks, a work of art or a civilization. Civilization will be stronger and more resilient when most everyone believes that we will all benefit by working to improve on what we have made. We cannot have many people wanting to destroy this nascent global civilization to see what else might take its place. For our own sake, and for the sake of those who will follow after us, there must be very few of us who believe that the world we have created is ugly or hurtful or evil. We need a society that all can believe in and feel glad to be a part of.
The rules we live by must be seen as fair. We must make a system that recognizes the people as the rightful owners of natural resource wealth, so that the world we create together will not be a world that has more paving or pollution or noise or extraction of limited resources than what most people would say is acceptable. Then we will have a true democracy.
If we limit or discourage excessive taking of resources... or putting of pollution... or destruction of wildlife habitat... or degradation of our view of the stars from outdoor lighting... if we limit harmful impacts on the environment by charging a fee to offending industries, then the fee proceeds (a monetary representation of what we all own in common) could be shared equally among all the world's people. (A system of random polls can show us when we have reached a point where impacts that had been excessive will have been brought into line with what most people think is acceptable. At that point, the associated fees will be set at the right amount.) We will have a more equitable society. No one will live in abject poverty.
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