Pelosi: A Safe Environment is a Human Right

Look out, here comes tomorrow.

"We have so much room for improvement. Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory ... of how we are taking responsibility" for solving climate change and creating healthy environments.

"I do see this opportunity for climate change to be ... a game-changer. It's a place where human rights — looking out for the needs of the poor in terms of climate change and healthy environment — are a human right."

"We are all in this together. The impact of climate change is a tremendous risk to the security and well-being of our countries."

All of these quotes from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to Chinese school children and to Chinese officials, this week.

The Associated Press noted that the trip was long on environmental policy and very, very skimpy on "her usual criticism of human rights" violations.

Instead, she proclaimed that "the right to a clean environment is a human right."

Once again this demonstrates how dangerous the concept of "positive rights" are to individual liberty.

"The right to a clean environment" becomes a human right, and governments consider themselves empowered to subject "every aspect of our lives" to regulation -- "inventory" is Mizz Pelosi's code word.

"People have a right to housing." Suddenly governments consider themselves empowered to jigger with real estate financing and markets. (What could possibly go wrong there?)

"People have a right to health care." Well, if you don't work to make money or to qualify for employer-provided health insurance, then the government must provide your health care -- after all, it's a right, isn't it?

But the more powers a government assumes to grant all these "positive" rights, the less room there is for individuals to assert their "unalienable" rights granted to them by Nature's God. There is an inherent conflict between a government trying to provide all the "positive" stuff it has declared, in its omnipotence, that people have a right to, and individuals merely trying to retain a sliver of their independence. It is an irreconcilable conflict. It can't be done.

That doesn't bother today's progressive leaders.

But it should bother you.