A positive duty imposed on humans to ensure the survival of Earths SES

An environmental rights-based law is a necessary but not a sufficient change needed for environmental law. A workable change for environmental law would be to also impose a “duty” on humans to ensure that nature is not so modified by anthropocentric actions as to make it impossible for humans to survive. Such a duty would be consistent with the thinking of Pufendorf. He believed that humans needed to do more than “doing no harm” to their fellow humans; humans also should have an affirmative duty to benefit others an promote the good of others. The need for a correlative duty to accompany an environmental right held by the SES is consistent with the Laws of nature. A duty to nature/environment imposed on humans is the symmetrical counterpart of the right held by the SES. A right/duty dichotomy reflects the need for “symmetry” in any workable system of environmental laws. Such a duty is also “simple;” when a duty is imposed it does not require an enormous complicated administrative apparatus to function. And a duty on humans “connects” humans to their environment.