Article 13, EU Charter

Freedom of the arts and sciences

The arts and scientific research shall be free of constraint. Academic freedom shall be respected.

It strikes me that science free of constraint on it’s own could be potentially very destructive.

Of course, the Charter begins with Human Dignity:

Human dignity is inviolable. It must be respected and protected.

And is followed by the Right to Life.

But it’s not until Article 37 where we talk about Environmental protection, and fairly weakly:

A high level of environmental protection and the improvement of the quality of the environment must
be integrated into the policies of the Union and ensured in accordance with the principle of sustainable
development.

I understand well the reasons why human life is so primary in a document of human governance, and the risks to property rights people feel would be inherent in giving the natural environment greater protections.

But there’s an argument to be made, that Human Dignity and Right to Life come from fundamentally healthy and functional inter-locking planetary ecosystems.

To not constrain science within such a framework seems, to me, something we will look back on ruefully someday.

But what do I know?