Ecological degradation is already preventing many living things (including a lot of humans) from achieving their full potential for self-realization (or their three-score and ten if you prefer).

One of the principles of ecology can be stated as "all living beings have equal rights to self-realization" which stems from an ultimate norm "Complete Self-realization".

This gives rise to the concept of rights of nature - a necessary counter to the capitalist legal framework in which nature is treated as property, whereas a company or corporation has legal rights analogous to an individual.

A lot of rubbish has been appearing on social media and elsewhere about what a terrible year 2016 was and good riddance to it.

I beg to differ. In many ways 2016 was a good year.

I recently used the short phrase "shallow new greens" in a comment on a forum and was pulled up for being pompous. That's the trouble with throwaway comments; they often don't convey the intended meaning.