Guardian Wants To Make Ecocide An International Crime
By Paul Homewood
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h/t Robin Guenier
The Guardian has let the fruitloops out!
The Paris agreement is failing. Yet there is new hope for preserving a livable planet: the growing global campaign to criminalize ecocide can address the root causes of the climate crisis and safeguard our planet – the common home of all humanity and, indeed, all life on Earth.
Nearly five years after the negotiation of the landmark Paris agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions and associated global warming to “well below 2.0C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5C”, we are experiencing drastically accelerating warming. 2020 was the second warmest year on record, following the record-setting 2019. Carbon in the atmosphere reached 417 parts per million (ppm) – the highest in the last 3m years. Even if we magically flipped a switch to a fully green economy tomorrow, there is still enough carbon in the atmosphere to continue warming the planet for decades.
The science is clear: without drastic action to limit temperature rise below 1.5C, the Earth, and all life on it, including all human beings, will suffer devastating consequences.
Yet only two countries – Morocco and the Gambia – are on track to meet the 1.5C target. The largest emitters, including the United States, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, are putting the world on course for 4C. At that rate, the polar ice caps will melt, causing dramatic sea level rise that will – in combination with other devastating effects like strengthening storms and droughts – cause mass famine, displacement and extinction.
Currently, much of humanity feels hopeless, but the establishment of ecocide as a crime offers something for people to get behind. Enacting laws against ecocide, as is under consideration in a growing number of jurisdictions, offers a way to correct the shortcomings of the Paris agreement. Whereas Paris lacks sufficient ambition, transparency and accountability, the criminalization of ecocide would be an enforceable deterrent. Outlawing ecocide would also address a key root cause of global climate change: the widespread destruction of nature, which, in addition to increasing greenhouse gas emissions, has devastating impacts on global health, food and water security, and sustainable development – to name a few.
Ecocide shares its roots with other landmark concepts in international law, including genocide. Indeed, ecocide and genocide often go hand in hand. Around the globe, ecological destruction is also decimating indigenous communities. To give just a few cases: Brazil’s Yanomami are facing mercury poisoning generated by the 20,000 illegal miners in their territories. 87% of Native Alaskan villages are experiencing climate-related erosion, even as they face growing calls to drill on their lands.
Conviction for ecocide would require demonstrating willful disregard for the consequences of actions such as deforestation, reckless drilling and mining. This threshold implicates a number of global and corporate leaders through their complicity in deforesting the Amazon and Congo basins, drilling recklessly in the Arctic and the Niger delta, or permitting unsustainable palm oil plantations in south-east Asia, among other destructive practices.
As a term, “ecocide” dates to 1970, when Arthur Galston, an American botanist, used it to describe the appalling effects of Agent Orange on the vast forests of Vietnam and Cambodia. On the 50th anniversary of the concept, we can take heart in the growing civic will to officially make ecocide an international crime.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/24/climate-crisis-ecocide-international-crime
If they has been paying attention at the time, they might have realised that the Paris Agreement was a sham from the start, as developing countries got off scot free, allowed to carry on increasing emissions as much as they wanted.
And, while they are busy bashing capitalist companies, maybe they could care to explain what they would do about China and other countries, who would simply ignore the new laws.
In any event, where on earth would you draw the line? They blame corporations for deforestation, but much of happens at a local level; would they prosecute a farmer in Brazil, for instance, for clearing his land? And should politicians be prosecuted for mandating biofuels?
Or what about the car driver, who fills his car up with petrol?
It is clear that their main priority is to attack capitalism, as this statement makes clear:
But ecocide would not just be a punitive measure for corporate leaders.
Welcome to the Gulag.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
They could start with picketing Drax!
Like all daft retributative measures one must ask “policed by whom and penalised by whom at whose administrative expense”? You can tell how severe the staff cuts at the Guardian have become when this sort of stuff gets past the remaining editors.
Fortunately, it’s unworkable – another waste of people’s time, money and an addition to CO2.
Ecocide, aka Control Freakery!
I have just finished reading “The Denial” by Ross Clark. I think he must be clairvoyant!
When are these Guardian reading dopes going to realise that there is no thing as international law. The international court in the Hague is brilliant at prosecuting “losers” from tiny backward nations but hopeless in bringing to account big powerful nations. Thus this fantasy of Ecocide will bring the full weight of “justice” on little people and little nations, whilst the big well armed super state nations will, as usual, do what they like. Reminds me of that song “we run them in, we show them we’re the bold gendarmes”
This is ridiculous beyond belief. No wonder their readers have deserted in droves.
The Orwellian terms “duckspeak and doublethink” cover this article well. The science is “clear” apparently, if that were true, then the corollary would be that the emissions of all countries would have to be reduced without choice, even if war were needed. What they mean is that the power-group believe that CO2 is the new devil and we must all live in fear of the small, and possibly not even unusual, increase in the value as the world warms, they even have their indulgences and now want punishment for the “unbelievers”: Spanish Inquisition anyone?.
Following our local Council’s declaration of an Ecological and Climate Emergency last year, and several comprehensive documents explaining the perceived threats to the planet but without any costings at all, except to say that they had done a deal for 100% Green Energy from NPower, using exclusively Wind and Hydro power, costing the local Council tax payers £10,500 per annum EXTRA for the privilege. They then asked us to complete a long survey stating what our Green priorities and concerns were. I asked for costings in order to complete the survey in an objective fashion. They eventually replied with generalisations, and said costings would be examined after they had decided on taking action on the priorities we had expressed.
Within one of the documents was the statement: “an environmental law organisation has recently given notice to one hundred local authorities that have declared a Climate Emergency (including this Council) and are revising their Local Plans, that they will challenge those that do not sufficiently take account of the Climate Emergency in their new Local Plan.” This threatening organisation I have found out, is Clientearth, who are already threatening Legal Action against Councils in advance of any action, so
a legal form of Ecocide exists now.
I am wondering about a collective bit of pushback if we all write to our councils who have declared an emergency demanding the basis upon which they have thought it necessary to declare said emergency.
That demand should be for them to come up with empirical data which MUST underpin any decision they are making, pointing out that the product of models are not empirical data. Worse, that the product of wrong models are not worth dignifying with a response (even though the “cyentists” in the pay of the IPCC political organization seem to think it is ok to promote the averaging of a whole bunch of wrong models as a right answer).
They should be challenged to show with details exactly HOW we are in uncharted territory climate wise and that what is happening today has not happened before during the last 100 and indeed 1000 years. Ask them to produce answers in the context of geological history and the laws of physics which must be ignored to make their emergency real. They must also be able to guarantee value for money wasted, sorry spent in respect of units of climate change avoided or deferred per £1 million frittered away on virtue signalling and worthless green bureaucrats.
On your point about this pointless mob threatening Legal Action. I know these charlatans are all suspiciously well funded but upon what legal basis can they make this work when this is a claimed global phenomenon which means outside of the UK’s legal jurisdiction.
How truly absurd it is that we live in such a world where the Enlightenment is dead and reason has gone out of the window.
Come on, only the Grauniad would publish such drivel.
Start with removing legal protection for politicians, then we’ll have a really interesting conversation about how actions have consequences.
‘To stop climate disaster, make ecocide an international crime. It’s the only way we can people to accept global government. Which is what all this ecoshit is about, anyway.’
Fixed it.
Sorry for being OT but the BBC have now even started inserting green propaganda into Pointless. Last night there was a question about which countries produced the most solar energy. Each answer was accompanied by some nonsense about this being enough to boil a hundred million electric kettles or some such drivel. I strongly suspect that the figures would have been based on nameplate capacity rather than what is actually produced.
What is that in Hiroshima Bombs*?
*My preferred unit of energy.
These people at the grauniad, although they talk about eco this and eco that, they have absolutely no idea about nature and the immense power of nature.
At last some truth: “The Paris agreement is failing”.
Isn’t the Guardian an international crime?
Meanwhile, the result of sharing a position on the Climate Change Committee and a directorship at Drax is to cancel plans foe 3.6GW if reliable CCGT generation. Our capacity crunch, Texas style, draws closer.
https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/drax-drops-plan-for-europes-largest-new-gas-plant-as-it-turns-its-back-on-fossil-fuels
Slowly but surely the obscenity of the marxism behind all of this reveals it’s self. Criminalizing people for invented accusations about an invented problem indeed. How long before they dispense with the need for an excuse and just go for “wrongthink”? . How long before they openly suggest getting back to what they are REALLY good at which is snatching people in the middle of the night followed by summary executions……The deliberate distortion in factual education about the realities of marxism in the West by marxist sympathisers has come home to roost. Now we have a largely poorly educated but politicized youth indoctrinated with all of the evil you can imagine. They murdered more than 100 million poor wretched souls in the 20th century and I feel that this mob just cannot wait to get started and show how much better they are at it! The lowercase “m” for marxism is deliberate and my own feeble way of expressing my profound contempt for this pernicious ideological cancer on the back of mankind.
“the science is clear: without drastic action to limit temperature rise below 1.5C, the Earth, and all life on it, including all human beings, will suffer devastating consequences.”
Ok Guardian. Let’s be clear. The pandemic lockdown has shown you what happens when carbon fuel emissions are quickly reduced. Will further such action be able to avoid this social and economic devastation once the pandemic is controlled? So…what drastic action will lower the Earth’s temperature without these devastating economic consequences to human beings? Isn’t it time to provide some specifics on your call for drastic action?
You and I both know they do not have any because this is the mother of the Emperors Clothes where brute politics is behind it all. In any other area of science claims do not exist. Empirical data must underpin theory if it is to be considered credible. To move my argument into the legal realm, only factual evidence is accepted. The product of models are hearsay and inadmissible as evidence.
Orwell was way ahead of his time!
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
eco mentalists need to be locked up for their own sanity and our protection.
As Paul recently referred to, the Guardian is essentially written by and read by “scum”. For all its high and mighty claims it has became the plaything of various plutocrats hiding behind “charitable” foundations (a.k.a.” brainwashers”) such as Ford, Rockerfeller and Gates for its existential funding. But for their interventions the publication would have been bankrupted years ago having consistently lost money since before that media whore, Viner, was even born.
And yet this prostitute of a publication tries to claim a “superiority” over others. Needless to say I hate the pompous rag and would dearly love to see it wiped from the face of the Earth.
Rant over!.
I wonder how Jojo plans to hold the Chinese politburo to account.
Jojo… doesn’t speak Mandarin: Oxford University, Degree BA Hons Field Of Study French & Italian. Maybe she will speak to them in French or Italian. Those seem to be her only scientific credentials.
I would have thought, or hoped anyway, that some organisation like IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organisation) could have been requested to take action over such unadulterated, fake, ”news”. It’s about time somebody did anyway.