Climate Craziness of the Week: British lawyer urges UN to accept 'ecocide' as international crime on par with genocide

Supporters of a new ecocide law also believe it could be used to prosecute “climate deniers”. Effort started by Club of Rome lawyer.

Excerpts from the Guardian article:

A campaign to declare the mass destruction of ecosystems an international crime against peace – alongside genocide and crimes against humanity – is being launched in the UK.

The proposal for the United Nations to accept “ecocide” as a fifth “crime against peace”, which could be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC), is the brainchild of British lawyer-turned-campaigner Polly Higgins.

The radical idea would have a profound effect on industries blamed for widespread damage to the environment like fossil fuels, mining, agriculture, chemicals and forestry.

Supporters of a new ecocide law also believe it could be used to prosecute “climate deniers” who distort science and facts to discourage voters and politicians from taking action to tackle global warming and climate change.

“Ecocide is in essence the very antithesis of life,” says Higgins. “It leads to resource depletion, and where there is escalation of resource depletion, war comes chasing behind. Where such destruction arises out of the actions of mankind, ecocide can be regarded as a crime against peace.”

Higgins, formerly a barrister in London specialising in employment, has already had success at the UN with a Universal Declaration for Planetary Rights, modelled on the human rights declaration. “My starting point was ‘how do we create a duty of care to the planet, a pre-emptive obligation to not harm the planet?'”

After a successful launch at the UN in 2008, the idea has been adopted by the Bolivian government, who will propose a full members’ vote, and Higgins has taken up her campaign for ecocide.

See the Guardian article for the rest

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Polly Higgins, the lawyer behind the idea of ecocide, is on the board of DESERTEC  (www.desertec.org). As press releases make clear [quote] “The DESERTEC Foundation is a charitable initiative of the Club of Rome” Polly Higgins can be seen listed as a board member on the press releases of DESERTEC. E.g. here: http://www.desertec.org/fileadmin/downloads/press/press-release_090616_en.pdf

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pat
April 11, 2010 9:04 am

Self-righteous twit. The loons in the Obama administration will likely applaud the idea. It is not like the UN has any real problems to deal with.

Karl Maki
April 11, 2010 9:06 am

Elizabeth (Canada) (08:50:03) :
And, coming soon to a city near you, the Thought Police.

Exactly. This initiative only serves to demonstrate the would be totalitarian nature and desires of many on the warmist side of the debate, for it is the totalitarian who seeks to criminalize thought and opinion.

johnythelowery
April 11, 2010 9:07 am

……………I mean……who do these people think they are?

Lazarus Long
April 11, 2010 9:08 am

“The radical idea would have a profound effect on industries blamed for widespread damage to the environment like fossil fuels, mining, agriculture, chemicals and forestry.”
Gee, just about everything that keeps human beings alive.
QUELLE SUPRISE!!!!!!

Pamela Gray
April 11, 2010 9:08 am

This is an invitation to court litigation that should be avoided at all costs by AGW proponents. One must be careful what one wishes for.

Jimbo
April 11, 2010 9:09 am

I posted this up at the Guardian:
It’s obvious that the alarmist have lost the argument that is why they first resorted to smear tactics, then onto “better safe than sorry”, then onto “appeal to authority” [IPCC] and finally onto legal action from the IPCC’s supporters the UN. If alarmists think that this is going to stop legitimate scepticism then you have lost the plot. For example most people in the UK don’t believe man has caused AGw. Maybe this is the reason for the ever more shrill alarmist calls and threats of legal action. IT WILL FAIL.
If you really want to argue the science and believe that the climate of earth used to be in some sort of equillibrium which man has disturbed then I point you to Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT who has something to say about it (click here).

davide
April 11, 2010 9:09 am

“The extensive destruction, damage to or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished.”
Can we use this to take action against windfarms?? It seems to cover most of the problems with them.
(sarc)
Don’t think it will work though as windfarms are completely green and do no harm to the environment(/sarc off)
tho only other comment i can make is “stupid cow”

Dagfinn
April 11, 2010 9:09 am

Deliberate environmental destruction can be a serious crime, but it doesn’t become something else and more sinister just by inventing a word that ends in “cide”.
It’s well known that democracies don’t make war against each other, so the ones who should be suspected of causing war indirectly are the ones who want to move towards dictatorship and abolish freedom of speech for “denialists”.

Antonio San
April 11, 2010 9:10 am

Civil War first courtesy of Higgins and greenies.

R. de Haan
April 11, 2010 9:10 am

Now we have the law on our side, we only need the uniforms!
Watch it, the ECO NAZI’s are coming!
Climate craziness unlimited!

DirkH
April 11, 2010 9:11 am

Oh sorry – Polly seems to have left the retail business. The shop i linked to –
http://www.lazyenvironmentalist.com/
belongs to a Josh Dorfman. Polly’s website used to be at
http://www.lazye.co.uk
but that redirects to her blog now:
http://thelazyenvironmentalist.blogspot.com/
and she’s got a real glossy new site at
http://www.thisisecocide.com/

kwik
April 11, 2010 9:17 am

Yes, this is the true face of the AGW agenda.
For all of us who believed that any talk about the Club of Rome means that the one mentioning it is a crazy conspiracy theorist…. it seems this is real.
The Club of Rome exist and is at work. And we should fear it.
Because these ideas can lead to war. Step by step they will lead us into a situation where we live in a POL POT regime.
And remember; The first step of genocide, is to put a demeaning name on the victim. Denialist. Untermensch. Kraut.
Then the next step, the killing of the Untermensch, the Denialist, the Kraut, is much easier. They are, after all, not proper humans?
Right? Seen it before? But instead of Hitler Jugend, it will be Green Police.
Or as they call it on Norwegian TV; The ask parents (In commercials) to let the young join “Environment Agents”, who can rat on parents and friends. Its the first small step.

starzmom
April 11, 2010 9:17 am

And some sort of decree not to use resources will not lead to massive discontent and war? Seems to me in my limited knowledge that peaceful people are people who have what they need to live, and it is the quest for resources that drives war. It also seems to me that war is one of the most environmentally destructive things humans do. What craziness!!

Dave F
April 11, 2010 9:18 am

This is disturbing. CEOs of companies go on a business trip, and at the airport, ecocide groups take them to jail, or if this fails, how does such a thing not empower environmentalist groups to ‘take matters in to their own hands’? Even a serious consideration of this policy is damaging to the truth behind the term ‘Crime against Humanity’.
Second, what is with the new overuse of the term? Rwandans, Jews, and Armenians know something about crimes against humanity. The logic that leads to this sort of assumption makes us all criminals against humanity! We are all eco-killers! Here is hoping some common sense prevails, but I won’t hold my breath.

John R. Walker
April 11, 2010 9:19 am

“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…”
Club of Rome
We have arrived at a point where a mini ice age in the northern hemisphere would be a blessing because it will put paid to 3 decades of systemic lies and deceit about man’s effect on the atmosphere.
If the warmists are allowed to run their course, and nature does not intervene, then we won’t need a crime of ecocide because genocide already covers what they are leading a substantial proportion of the world population into.

Robert Wykoff
April 11, 2010 9:22 am

I would be happy to contribute my tax dollars to building a new UN building in Port Au Prince.

Phillip Bratby
April 11, 2010 9:24 am

So waht does this crazy woman know about climate change? Not a lot in case anyone was in any doubt.

Gary Pearse
April 11, 2010 9:26 am

Polly is a very unhappy angry person and her type attracts unhapply angry persons into large mobs and mobs attract the less hung-up types as well. I personally knew a few young students who spent more time in rabid protest mode on myriad causes than in studying their courses (perhaps this is why they studied subjects that needed little attendance to pass with flying colors from professors who themselves were unhappy with their lot). They had pushed the envelope on a number of occasions, engaging in aggressive civil disobedience to the point of being arrested. The other thing I knew about these few students was that they curiously all hated their fathers, (apparently also their country and I suspect themselves). One father I would have to agree was a pretty hateable guy. I even hate the guy because, not only did he ruin his family he contributed another warrior to the cause of destruction of productive, peaceful society. I think an objective study of overzealous protesters personalities would be very revealing, likely showing that the calculus of big issue protests is really the integral of the personal anger of individuals with axes to grind with their parents and the nameplate issue is irrelevant. You can be sure that such a “survey” will never be done (social sciences don’t take on this type of thing).

DirkH
April 11, 2010 9:30 am

Polly’s wikipedia article only contains stuff she did since 2008 as an eco-activist, fighting for the rights of trees and planets. But interestingly there’s a short list of her education:
St Aloysius College, Scotland
Aberdeen University, Scotland, 1986 – 1991 Cultural History MA, First
Utrecht University, The Netherlands, 1990 – 1991 Semiology Dip, First
Glasgow University, Scotland, 1991 – 1992 Decorative Arts Post-Grad Dip, Merit
City University, London, 1996 – 1997, Law Dip
Call to the Bar, London UK 1998 (Middle Temple)
…and after these various stints and her short-lived retail career i mentioned above she suddenly appears on the green scene in 2008:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polly_Higgins
“In April 2008 Polly also founded WISE Women in Sustainability and the Environment – an international network […]”
“After addressing the United Nations in November 2008 Polly founded the campaign Trees Have Rights Too in order to gain global support for a Universal Declaration of Planetary Rights.”

Phillip Bratby
April 11, 2010 9:32 am

I declare that I am a “climate denier”. I deny there is such a thing as climate.

Al Gore's Holy Hologram
April 11, 2010 9:32 am

Universal Declaration for Planetary Rights? Heh, so The People’s Cube have been vindicated in their predictions of human stupidity yet again…
http://thepeoplescube.com/images/Free_Pluto_150.gif
http://image.spreadshirt.com/image-server/image/composition/1629225/view/1/producttypecolor/2/type/png/width/280/height/280

phlogiston
April 11, 2010 9:35 am

KPO
Your Pol Pot Cambodia analogy is right – these are the Khmer Vert.

Richard111
April 11, 2010 9:35 am

China has just spent £41.5 billion on the military.
The UK sent China £170 million in aid this year.
There is madness in the world.

Expat in France
April 11, 2010 9:36 am

Eco-blimey, this is really eco-too much. Will there be ecoxecutions for eco-transgressors?
Ecoloons, God preserve us from them.

kim
April 11, 2010 9:37 am

I like M of B’s term: the traffic light tendency. Greens too yellow to admit they are red.
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