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
So she wants to save the planet from us so that our Sun can have it in ~5 billion years time? That’s a great idea.
Yeah right!
“Al Gored (19:17:08) :
Is it any wonder that 1984 was set in the UK, and the BBC, CRU, Polly and Prince Charles are from there? Too bad Monty Python is gone. They could have done wonders with this proposed inquisition.”
Reminds my of a late blogger mate of mine who stated that Communism failed in Russia but would have worked in the UK. I tend to agree with him.
I can see where this sort of insanity will lead. I think there will be a massive political backlash in the UK soon.
A Hippy Chick with a law degree…..my worst nightmare!
“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.”
Where on Earth is she talking about? I’d argue that since there is no “peaceful enjoyment” by the [non human] inhabitants of that territory in the first place, it is not possible to “severely diminish” it.
This is the nuts and bolts of what’s going on in the politics of “climate change” scam: click
How do you plead Vesuvius, Pinatubo & Krakatoa, for the horrendous crime of ‘Ecocide’ & crimes against ‘Peace’?
Guilty your Honor…
So you plead guilty do you!…..you will be sentenced to…you will be sentenced to um…er…sentenced…to….er..um….er…er….er….
http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/04/09/lawrence-solomon-the-new-climate-game.aspx
As made clear in an 84-page Minority Staff report produced in February by the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, criminal charges will be aggressively pursued if the chief force behind the report, Senator James Inhofe, finds himself once again a Senator in the majority after the November elections in the U.S.
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Please vote for Senator James Inhofe, he is the only guy willing to investigate and prosecute climate fraudsters like Al Gore.
I am an AGC sceptic.
Where should I go to be guillotined?
“Freedom to Healthy & Clean Environment” – From Polly’s Econut site.
Hmmm!. Dictatorships do not have a good record, environment-wise.
http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=5978
“A UN judge has suggested that Pope Benedict XVI should be tried before the International Criminal Court for “crimes against humanity.””
I knew I had seen some other craziness involving the UN and crimes against humanity this week. Seems the UN understands the route to power for itself. Snatch up anyone you can tag with the ‘crimes against humanity’ label.
Eco defense lawyers and prosecutors are happy to be paid in CO2 credits? Beautiful industry.
DESERTEC is very openly an initiative of the Club of Rome.
From http://www.desertec.org/fileadmin/downloads/press/press_release_en_08.pdf
Michael.Straub AT ClubOfRome.de
Head of the Supervisory Board is Dr. Gerhard Knies; former President of the CoR.
The nice thing about the CoR is that they are arrogant beyond reason. They don’t attempt to hide such associations or their malice towards humanity. They believe that they are above the usual rules of society.
Forgive me if somebody else has mentioned this – too many comments to work through, but …
Polly is a Director of a Club of Rome “initiative” to produce energy for Europe from the deserts in North Africa and the Middle East (no mention of getting permission from the inhabitants of those regions).
The initiative is called DESERTEC.
Presumably this energy will be generated from massive arrays of solar panels.
Now, as I understand it (and I am looking for clarification here), solar arrays not only absorb energy from the sun, but they also reflect energy back into the atmosphere. If the amount of energy reflected is greater than the energy reflected by the earth, will that exacerbate the greenhouse effect?
DirkH: I suspect that the Hamburg address is Michael Straub’s. He provides a mobile phone number as Desertec-Marketing contact, but there’s a landline listed for the Club of Rome.
The official address http://www.clubofrome.org/eng/national_associations/ is associated with (Matthias) Max Schön elsewhere in Hamburg, but the phone number given is the same as for the CoR.
The repositioning has begun, global warming gave way to climate change, climate change gives way to ecocide.
There’s one heck of a difference between chopping down great swathes of equatorial forest, which does destroy species, and ‘being a climate denier’ which most certainly does not.
I would be most interested in seeing the arguments presented to a judge by this UK lawyer, which show PROOF that climate denier status murders species.
1. The first assumption of this is that climate changing with all of the opinion that climate change is bad will not destroy species, whilst climate changing in the presence of climate deniers will. I remain 100% confident that I can transmit ESP signals to millions of species around the world telling them to ROLL DOWN AND DIE………since clearly they won’t be dying in the absence of me doing that. Seems to me that climate deniers could do the world great good by sending ESP signals to Al Qa’ida to get them all to roll down dead tomorrow morning!!
2. The second assumption is that climate change is something new. I am sure we will bring witnesses to demonstrate that multiple extinctions occurred on this planet without humans taking part at times of rapid climate change.
3. The third assumption is that dangerous climate change is occurring currently. It would not be hard to assemble data comprising of:
i. Sea ice oscillations.
ii. Rural temperature trends.
iii. UHI temperature trends.
to show that temperatures are not increasing currently, nor is melting ice about to flood the world, nor are temperature records reliable.
One could go on.
What this story shows is the dangers of lawyers thinking that lawyering is more important than science.
Lawyers glorify winning arguments from a weak position. It’s how they earn their reputation.
Scientists glorify reaching the right conclusion through measuring the right things and asking the right questions.
Oh but this lawyer would learn some science……….
I’ve used “Club of Rome” as a 100% accurate indicator of lunacy ever since “The Limits to Growth” by Meadows et.al. was pushed by them in the 1970s. They used computer models to predict that we would run out of everything due to exponential growth and that we were destroying the planet (sound familiar?)…
Then when caught in the gross error decided it was a ‘projection’ not a prediction… (“run out of natural gas by 1980” is what I would call a prediction and that’s what was in the book.)
These folks are ALWAYS 100% spectacularly wrong.
FWIW, I have seen at least one claim that they were tied up in the initiation of the AGW fantasy…
So my advice: When you see “Club of Rome” attached to anything, assume it is 100% wrong and bogus. Then grab your wallet and run…
Richard111 (09:35:36) :
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.
You have got to be kidding, right? The (headed to bankruptcy) UK is sending pounds to the world economic / manufacturing juggernaut that is dominating world trade? For “aid”?
OK, I want you to get your water tested. Soon. Somebody is putting “funny stuff” in it. That’s the only rational explanation…
“Bernd Felsche (00:35:48) :
DirkH: I suspect that the Hamburg address is Michael Straub’s. He provides a mobile phone number as Desertec-Marketing contact, but there’s a landline listed for the Club of Rome.
The official address http://www.clubofrome.org/eng/national_associations/ is associated with (Matthias) Max Schön elsewhere in Hamburg, but the phone number given is the same as for the CoR.”
No, see my comments above, Straub and Schoen are both in Ferdinandstr. 28 according to google and the websites of the respective organisations.
“Bernd Felsche (00:09:14) :
DESERTEC is very openly an initiative of the Club of Rome.”
Yes, they are not ashamed, but when desertec was described in all the news magazines in Summer last year, the CoR connection got lost, they only talked about Siemens and Munich Re behind it, so for me it was something new.
Maybe the german journos just don’t know what the CoR is – probably too young to remember the Limits To Growth and the Malthusian ideology behind it; or they are too much died-in-the-Wool german Malthusians to still see Malthusianism when it crawls up their nostrils so they don’t report it (automatically assuming that the CoR are benign; that would be the typical german fallacy and that’s the way to get at their wallets.).
Well there’s somebody building a career for herself on various UK government quangos.
E. M. I’m pretty sure we’re sending “aid” as well…. to “help” them transition to carbon neutral… Hillary took a nice big posterboard check for 100B to Copenhagen. Well, first, we borrowed it from China, then we gave it back to them as aid.
I don’t hold any brief for daft Polly, but I can’t actually find any statement in her own words which supports prosecution of climate change ‘denialists’. The Guardian article itself doesn’t explicitly attribute this view to her, and on a somewhat desultory browse of her blog and website I can’t find it there either. Maybe she has expressed some such views somewhere, in which case by all means hang her and flog her, but climate skeptics should be the first people to demand clear evidence for any accusations.
Something interesting is happening in Névian (France).
For the first time in the French law, a judge said that the installation of a large wind farm, overlooking a vineyard, is for the owners an abnormal disturbance of neighborhood by the degradation of the landscape, by the sound pollution and by the resulting depreciation of land. In this case, he recognized the abnormal disturbance of neighborhood and ordered the “Compagnie du Vent”(the firm that installed the wind turbines) the demolition of four turbines and to pay the amount of around 500 000 euros for damages of belongings and for the estimated reduction of property value.
The verdict of the “Tribunal de Grande Instance” of Montpellier, is dated February 4, 2010, but has recently been known.
The given amount has to be paid, even if the company will take its case to a higher court. “However, the demolition will only intervene if the Court of Appeal affirmed the decision of first instance.”
http://eolien.info/documents/html/nevian.htm (French website!)
The company speaks about a case of “general interest” and does not understand the decision.
If “ecocide” or “a crime against peace”, should become generally accepted standard terms, these owners of the domain should to have accept all these modifications of the landscape.
But the last word is not yet spoken! It is interesting to know what will be the decision by the Court of Appeal.
Nobody expected the UN inquisition.
So I’m assuming in good faith Polly Higgins will go after the main perpetrators of “ecocide” first:
1) industrial agriculture and commercial housing development, which destroys “entire ecosystems”
2) The US and other militaries, whose “carbon footprint” is off the charts
3) carbonated drinks manufacturers such as Coca-Cola, whose products are clearly designed to increase atmospheric carbon
4) Dentists and enthusiasts of nitrous oxide, whose dangerous pleasure is perhaps the world’s greatest “greenhouse gas”
I’m assuming, in good faith, that Polly Higgins would not be pushing this initiative in order to gag the opposition, to force a political agenda on an unwilling public or to lend credence to a new debt-based economy using carbon dioxide trading.
Right, Polly?