Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Does The Guardian want military invasions of countries which fail to reduce CO2 emissions? Author Jojo Metha laments the Paris Agreement has no enforcement clause – but she shies away from describing exactly how future agreements could be enforced, and what the world would do to replace the lost energy production.
To stop climate disaster, make ecocide an international crime. It’s the only way
Jojo Mehta and Julia Jackson
Wed 24 Feb 2021 18.16 AEDTOutlawing ecocide would hold governments and corporations accountable for environmental negligence. We can’t wait
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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.…
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.
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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.
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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.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/24/climate-crisis-ecocide-international-crime
According to her bio, author Jojo Metha is an Oxford trained lawyer based in the Netherlands.
The Netherlands utterly depends on Russian gas for heating in winter. Thanks to a fracking ban, hostility to nuclear power, and the unexpectedly rapid depletion of North Sea gas fields, domestic Netherlands energy production is in steep decline. Imported Russian gas produced by intensive drilling in the Siberian Arctic is keeping Dutch homes warm in winter, and helping to keep the lights on.
From what I saw of visiting the Netherlands, they might talk the talk, but they like their comforts – Dutch home heating is usually cranked up pretty high in winter. So good luck convincing Dutch people they have to start living like paupers, for the sake of the planet.
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Poor Jojo is seriously unhinged, therefore in perfect synch with the grauniad and moonbat.
a lawyers paydirt
define ecocide any way they choose
The unfortunate shareholders of Royal Dutch Shell, Total and BP are suffering from the craven capitulation of their managements and directors.
The watermelons have now turned their sights upon ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips et al.
Larry Fink of Black Rock and Mike Bloomberg (among others) are rendering aid and assistance to the enemy within. Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase is wavering. Goldman Sachs will (as ever) be bought by whoever offers the largest bribe.
“The Paris agreement is failing.”
Yes. Of course it is. It is a total sham, based on bogus science and lies. It only pretends to do something about a non-existant “problem”. It is mostly about punishing the western world, especially the US, for being rich.
So, invent a new faux crisis – “ecocide”.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
That’s what Trump said, but everybody notable in academia, journalism, and entertainment disagreed. Then Biden rejoined it, and immediately destroyed it. Obviously it must be so.
Truth is Paris is, pardon my French, biggus crappus, but sadly Grauniad is even more enormous caca.
It takes three decades to take a turn in major trends. 1990 to 2020 is three decades, so I’m waiting for young ppl to appear and criticize what Thunbergism is.
“limit temperature rise below 1.5C, the Earth, and all life on it, including all human beings, will suffer devastating consequences.”
I only see positive consequences.
The writers of this article on “ecocide” talk about “drilling recklessly in the Arctic and the Niger delta”. What is “reckless” about drilling in the Arctic, in brutally cold climates where there is very little wildlife, and the wildlife that is there tend to congregate around oil pipelines for warmth?
The “Niger delta” in southeastern Nigeria is where “Bonny Light” crude is obtained, which contains about 5 times less sulfur than the best Middle Eastern crudes, and contains a large concentration of high-quality naphtha that is easily refined into gasoline. Over about the past 10 years, the Nigerian government has encouraged the building of new refineries, owned and managed by Nigerians, so that the Nigerian people can benefit directly from the refined products (gasoline, jet fuel, kerosene, Diesel) instead of exporting the crude, leading to an economic boom in southern Nigeria. Are these “ecocide” cops going to force Nigerians back into poverty? Don’t “Black Lives Matter” in Nigeria?
If some of the high-sulfur Middle Eastern crudes are replaced by low-sulfur Bonny Light, this results in less emissions of sulfur dioxide for the same amount of energy produced. A light, sweet crude also requires less energy input to refine into useful fuels than heavy, sour Middle East crudes.
How can they say that when it was such a successful stunt of Obama to go along with his weekly queue of federal agency press conferences jabbering on about climate change instead of doing their assigned work. Besides, news publishers of all sizes got paid to run agenda news stories in the lead up to the grand ceremonies of the signing and Obama got the Nobel Prize in advance for “being there”. The Guardian needs to learn PR basics, maybe from the new woke climate communications specialists.
Presumably the legal principle of Corpus delicti would apply to “ecocide” prosecutions. First they’d have find a deceased eco. Then they’d have to prove cause of death and finally demonstrate that the specific actions of the defendant caused the death. There might also be a need to classify the degree of the crime – 1st, 2nd, 3rd, “ecoslaughter”, etc. Would there be an allowance for self defense?
I could see a possible conviction in the case of wind turbines as bodies of birds and bats would provide plenty of corpus delicti and the perpetrators would be easily identified. But allegations of ecocide related to CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels is problematic. Who would be charged, those who produced the fuels or those who actually burned it? Is a gun or ammunition manufacturer responsible for a shooting or is it the person who pulls the trigger? If The claim is that CO2 emission cause a particular case of ecocide everyone who has ever driven a car or used electricity or heated their home with gas, oil or coal could be charged.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
Reckless echocide, a new crime and word to force support for their agenda and name for a lawless law. They are running out of goal posts for our demise and now inventing words to charge industries producing energy that actually extend and save lives. Who is the criminal here.
The Netherlands finally succumbed to political pressure and mandated universal wearing of facial diapers beginning December 1. The coronavirus-attributed death rate, which had been falling since November 9, began a rise from 2.78/day on December 7 to 6.27/day on January 10. Whether masks affected the rate in any way cannot be proven.
I suspect the pressure to criminalize nations for “ecocide” comes from the same people who demand criminalization of individuals for failure to mask themselves. Are these people useful idiots or do they really believe they will personally experience better living through oligarchy?
Speaking of masks, the Wuhan virus is very small and can pass through an N-95 mask. If the virus is incased in a water droplet, then the mask can prevent the passage of the larger particle. At least, that is my understanding of the situation.
There has been a drastic reduction in cases where people are infected with the flu and common cold virus over the last year, and my question is: Are the masks people are wearing today effective at blocking out the flu and cold viruses? What else would account for the large reduction in flu and cold cases?
Leave room for the possibility of overzealous (and improper) misdiagnosis of flu as C19. Unfortunately, there is no possible way to know that now.
Forget Paris Accord, the real problem will be the political leverage Putin gains over Europe when they begin purchasing more Russian nat. gas via the Nordstream II pipeline and thus funding Putin’s military. A threat of a reduced energy supply would be powerful and opposing Putin’s military threat will far more difficult.
I don’t know how Putin brainwashed the Europeans into believing Russia’s nat. gas was the solution to their energy and environmental needs but he did.
The previous US administration was justified in their opposition to Nordstream II pipeline and all the NATO members should be putting pressure on Germany to cancel the project.
Putin didn’t persuade them. Germany committed economic seppuku. The lunatic Greens in Germany shut down the country’s nuclear generating fleet.
Who funded the lunatic Greens?
If any US sanction is applied, ever, Europe should threaten US with counter sanctions like the world has never seen.
From the article: “Currently, much of humanity feels hopeless,”
Not me. I think the author, Jojo, is projecting her own feeling on others.
As with most leftists, she feels like she speaks for everyone.
“Currently, much of the Guardian workforce feels hopeless, having seen the latest circulation figures.”
Fixed it for you.
Who gets to decide what is ecocide and what is not ecocide?
Noting the above article’s title: “The Guardian: “The Paris Agreement is Failing”
That is just excellent news . . . well deserved!
However, I learned long ago to never trust anything stated in The Guardian.
It does not look like Russia or India are interested in enforcing the ecocide mandate (or what ever it is) via the UN Security Council. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
https://www.climatedepot.com/2021/02/25/un-security-council-rejects-climate-alarmism-russia-india-reject-attempts-to-turn-global-warming-into-a-global-security-issue/
Who writes this garbage?, more oddly, who pays for it?
“Currently, much of humanity feels hopeless”
My English teacher would have failed my essay for such wildly exaggerated, unsubstantiated hyperbole.
a search will show there have been discussions of cooling or warming back to the 1890’s. Old Popular Science, Popular Mechanics etc…, had articles both ways since 1920’s. The world runnuing out of oil was discussed even in the 1950’s. Look, climate has always been in flux. During Roman Empire the earth was warmer than now
Michael Crichton:
You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There’s been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away — all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time.
It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. Might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It’s powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. You think this is the first time that’s happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine.
When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. Hundred years ago we didn’t have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We’ve been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we’re gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.
Has Mankind really progressed much in over half a millennium?
“Archaeologists working in Peru have found what they say is the site of the largest known child sacrifice in the world. About 140 children and more than 200 animals, probably llamas, were killed in the middle of the 1400s. A civilization known as the Chimú sacrificed the children in response to catastrophic weather, the scientists suggest. An unusual layer of thick mud, a sign of an extreme El Niño event, covered the burial pits.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/03/06/historys-largest-child-sacrifice-was-response-devastating-weather-archaeologists-say/
Seems we have only shifted who the victims will be for changing the climate. I have made the point for decades that a child born today is just as ignorant as one born hundreds of years ago. Every child must be properly educated. When that is not done, expect violence to be the response to things they do not understand.
It is spellbinding that such a large percentage of Westerners can be whipped up into such a misanthropic froth. The hatred is palpable. The worst are among the scientifically illiterate practitioners of the misnamed “humanities”.
Their corrupted education gave them their marching orders long before climate was cobbled together as a ploy to ‘necessitate’ a Marxist putsch to end free enterprise and centralize governance of the globe. They really didn’t need a climate emergency to subdue, incarcerate, and even terminate those that don’t buy into their plan.
The scariest part is that resourceful, well-adjusted and analytically-minded people tend to transcend such an evil-purposed education and it is the easily-led, psychologically unfulfilled that can be exploited for such ‘work’.
I disagree with the article’s author that Echo-cide is a widespread problem these days. It’s the brainless echoing that should be stamped out.
Lets face it…the only way the Greenies would be able to enforce their policies is to enslave the entire population of the world. There is no middle ground. World governments as the way they are (other than China) will do what is necessary to stay in power and as long as people can express themselves they will never agree to give up all their creature comforts to save the planet. It makes you wonder if the current China friendly globalist movement isn’t a part of a larger plan to “do what’s necessary to save the planet:”