The Fool on the Hill: Climate Change as Crime

What is the scale of the Climate Emergency as an event, compared to other events in human history?

Consider number of deaths as a metric.

Serious peer reviewed scientific papers suggest numbers between 83 million and one billion

Either way, it's a lot.

Can it be reasonably claimed that those responsible for creating and sustaining the carbon economy were ignorant of the consequences?

Well, not since the beginning of the twentieth century, no. The global warming effect of CO2 emissions has been known since 1896. The petrochemical industry has known from its own research since at least 1977. And I knew in 1972, because I read the Club of Rome report. It was widely distributed, and reported in the press, at the time.

So, who is culpable?

Again, we've almost all of us burned fossil fuels, or used products made by burning fossil fuels. But we're mostly not very culpable, because we've individually burned very little, and because most of us have had little choice over the fuels we used and the products we bought.

But oil company executives, publicists and lobbyists, especially those who deliberately hid, distorted and lied about research that they knew about, are extremely culpable. The most culpable of all are those involved in greenwashing, and in 'carbon trading' schemes. And senior public policy makers - both politicians and civil servants - who licensed and who continue to license fossil fuel extraction are extremely culpable. If they knew about anthropogenic climate change when they licensed fossil fuel extraction that was criminal; if they didn't, that was grossly negligent.

Is it genocide? The definition of genocide as given in Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

I think the argument that the fossil fuel industry would seek to make would be that they have not deliberately set out to destroy anyone, it's merely an unfortunate side effect of their pursuing shareholder value, as, they would argue, they're required by law to seek to do.

Will that wash? When you know what the inevitable consequences of your actions will be, can you claim that you didn't intend them? If you go out into the public square, point a gun at a random stranger, and pull the trigger, can you really claim that you were only checking to see whether the gun was loaded?

So: who is the group whom the fossil fuel industry is intending to kill? I would say 'the whole human race', but legal friends I've run this argument past say that's not specific enough to fit the meaning in this clause. So instead I'd draw attention to the following groups:

1. The people of the Maldives;
2. The people of the Marshall Islands;
3. The people of Bangladesh;
4. The Igbo of the Niger delta;
5. The peoples of Sudan;
6. Arab peoples.

The Maldives, Kiribati, the Solomon Islands and the Marshall Islands are all likely to simply disappear off the map in fairly short order; that inevitably means their populations will either die or be dispersed. In either case, the ethnic groups will cease to exist, and it is beyond question that the destruction of their homelands will cause serious mental harm to all members of the groups. However, none of these places have large populations, and the disaster will probably happen slowly and progressively, so it's reasonable to assume that neighbouring countries will be able to accommodate flows of refugees and that there will consequently be relatively few deaths directly caused.

The Bangladeshis and the Igbo are a differerent matter. The deltas of the Ganges and of the Niger are very densely populated, and the people in these deltas are mostly extremely poor. So not only is it unlikely that they can afford to flee, it's unlikely that surrounding areas will be able to accommodate them; and, in any case, in both regions, ethnic tensions mean that it's unlikely that they would be welcomed.

People who live in arid regions — I've cited Sudan, but that is really just an example; Syria's another — are dying now, and in huge numbers, partly because their ability to produce food in customary ways is failing or has failed, partly because the extreme disruption of this level of food stress sparks wars.

A fouth group of peoples are those who live in areas exposed to both high temperatures and high humidity, areas which include the coasts of the Arabian peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the Gulf States — broadly, most peoples of Arab ethnicity). Here, death is likely to strike very suddenly, making escape impossible. Those without air conditioning will just die; those with, will retreat into their air conditioned buildings, and die there when the power fails.

All these deaths and disruptions are known, and were known in advance, and were predictable, and were inevitable, unless climate change was halted. And to halt climate change we had to stop pumping fossil fuels. For which, yes, all of us bear a degree of culpabilitiy. But the executives of fossil fuel companies, and the lobbyists they paid, and the politicians and policy makers who protected them: they are culpable in the highest degree.

So what is the scale of this culpability?

The Nazi extermination programmes killed, in total, about 20 million people. For that, 24 people deemed most culpable were tried at Nuremberg, of whom half were sentenced to death. We don't yet know how many people will be killed in the petrochemical industry's extermination program, but it is at the least estimate vastly more. These are crimes of the highest magnitude ever committed. There must be penalties. There must be a deterrant that echoes down history.

We need a new Nuremberg process, and we need it now.

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