Lock Up Deniers, Says Potty Professor

By Paul Homewood

h/t VAG

Climate denial has increased the risk of catastrophic global change. Should international criminal law be used against those who promote this dangerous trend? Economic and political leaders can no longer pretend it is business as usual. Whether they actively induce environmental harm or just ignore the existential threat against the survival of the human species, states and corporations must be held accountable for their actions or inaction regarding climate change.

Criminal sanctions are the most potent tools we have to mark out conduct that lies beyond all limits of toleration. Criminal conduct violates basic rights and destroys human security. We reserve the hard treatment of punishment for conduct that damages the things we hold most fundamentally valuable. Climate change is causing precisely such damage.

Over the last 250 years or so, we have burned fossil fuels for cheap energy, destroyed carbon sinks, grown the global population, and failed to halt the malign influence of corporate interests on political action that could have made mitigation manageable. Now, we have a window of just ten years or less to avoid using up the carbon budget for 1.5 ℃ (link is external), according to the 2018 Special Report (link is external) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). If we continue on our current trajectory of emissions without aggressive mitigation, we could see warming in the range of 4–6.1 ℃ above pre-industrial averages by 2100. Even if all countries meet their current mitigation targets under the Paris Agreement 2015 (link is external) (COP21), we are likely to see warming of at least 2.6 ℃ by 2100 (link is external).

A 4–6.1 ℃ rise in temperature by 2100 would be catastrophic. Large areas of the earth would become uninhabitable as sea levels rise and temperatures soar. Severe weather events, crop failure, and conflict in the face of mass migration never before seen in human history, would place intense pressure on remaining habitable places. In these fragile and febrile conditions, positive feedback from warming could put humanity at risk of extinction (link is external), according to the journal, Futures, September 2018. This feedback occurs when tipping points are passed in the climate system, causing processes to be unleashed that exacerbate warming. For example, the transformation of the Amazon forest from the world’s largest carbon sink to a carbon source; or, the massive retreat of polar ice, which reduces the planet’s reflectivity, leading it to warm at a greater speed (link is external). These tipping points are described in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) as a critical threshold at which global or regional climate changes from a stable state to another stable state.

Temperature rises of 4–6.1 ℃ are not likely, but they are not science fiction either. Each year that passes without aggressive mitigation to reach net zero emissions by 2050 makes this existential threat more real. Even if the Paris Agreement aggressively ratchets up mitigation ambition to close the emissions gap by 2030, it remains the case that we have already reached 1 ℃ of warming. Given the time lag between emissions and the warming they induce (link is external) – due to the long lifetime of carbon molecules in the atmosphere – further increases are to be expected.

I have proposed that international criminal law should be expanded to include a new criminal offence that I call postericide (link is external). It is committed by intentional or reckless conduct fit to bring about the extinction of humanity. Postericide is committed when humanity is put at risk of extinction by conduct performed either with the intention of making humanity go extinct, or with the knowledge that the conduct is fit to have this effect. When a person knows that their conduct will impose an impermissible risk on another and acts anyway, they are reckless. It is in the domain of reckless conduct, making climate change worse, that we should look for postericidal conduct.

Who should be prosecuted for postericide? We could start by examining the established international network of well-funded organizations devoted to organized climate denial (link is external) The epicentre of this activity is in the United States. A set of Conservative think-tanks has deliberately deceived the public and policymakers about the realities of climate change. Their ideologically-driven climate denial has been heavily funded by the fossil fuel industry; which include, for example, Koch Industries and ExxonMobil. This climate denial has had a significant impact on public opinion and has impeded legislation to tackle climate change.

Climate denial has seriously impeded aggressive mitigation efforts that could have averted our present climate emergency. It has magnified the risk that humanity locks in to catastrophic global climate change. The people in positions of authority in states, or industrial groups whose lies have put us and our descendants in peril, should be held accountable. The damage that climate deniers do is heinous, and they have no excuses. The time has come to prosecute them for postericide.

https://en.unesco.org/courier/2019-3/climate-crimes-must-be-brought-justice

This is not the first time we have heard this sort of paranoid nonsense. As with others of her ilk, she fails to understand that it is the lack of evidence for any sort of climate emergency which explains the public’s apathy in the matter. It is really only the impressionable younger generation who have fallen for it.

In any case, the idea that a few conservative think tanks can persuade the public, in the face of the alarmist media onslaught, is absurd.

One does have to question though how a looby-loo like McKinnon ever got to be a Professor of Political Theory.

I am a political theorist working on climate justice and climate ethics. My research in these areas adopts a broadly liberal approach which reflects my other research interests in contemporary liberal political philosophy (especially Rawls), and the theory and practice of toleration. In my work, I take seriously what we owe to future people in the face of the climate crisis. Although most of my work has been in ‘pure’ political philosophy, I am increasingly engaged in transdisciplinary work on climate justice in order to better inform climate policy. Before coming to Exeter I was the Director of the Leverhulme Doctoral Programme in Climate Justice, and Director of the Centre for Climate and Justice, both at the University of Reading.

http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/politics/staff/mckinnon/

I note that her CV says she believes in toleration, but obviously this does not extend to those who disagree with her!

Leaving aside the obvious problem of what she proposes to do about China (go and arrest Xi?), there is one very serious issue she ignores, the very real social and economic impact of the rapid decarbonisation she wants.

She may be no economist, but it is abundantly clear that such a transition would be hugely damaging to people’s lives, both in rich and poor countries. There is simply no realistic alternative to fossil fuels in the foreseeable future, if we want to maintain living standards or want to improve those of developing countries.

Indeed the damage caused would go far beyond knocking a few percent off people’s incomes. There would be a genuine risk of massive economic dislocation, unemployment and even starvation. Just think back to the 1930s to see what economic breakdown looks like.

When she says, “over the last 250 years or so, we have burned fossil fuels for cheap energy, destroyed carbon sinks, grown the global population, and failed to halt the malign influence of corporate interests on political action that could have made mitigation manageable”, she clearly believes that this period of human history has been some sort of disaster, and not one when the human lot has improved out of all comprehension.

The manic eagerness to return whole populations to conditions of those earlier days is the real crime.

FOOTNOTE

There was a time when the UN Courier was a serious magazine.

Its August 1973 issue, for instance, was devoted to the world’s climate: