There is a push to have “ecocide” made illegal as a fifth crime against peace. I am at a loss to figure out how harming the environment could be constituted as such, unless you consider nature to be the equivalent of a sovereign nation that the horrible corporate world is waging war against.
Lawyer Polly Higgins likens ecocide to slavery:
To get there, Higgins needs to borrow one more detail from the slavery story: to find a modern Charles Grant willing to stand up among his or her business peers and urge them to support the abolition of ecocide. So who might that be?
The journalist, Juliette Jowit throws out several examples before coming to Richard Branson.
Richard Branson too has a long history of supporting good causes, despite the sometimes startling gap between his business interests (Virgin Atlantic) and professed interests (climate change).
That’s also called hypocrisy. Why does the left continue to love Richard Branson despite this? If they were being consistent, we would hear them question why he puts his business interests over a cause he claims to really care for.
Upon coming across such green craziness, a few quick links led me to even crazier green realms.
This is the definition given for “ecocide” by an environmental organisation. I’m wondering, do they consider natural environmental destruction (the “other causes”) also to be a crime against peace? Do environmentalists really want to charge mother nature for turning once-lush forests into barren deserts? Also, does putting up ugly wind turbines count? I find that diminishes my enjoyment of the landscape.
The folks at Eradicating Ecocide describe the ecocide going on in the world.
Each day 100 living species become extinct, 1,000 acres of peat bogs are excavated and 150,000 acres of tropical rainforest are destroyed. Each day, 2 million tons of toxic waste is dumped in to our rivers and seas, 22 million tons of oil are extracted and 100 million tons of greenhouse gases are released.
While human activity has definitely increased to rate of extinctions worldwide, we must remember that extinctions occur naturally and that we can’t get worried about every little species of frog, bug and plant, especially if they prevent $2.6 billion of housing developments. Certainly we should try to protect endangered species, and it would be a tragedy if something like the bilby went extinct, but what makes every species worth preserving?
The next part I think is funny:
Today large scale habitat destruction, massive soil depletion, extensive deforestation lead to worldwide disruption of natural cycles and the irreversibility of extinction.
I’m sorry, was extinction previously reversible?
A link from this site led me to an anti-capitalist website that proposed a disturbing ultimatum; “Ecosocialism or Barbarism: There is no third way”. So if you’re not an ecosocialist, you’re a barbarian? I guess that makes the majority of people (who are politically moderate or apolitical) barbarians. So if you’re not with these people and their naive socialist ideas, you are against the environment and by extension peace? What a choice!
Climate Nonconformist 
“Hi, I’m the climatenonconformist (not my real name), ”
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lol, I’m glad that’s cleared up! Next, would be to define what “damage to an ecosystem” means.
The assumption, of course, is that man isn’t part of the ecology of the world, but rather, an aberration. If one views it as man is part of nature, then it changes the perspective. 🙂
Nice site!
These environmentalists and far left extremists have become so far out of touch with society that they belong in an asylum. Well here is something to consider..
By Definition:
Terrorist – A person who uses terrorism in the pursuit of political aims.
Terrorism – The use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.
I think its fair to label these environmentalists as terrorists, because they are using intimidation and in many cases violence (anti whaling protesters ramming ships constitutes violence as far as I am concerned) to achieve political aims. The amount of unfounded scaremongering that they conduct against perfectly viable and ecologically stable projects is beyond belief, surely it has to be politically motivated (far left socialists against capitalist projects comes to mind).
In terms of political motivation, it surely cannot be about saving the environment, the environment is the only point of leverage which they currently hold. This leverage was obtained through constant fear campaigns for the past century, based on skewed statistics and data. When people are scared, they tend to conform rather nicely into whatever requests, no matter how unreasonable.
The commercialised world needs to join force and fund a anti environmentalist campaign, educating the public with some actual facts about environmentalism and show them for what they truly are ~ industrial terrorists. They after all peg us as barbarians..
Typically British eccentricity, also a ploy for free publicity.
If Nture is given legal personality, locus standi in a court, can she also be sued? For a legal person may have rights, it also has liabilities. Who pays when a lightning victim seeks damages.
The whole idea is the expected birdbrained stuff that comes out of green minds.
Nik
I think Emperor Palpatine would have made a terrific eco-facsict!
I vote for Angelina!
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Good article. The claim from that group about 100 species going extinct and 150,000 acres of rainforrest being cut down every day is clearly ludicrous. Cannot be the case. I’d love to see them name 100 species A YEAR that went extinct. Really would. As for 150,000 acres a day, do the math again. It’s BS extrapolation.
If it was up to me I would not give these ecocide people any publicity whatever. In future I would advise that you ignore them. Remember they thrive on publicity. that is their lifeblood
Fair point, but seeing as Higgins was at COP17, it looks as though they’ve already got plenty pf publicity.
Ah well no, 10,000 parasites were there, all of them brought cameras and posed as somebody important, she has a youtube hit count of 200, it’s difficult to stand out in that crowd of useless eaters.
Polly Higgins used to try to sell selfmade doormats from recycled material, later she invented this ecocide stuff to become a big time gravy train rider and landed a job as some kind of director at the German Club Of Rome, for their pet project Desertec.
She’s been pushing ecocide for at least 2 years now.
She’s made it to COP17. Club Of Rome connections paying off, probably.
Oh, and if you’re a Star Wars fan, you might be interested in the longest Star Wars movie reviews ever – quite funny.
http://www.redlettermedia.com
At least if it is declared a crime we might get to question the climate science in a court of law as actually proven beyond reasonable doubt.
What we have is averages used where averages are a meaningless function. We have man’s gross emissions used and compared with the current levels of CO2 in other words not the natural gross emissions but the net ones which are probably smaller by a factor of at least five and probably far more.
We have when we examine not the averages but the maps a series of hot spots caused by CO2 trapped sunlight somewhere in the world. hot spots that are enabled in some invisible miracle method as yet unexplained by climate science to convey the warmth to one where it can cause a highly significant temperature rise very locally. This hot spot then resumes the behaviour pattern one would expect and disperses heating ever larger areas by less. This is really visible on the NASA sea anomaly plots.
All this is backed up by computer models that would not pass the quality standards for a low cost mass produced electronic toy.
The notion of ecocide is just too silly for words. However, I have to agree that if we are going to go down that ridiculous path, then we should be able to declare that the owners of those wind turbines are committing ecocide… yuk, they have destroyed the landscape around Lake George!!
On a more serious note, and keeping to the topic, I nominate the late Saddam Hussein as the first ecocidal maniac. The reason for this nomination is due to the fact that he set fire to the oil refineries in Iraq during the 1st Gulf War. That kind of activity is ecocide in a nutshell. His action cause a lot of damage to the environment. I think that it can also apply to the late Moammar Gadhafi since he authorised the use of weapons against his own people and mined the harbour at Misrata.
It would not take long to think of other situations where there has been widespread destruction that is not associated with the mythical extinction of the species or the mythical deforestation in South America or Indonesia.
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“Each day 100 living species become extinct, ”
First off, “living species”? Dead species cannot go extinct, duh!
Also, they cannot and do not have a clue what species they are talking about. There are none reported. The species extinction predictions are only predictions and have no basis in fact.
It is all based on a computer model that was not designed for this purpose. Is there a law for torturing and abusing a computer program and reporting results from same as if it’s fact? This constitutes fraud.
The first word in your second paragraph is the key to this insanity…”Lawyer.”
Think of the untold millions to be siphoned off by litigating “on behalf of the Monarch Butterflies that froze on their migration because YOU drove your diesel SUV to the market.”
The lawyers don’t have to be right, or even win–they just need to get into court to get paid.
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