Calls for ‘ecocide’ law to punish those who destroy nature like war criminals
Scotland could become one of the first countries to establish a specific crime for mass environmental destruction as championed by late Scots barrister Polly Higgins.
And just like that, conservatism was outlawed.
Cool beans!
conservatism
Consevationism, there's so many other aspects of conservativism than conservationism, the capitalists/right wingers aren't going to hurt themselves by outlawing all of conservativism.
Conservativism also touches on race, religion, economics, and others that are unique or spawned by the main tenets of conservativism.
Conservationism is not in any way a part of modern conservatism. Conservatives hate everything about conservation of nature.
Conservative != conservationist.
Start by taking away private jets and private flights from rich people. As all laws do, this one will also apply only to regular and poor people, not even big companies and certainly not for rich. Just look at what Musk is doing to nature reserve nears his launch pad. He was warned, didn't get launch permissions, doesn't have permission for letting untreated water into ground from cooling... and yet he does all that and no one bats and eye. Just look at the main page of Lemmy and you'll see news of some dude flying alone in 747 because he can. Royal family has been known to fly across the ocean to get lunch.
I meant you can live as carefully as possible, walk everywhere, never fly a plane and live only on solar for multiple lives and you couldn't offset what they fuck up in a day.
Is the Saudi royal family's emissions offset by planting 10 billion trees?
"Plans to" and actually planted those trees are two different things. But that would be a great solution. Wood is a renewable material, easy to work with and most importantly keeps carbon trapped until its burned or rotten. In other words, plant trees, make stuff with wood.
Carbon offset isn't real.
Not like we punish war criminals that strictly either...
L m a o
This. Everything looks so tasty on paper tho!
Yeahhhh I don't wanna shit on anyone's day but this is entirely unenforceable.
All the rich would be arrested
No, they'd be able to afford the best lawyers. It's the poor who would be punished the most. We already have fines for not recycling properly, even though the rubbish all gets mixed back together in Turkey or China and burned anyway. We have to use soggy paper straws with our drinks while the rich blanket the atmosphere in burned fuel from the private jets.
No, we would just abolish corporations
Thats a true revolutionary cry. But since being "rich" is quite a relative term, you might wake up in the realization that most of the world considers you rich and your lifestyle complicit in the mass destruction of the global environment.
That's quite the stretch. Don't regulate the rich cause we might be caught up?
I don't take private flights from one side of a city to another. I don't own a yacht (or 6). I don't own a fleet of vehicles with a staff that drives them around. I don't throw away more food than most people eat. I don't horde dozens of acres of land that contain nothing but wasteful lawn.
There's a pretty stark contrast between the ultra wealthy, and the vast majority of people living in highly developed countries.
This is a form of slippery slope fallacy. Rich in this context refers to portion of society contributing to pollution on a massively higher scale than even an upper middle class American. How many 'rich' Americans regularly fly private jets or take yachts? How many average joes own and operate a cruise line or a refinery?
I think with regards to poorer people in other countries, they'd be on the same page with 99.99% of Americans about who's considered so rich that they alone pose a threat to global health.
They should but never will, Laws don't apply for rich people and even if, jail would BE to good for them
I love the idea but wonder how it would be handled for things like oil spills in the international waters space. Those are more more often accidental versus the types of just bad practice things like forrest destruction or such. Take that along with the notion of it being in international space would make even deciding jurisdiction a mess.
Are they truly accidental? Or are they because of cutting corners on maintenance etc and then “just happen”
And is it really cutting corners? Or is it saving your life and family while your job/government 'threatens' to cut you off money and food?
(Rhetorical/Sarcasm)
Climb the ladder, find the cause, and grab it by the neck.
I think those responsible should be fined the same as you or I would be for dumping used motor oil down a storm drain.
By the quart.
Same way we would handle a vehicle accident that kills people, I assume.
Jurisdiction would be based on nationality of the business, just like it is now for other crimes. You can't just commit a crime in international waters and go home scot-free.
I think we need to address this not just at individuals or corporations, but at nation states in which those individuals reside and are licensed.
We need to kick them in the wallet. Allowing rampant pollution? Extra trade tariffs, and exclusion from various international groups/events. Complicit in rampant pollution? Punitive economic Sanctions, and loss of access to certain technologies, financial networks, etc.
Trade tariffs hurt both countries and now is not really the time to be shooting your economy in the foot.
Targeted sanctions would be referable but are a much more serious form of leverage and will damage credibility.
And who is going to enforce these sanctions?
Because the capable ones to enforce these sanctions are the main culprits of the climate crisis and it would be incredibly convenient for them to use these laws to get even more ahead of underdeveloped nations.
Unless thats exactly what you want, keep the exploited poor and the exploiters rich. Think better.
Like, instead of doing this, we could simply tax carbon and achieve much more realistic results.
Looks like the non-profit founded by Higgins and Mehta is active in promoting this law on a worldwide scale, with ongoing legislative efforts in Spain, Finland, and Brazil. Here's their action page to get involved and offer support.
It's self defense. We have to get things under control before greed kills us all
"On oil and gas companies who have spent decades burning fossil fuels - ramping up the world’s carbon emissions - Mehta said the law couldn’t go back in time and punish past activities."
Since we gave people the death penalty at the Nuremberg trials ex post facto, we can do the same with anthropogenic climate change. I would support such death penalties now already, tho I suspect more than a hundred million people would have to die directly from unambiguous climate change events within a short period like a week, before more people would agree. The problem is that the climate-change tipping-points will cascade, which means that the 1st one may cause other tipping points to be triggered, at which point billions of people will die unnecessarily in a Mad Max world.
“On oil and gas companies who have spent decades burning fossil fuels - ramping up the world’s carbon emissions - Mehta said the law couldn’t go back in time and punish past activities."
Are they fucking serious? Why have any legal system at all then? People would just be allowed to rape and pillage as they please under that auspice.
Make it retroactive.
A climate debt? You sound like a tankie!
That'll be the same Scotland with a shitload of oil rigs off the coast, would it?
Are the rigs purely Scottish, idk how the UK works
Punishing individuals over corporations has me concerned. I don't think that's a good idea
Individuals lead corporations