I've said, and written, many, many times, that the environmental extremists and climate change panic-mongers aren't really all that concerned about the climate or the environment. That's a means to an end, the end being the imposition of socialist government; as I'm continually pointing out, it's always about power and control.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in the far-left groups who are attempting to leverage legal cases - lawfare - to clamp down on things like fossil fuel use, without which most of our modern lifestyle would be impossible. Now, we might point out the great irony of these people, using phones, laptops and tablets that cannot be made without petroleum by-products to organize their efforts, but they aren't overly concerned about that either.
In the latest such effort, at least one group is trying to make "ecocide" a crime, implying that human activities are destroying the environment. Watts Up With That's Robert Bradley Jr. has some thoughts.
MasterResource has followed eco-radicalism and Deep Ecology, the religion behind it. Ecocide, a term transferred from the Holocaust term genocide, has been explained and debated at this site.
Eco-radicals see humankind as a plague on Nature. (“I campaign for the extinction of the human race,” stated Les Knight in The Guardian.) They exaggerate, fuss, protest, threaten, and at times end up in jail. The malcontents (e.g. Roger Hallam) are at odds with society and are to be watched carefully and avoided. Eco-terrorism is always a few steps away.
Enter the UK-based Stop Ecocide International (est. 2017), dedicated “to make ecocide an international crime.” The vision statement has (unstated) climate change in mind:
Enable a new international legal framework to protect Earth and all its current and future inhabitants by establishing criminal liability for widespread destruction to ecosystems, so that human behavior is consciously aligned with a widely recognized moral code of respect, peace and duty of care for all life. Based on the principle: ‘First do no Harm’, this offers protection against ecocide and forms the bridge to a liveable world.
Further:
Creating a moral and legal mandate that will protect life on Earth and make ecocide unacceptable. Creating personal accountability for key decision-makers whose actions cause or threaten ecocide.
Stop Ecocide Foundation aims: To have Ecocide recognized as an international crime at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague; To have ecocide recognized as a crime at national and regional level and monitor the effective implementation of all legislation that criminalises ecocide.
Now, let's be honest, here: These people have about as much chance of getting ecocide recognized as an international crime at the International Criminal Court in The Hague as they do of spontaneously sprouting wings and flying to Neptune. That's just not going to happen, but it's likely the group won't confine their efforts to the ICC.
Read More: Al Gore’s 'Expert' Climate Predictions Fail Big Time
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Here's some deconstruction of the Stop Ecocide Foundation's claims:
Fossil-fuel Mortality?
Fossil fuels have been blamed for death from air pollution, even one in five deaths based on 2018 data (stroke, lung cancer, heart disease, and respiratory infections). But several criticisms immediately come to mind:
- Countries mired in poverty from Statism led the mortality estimate, led by China and India.
- With improving air quality in the U.S. and elsewhere, any estimate is subject to downward revision.
- This estimate of 8.7 million compares to lower annual estimates elsewhere (4.2 to 5.13 million). [Source: AI overview]
- Any mortality estimate must be netted against lives improved and saved from oil, natural gas, and coal, all environmental products under current technology.
Let's look at those:
First, China is the champion of building coal-fired power plants, with India running a close second. These groups' claims are belied by the fact that they scarcely, if ever, mention China or India. And it gets worse: Rivers in Asia are far and away the largest contributors to plastic waste in the Pacific, but they are rarely mentioned in that context, either. This is not about the environment. It's about power.
Second, those of us who were around in the late 1960s and 1970s remember all too well what the air, especially in major urban areas, was like in those days. Smog warnings were common, and it seemed every major city had a semi-permanent caul of smog hanging over it. Those days are gone. But this is not about the environment. It's about power.
Third, most of these estimates, on both sides, are largely guesswork. In the case of the Stop Ecocide Foundation, they are almost certainly wildly exaggerating any reasonable number. But this is not about the environment. It's about power.
Fourth and finally, the use of natural gas, oil, and yes, coal, has vastly improved the human standard of living in ways the eco-nuts can't seem to comprehend; if you ever run across one of these people, ask if they have a smartphone - they will - and ask if they have any idea how they might make a smartphone out of wood and leather - they can't. And they don't care about that. This is not about the environment. It's about power. It's always about power.
If there is any international crime happening around this issue, it is the denial of reliable, affordable electricity to millions of people in poverty, mostly in Africa and Asia, thanks to feather-headed activism by nuts claiming that solar panels and wind turbines are the solution. The single most important thing these people need is reliable, constant, affordable electricity, but efforts to build coal and gas-fired generation plants are routinely stymied by a lack of capital.
If you're looking for an environmental injustice, they don't come any more unjust than that.
