Lock Up Climate Deniers, Says Potty Professor
Relying on hackneyed talking points and junk science from climate alarmists, UK politics Professor Catriona McKinnon makes her case for locking up man-made global warming deniers. She writes:
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. Here is her short biography:
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.
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Andy Rowlands
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This so-called ‘Professor’ needs to be striiped of her qualifications if this the garbage she comes out with.
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chris
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I noticed that this thermodynamics denier doesn’t say anything about having any type of science background. So how does she know that she’s right?
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Dwieland
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Yes, she lacks science credentials, but apparently political theory is a good qualification for denying science and advocating wacko law. I sent her an email that’s unlikely to yield a reply and noted that a more accurate theatre analogy is causing panic by shouting “Fire!” when there is no fire. As I pointed out, that’s a crime in most jurisdictions.
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Andy Rowlands
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Nice one Dwieland, let us know if you do get any kind of response please.
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Alan
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The first rule of politics – I am always right and know more than anybody else.
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Charles Higley
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She has completely drunk the Kool Aid and responding in kind. There are many supposedly scientific studies out there reporting the effects of global warming in which the authors never checked for actual global warming themselves. They trust the propaganda and run with it, never checking that side of their thesis. It’s pathetic and bound for failure. Here, she is believing in toto the alarmist claims that are based on nothing but hype. There is no such thing as a tipping point as we would already have tipped because it has been much warmer than now in the not too distant past. Sheer nonsense for sure.
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Dan Paulson
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You just have to love the spoiled rotten millennial generation. A generation that enjoys all the benefits and privileges of 200 years of massive advancement and accomplishment of human civilization and throws it back in everyone’s faces, claiming to have been wronged.
I expect to spend my old age in some kind of prison, as I will without a doubt, be guilty of thought crimes. My opinions will certainly be outlawed in my lifetime.
Here in Canada the government is completely on board with all the fake science behind climate alarmist movements. The UK is worse.
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Andy Rowlands
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I’m in the UK Dan, and I agree it is ridiculous here. I’ve just submitted an article to PSI about just how bad it is going to get with the publication of the ‘Absolute Zero’ report.
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tom0mason
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Another ivory tower academic living well on a fossil fuel powered life — another academic hypocrite!
Like so many illogical academics of her ilk, she rides on the coat of the latest hysteria desperately trying to seem relevant to the misguided XR youth and UN elitists and their profiteers.
Not for her calculating the cost of removing fossil fuels on the populous of the all nations — no, that is beyond Ms. Catriona McKinnon (Professor of Political Theory). She wishes to inflict poverty on all nations. And this
reportessay of Professor Catriona McKinnon reveals her beliefs in magical thinking, as she tries with stupid UN inspired theory and socialist appeals to the prejudices and emotions to try and convince all that the world is other than it is — namely NOT heading for imminent destruction through a climate catastrophe.Demagoguery is all she has to offer.
She is another dangerous elitist fool!
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Alan
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in the last couple of days I have watched two discussions both involving the coronavirus and climate change. The virus is real and potentially a serious crisis; the climate crisis is entirely invented. It is astonishing that the there are more ideas on how to deal with something that does not exist than there are for the real crisis. In the end the invented crisis could kill more people than the virus and do far more damage to the world economy. The UK seems to be leading the world into a climate oblivion and the Heathrow runway issue demonstrates this.
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Jerry
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You have feel for someone that ignorant.
I suggest the science community send her some climate science information.
[email protected]
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Barry
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Who gets to decide what everyone has to believe and then sends the rest to jail. People like this should probably move to a place with a totalitarian government for a year or so and just see how that sort of thinking works out.
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Andy Rowlands
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Agreed Barry, that’s exactly what happens in such places if you have a dissenting voice.
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Graeme Mochrie
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In the UK we presently have a government that is contemplating the reintroduction of the death penalty as a deterrent to crime. I’ve have heard it said that all crime is political and there certainly are plenty of societies in the world where
incorrect thinking is sufficient to end your life. Perhaps the days of free thinking and honest debate are disappearing in the West.
I wrote to the Prof explaining that I have a method for sucking CO2 from the atmosphere and am proceeding with developments even though they may cause an ice age. Surely this is a moral dilemma that must be addressed.
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Andy Rowlands
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Good one Graeme telling the Prof that! I think you’re right about free thinking and honest debate, alarmists are trying despreately to silence skeptics and refuse to debate us.
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Jimmie P Montgomery
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You know what’s funny, is here in the United States, most working people know what it would cost if Climate Alarmism holds sway over the government. It is why most of the Leftist Democrats do not mention Climate Change, they’d never get elected if they did put their ideas out in a policy paper. Only that old fool Sanders says anything about it and I hope he gets the democrat nomination, because his brand of extremism may fly in Vermont and most of the Northeast, but most of the United States will not vote for him. All I have to do is look at my tiered electric bill to say NO to the Left.
Why are climate alarmists almost always leftists?
Why are their solutions always some kind of tax?
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