[HN Gopher] A New Push to Make Ecocide an International Crime
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A New Push to Make Ecocide an International Crime
Author : djrogers
Score : 53 points
Date : 2021-06-28 21:54 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| version_five wrote:
| > The draft defines ecocide as "unlawful or wanton acts committed
| with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe
| and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment
| being caused by those acts."
|
| Sounds good, until you consider that people will want to use this
| as a wedge to declare driving cars, eating meat, heating your
| homes etc to be crimes against humanity. Having billions of
| people around has a substantial likelihood of wide spread, long
| term damage to the environment. We should collectively work to
| mitigate this, while preserving our quality or life and rights to
| happiness etc. This declaration doesn't help that, it just
| provides silly cover for a political agenda.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Sounds good, until you consider that people will want to use
| this as a wedge to declare driving cars,
|
| Surely one cannot disagree that designing neighborhoods and
| quality of life around personal car usage is the number one
| culprit for pollution.
| carapace wrote:
| Yeah, I'm an eco-fanatic and this seems unproductive to me. The
| first thought I had was "Do cars count?" as they seem to fit
| the description.
|
| FWIW, I think the most useful political-economic thing to do
| would be to attempt to measure and account for "ecosystem
| services" both on the degradation/cost and improvement/benefit
| sides of the balance sheet.
| cryptoz wrote:
| Are cars really driven by individuals who amount to "reckless
| disregard for the damage which would clearly be excessive in
| relation to the social and economic benefits anticipated"? I
| honestly don't even think it's close. Cars have such enormous
| benefits that I do not think it is "clear" as it would have
| to be to fit the definition.
|
| Something close would be Exxon lying about climate change, or
| VW cheating emissions tests to produce high-pollution cars at
| scale without punishment, etc. Not individual drivers. I
| think that's pretty clear in the definition.
|
| Edit: I'm an eco-fanatic and this seems productive to me.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Are cars really driven by individuals who amount to
| "reckless disregard for the damage which would clearly be
| excessive in relation to the social and economic benefits
| anticipated"?
|
| Depends on the timeframe you choose to measure the social
| and economic benefits and costs.
| elihu wrote:
| The text includes this:
|
| > "Wanton" means with reckless disregard for damage which would
| be clearly excessive in relation to the social and economic
| benefits anticipated;
|
| Which seems to give a free pass to developed countries to just
| keep doing what they're doing as long as it's not outside the
| norms of what developed countries think is acceptable.
|
| I'm not sure that it should: I mean banning driving isn't
| workable, but at this point burning fossil fuels for
| transportation is an economic choice. Giving up on fossil fuels
| doesn't mean giving up on cars, it means embarking on a slow
| and expensive transition to better cars.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Sounds good, until you consider that people will want to use
| this as a wedge to declare driving cars, eating meat, heating
| your homes etc to be crimes against humanity.
|
| I realize this sounds completely impossible, but I'm not sure
| it would be a terrible idea.
|
| We've just been through a year and a half which shows us
| quickly the world can change for the worse. What is the world
| going to be like if people just keep going about their daily
| lives as they have been--driving cars, flying airplanes, using
| copious amounts of plastic, etc? Entire nations are going to be
| underwater.
|
| And I sit here and look around, and it doesn't _really_ seem
| like anything meaningful is going to happen. Just chipping at
| the margins. Barring several technological breakthroughs I 'm
| not convinced are going to happen--at some point we probably
| need to decide that air travel and oil refineries and
| everything else just isn't worth it except under very rare
| circumstances.
|
| If you have an easier alternative, I'm all ears...
| maddyboo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
| lmilcin wrote:
| I think the key is "unlawful or wanton".
|
| So no, driving cars, eating meat or heating homes are not
| suddenly going to be considered ecocide.
|
| But not taking care of your laws to try to minimize waste
| products of driving cars or heating homes might be.
| acituan wrote:
| Unfulfilled religiosity is liable to displace rationality with
| rote purity codes and magical thinking. No NPR, incantation of
| 165 words will not conjure our will to save the environment into
| existence. Understanding the root causes, the game theory behind
| multinational escalation of externalities and the _logos_ behind
| this complex emergent phenomena will.
|
| Shame might be a pragmatic technology to bring individual people
| in line, but it _can not_ steer planet scale collectives of
| people any more than it can steer our cars. In fact shame-
| politics stupefies people by asking them to relinquish their own
| rationality with the fear of painful non-conformity. It makes
| children out of adults. If there is a religious action to be
| taken, it is creating a reciprocal faith in rationality and
| virtuosity of the mature individuals, who can also trust that
| others will do the same.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Inasmuch as I agree with your flawless assessment, how does one
| go about achieving this oxymoron of "rational faith?
| JamesBarney wrote:
| We don't really enforce rules against genocide, I'd be surprised
| if there was enough international will to enforce ecocide rules.
| cryptoz wrote:
| That's a good argument in favor starting to enforce rules
| against genocide then, not a reason to stop progress elsewhere.
|
| I guess we may as well let the world burn at the hands of
| corporations, rather than bother to even say something about
| it. I'm really surprised at the defeatest attitude on HN about
| climate issues. This isn't the end. Time is still going, the
| clock is ticking.
| version_five wrote:
| > defeatest attitude on HN
|
| I see defeatest as accepting that we have to reduce our
| quality of life, or otherwise compromise in order to live
| sustainably. Many are, and more should be, aggressively
| pursuing technologies that let people do what they like while
| providing economically viable ways to make sure we don't
| cause long term harm.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| It's not defeatism, it's realism. Cooperation on climate
| change is a prisoner's dilemma type situation.
|
| You seem to assume there is a supranational entity that can
| force nation-states to comply with rules, but there isn't.
|
| A set of rules that no organization can enforce is worthless.
| I would like if we can all come together and cooperate on
| climate change, but it isn't likely.
|
| Here is a comprehensive list of global problems that humans
| have cooperated on a global scale to solve:
| version_five wrote:
| > Here is a comprehensive list of global problems that
| humans have cooperated on a global scale to solve:
|
| I think that food scarcity could be on your list. If we
| were globally connected 100+ years ago, we might have
| collectively worried that there was no way to feed our
| growing population, advocated rules about reproduction,
| about what we could eat, about how many calories we
| burned... turns out we really did collaborate globally so
| that most of us are fed well enough for population to keep
| growing, and for global quality of life to increasr. And
| the solution was technological, not dogmatic.
|
| Telling nations and individuals globally that they have to
| make sacrifices for climate change, and that only the
| selected few will be able to tell them what they can do, is
| completely untenable as you say. Working together to come
| up with more efficient ways to live is not.
| skissane wrote:
| I doubt this is going anywhere. The "Independent Expert Panel for
| the Legal Definition of Ecocide" is a private group with no
| official status.
|
| As the article does explain, one of the governments who have
| ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC has to formally propose it,
| and then two-thirds of those governments have to vote in favour
| of that proposal. Close to zero chance you would get two-thirds
| votes for this.
|
| Few governments are going to support turning the International
| Criminal Court into an international environmental regulator. Its
| existing expertise is in investigating crimes against humans
| (genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity); it has little
| expertise in environmental issues.
| greggeter wrote:
| They're coming for the mono crops! Few things are as destructive
| as soil depletion.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| These people would achieve more if the time were spent picking up
| plastic in a park.
| cryptoz wrote:
| This is honestly an extremely rude and unnecessarily mean
| comment. I also strongly disagree with it. Large scale actions
| are needed. Small scale good-samaritan efforts do not move the
| needle on large issues that require international, inter-
| organizational efforts.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| This is not action at all. The ICC is an institution that
| incinerates money while doing nothing significant to prevent
| any of the crimes already under its jurisdiction.
| cryptoz wrote:
| > This is not action at all.
|
| I mean, it is, though? Did we read the same article?
|
| > incinerates money while doing nothing significant to
| prevent any of the crimes already under its jurisdiction.
| reply
|
| They should improve their actions to prevent the crimes
| under its jurisdiction, then. I'm not sure how this is
| relevant to the topic.
|
| Your extreme use of language is making me doubt your
| points, by the way - I am certain the ICC does not do
| anything I would approximate with incinerating money.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| I realize you are a espousing an extremely unpopular opinion,
| but something people need to begin to recognize is that laws
| are only as meaningful as they are enforced. Passing laws to
| make things 'legal' or 'illegal' are worthless outside of the
| scope of their enforcement.
| istorical wrote:
| Mass environmental destruction that persists beyond a single
| human generation should be seen as worse than mass human murder,
| a human life is ~100 years but many forms of environmental
| destruction tangibly damage the planet, its life, or its capacity
| to support life in ways that will affect multiple generations of
| humans.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| That's a great idea, maybe we should also make murder illegal so
| people won't do that either!
|
| Climate change is a wicked problem - we can't just legislate it
| away. We need to solve many many problems like reducing our
| reliance on fossil fuels, allowing/helping nature to rebound from
| centuries of industrialisation, and probably numerous other
| things, on a global scale without losing out to unscrupulous
| international competitors (both national and business). All
| without giving up too much of our present lifestyle (because
| people will resist such efforts).
| teawrecks wrote:
| We don't have a rampant murder problem, though.
|
| There are exactly two ways to address climate change: * wait
| for a _natural_ feedback loop to kick in, i.e. wait for people
| to start dying. Necessity is the mother of invention, etc. *
| _artificially_ stimulate the feedback loop early through
| legislation, taxes, and real penalties.
|
| One way or the other, the goal is to disincentivize
| unsustainable behavior such that the people who would be
| willing to resort said behavior no longer find it worth the
| risk/expected cost vs the estimated payoff. Yeah, people still
| murder, but they are a small exception. The goal is to get to
| that point for ecological damage too.
|
| Personally though, I think it should already be considered a
| Crime Against Humanity.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Making things illegal is one of the most ineffective
| counterincentives though - we need systems-aware
| interventions if we want to change our course in time. A good
| example would Tesla making electric cars desirable, massively
| accelerating the transition to electric cars from other
| automakers.
|
| Just making things illegal is painfully easy to work around
| for the wealthy and well connected, this should be obvious by
| now.
| frereubu wrote:
| Your first sentence implies that we shouldn't have laws against
| murder because it happens anyway, which isn't a great argument.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| That wasn't my argument, but I say see how it would come
| across that way. My point is that you can't just legislate
| away complex misaligned incentives. You decrease murder by
| attacking the causes of murder.
|
| Murder has been illegal for a long time but murder hasn't
| gone away. We need ecocide to go away, and fast. A more
| effective approach is needed.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Find some Ents. They would support this law.
| cryptoz wrote:
| I think this is a great idea. Long overdue. Better late than
| never, however.
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