Countless generations of people, as well as much of the natural world, have become victims of ecological crimes. The perpetrators are the world’s corporate and political elites, who’ve long exacerbated the climate crisis despite the evidence being undeniable that they’re destroying the planet. And they need to be held accountable for their climate crimes in a similar way to the Nuremberg trials.
As the journalist Eleanor Goldfield has concluded, perpetuating the climate crisis through one’s position of power is equivalent to a war crime. “This isn’t simply a matter of folks not doing their job that well,” commented Goldfield in a recent video about the The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s approval for a fracked gas pipeline. “This is a matter of people actively pushing us towards climate chaos. This should be considered a war crime. The level of crisis that we face cannot be underestimated. The destruction of irreparable environments due to our extractive industries already killing and displacing millions of people, not to mention plants and animals. Considering this, should we not think of those who knowingly perpetuate climate change on a large scale?”
This applies both to the people in power who contribute to the climate holocaust with knowledge of what they’ve doing, and to the ones who deny the climate science. Whether or not Donald Trump actually means it when he says he doesn’t believe in anthropogenic global warming, he and his administration are carrying out the extermination of incalculable amounts of present and future life.
They’ve sabotaged America’s participation in the Paris climate deal. They’ve destroyed many of the most basic environmental protections that existed before Trump, including requirements for oil and gas companies to report methane emissions leaks, rules that limited toxic emissions from industrial facilities, and limitations on hydrofluorocarbons. Throughout the last two years, they’ve taken radical steps to expand the capitalist destruction of the natural world, such as passing a bill that invites drilling in the arctic, illegally stripping millions of acres from Utah public lands so that companies can mine coal and uranium from them, and carrying out an illegal coup in Venezuela so that the U.S. can profit from Venezuela’s oil.
These and the other key figures in the war against the climate need to be prosecuted. When those in positions of governmental or corporate authority actively further climate change, they’re liable for the death and suffering that they’ve caused. Criminal negligence is defined as causing harm when one ought to be aware of substantial and unjustifiable risks that could occur. This means that Trump is negligent when he signs off on the policies I mentioned. The same is the case for the leaders of the corporations that engage in oil spills, deforestation, and excessive carbon emissions, as well as for the companies and political influence groups that work to knowingly mislead the public about the reality of climate change. And this legal standard should even apply to local officials like Mike Talbott, the former head of Houston’s flood control district who endangered his constituents by refusing to act on climate change before Hurricane Harvey hit his area in 2017.
In addition to the numerous climate lawsuits that are being lead against government officials, in 2016 the International Criminal Court startedprosecuting environmental crimes. But these legal protections for the victims of climate change must be greatly expanded. This project to hold the engineers of the climate holocaust accountable, as well as the project to stop further contributions to the climate’s destabilization, can only be realized through a revolution against global capitalism.
We need to build socialist organizations, like the Socialist Equality Party and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. We need to get active in protest efforts that combat the corporatocracy, like the Gilets Jaunes movement. We need to organize in our local communities to transition away from corporate monopolies by establishing worker-controlled businesses, creating public banking systems, and making community institutions like universities and hospitals purchase goods locally. There has to be an uprising against corporate power, imperialism, and the many forms of social injustice that prop up these systems.
As we grow this movement, we need to consistently demand that capitalism be dismantled. Climate change can’t be adequately curtailed under capitalism, because capitalism’s demands for profit and endless growth inevitably perpetuate greenhouse gas emissions. And as long as capitalism exists, the ruling class won’t be held accountable for their crimes nor taken out of power, because capitalism is built on inequality. We need to transform our government into an eco-socialist entity that holds the perpetrators of capitalism’s crimes accountable, while ensuring that all natural and human life is protected. And we need to carry out this shift before it becomes too late to stop climate change from ending civilization.
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