When considering who the key climate criminals are and their responsibility for mass loss of life and other extreme harms caused by climate breakdown, we must look at those who initiate the policies that kill and cause extreme mass suffering; those who lobby for those policies; those who fund and undertake fossil fuel extraction; those who run high emission industries; those who benefit financially from the cruelty and those who were guilty of disseminating the propaganda that led millions of people to believe that this was anything other than an act of extreme criminality.
WHO ARE THEY?
When asked, people invariably attribute the blame for climate breakdown on the politicians who expand polluting activities and unnecessarily slow the pace of decarbonising the economy. Politicians who expand luxury, non-essential activities, like aviation tourism, are easily identified. But politicians who fail to decarbonise the economy as quickly as they could are also responsible. This will include politicians who oppose cheap, onshore wind power, those who oppose a mass home insulation programme that would reduce carbon emissions and household bills. It would also include politicians who finance polluting activities abroad or allow the banking and financial sectors to fund activities abroad that drive climate breakdown.
All government ministers in an administration would be responsible, because they all have collective responsibility and all were at liberty to resign if they did not want to participate in the policy decisions that contribute to mass killing and suffering. So, if an administration undertook to expand the aviation sector, all government ministers would be culpable.
Turning to the business sector, it follows that those who run fossil fuel companies, particularly those who open new oil, gas and coal facilities, are also committing a criminal offence under the legislation. Aggravating factors will be those who lobby government ministers seeking the policies that will allow for expansion of fossil fuel industries and those who were responsible for disseminating climate disinformation.
Those individuals who run polluting industries may also be in breach of the legislation. Clear examples will be the executives who run luxury polluting activities like space tourism, aviation tourism and those who continue to manufacture the most energy intensive luxury goods like SUVs.
The other key players are in the financial services sector that either finance or provide insurance to the most polluting activities, for example, the construction of new fossil fuel facilities here in the UK and abroad.
There are others who arguably have greater responsibility because they created the environment in which mass killing and suffering were permitted. This will include news editors, the owners of callous media organisations, commentators and journalists who incited criminal behaviour, lobbied for the expansion of fossil fuels and other activities that drive climate breakdown, argued against the policies that would save lives and published disinformation intended to deceive audiences on the number of people being killed and the gravity of the threats.
In other cases of genocide and crimes against humanity other key figures have also been prosecuted. That includes senior public/civil servants who facilitated the policies that kill and members of the criminal justice system (police, prosecutors and the judiciary) who had a clear legal duty to intervene to stop the killing but refused to do so.
Prosecutors must also consider whether the pension funds and other key investors are criminally responsible and the scale of reparations they must be compelled to pay. For example, the Church of England has been lobbied for many decades to divest but refused to do so, despite being certain that the payments it received had been generated from activities that contributed to the mass killings and appalling levels of suffering. Consideration must therefore also be given to the prosecution of the major investors and the confiscation of assets to contribute towards the vast cost of climate repair, adaptation, loss and damage.
People often ask whether everyone in society is to blame, particularly those nations that have benefitted for centuries from the economic benefits derived from burning fossil fuels. Arguments against that include the fact that millions of people are trapped into lifestyles that are determined by government policy and the fact that the scale of death, suffering and the scale of the threats have been hidden from the people. In any event, it is not feasible to prosecute everyone so, in other cases of crimes against humanity and genocide, the ring leaders with the greatest responsibility are prosecuted.
Doubtless, as the climate continues to break down, deaths increase and suffering worsens, the young will look in greater detail at those who are responsible and those who should have intervened to stop the killings. If agriculture and civilisation do indeed begin to crumble, there will be consequences; and it is difficult to predict the full extent of what they might be.