One day it struck me that the world would be a very different place if environmental crimes were treated in the same way as murders. So, why aren’t they? And should they be?
At the moment such crimes can, mistakenly, feel distant and abstract. If someone came into your flat and set fire to your furniture, stole your valuables, killed your pet, added poison to your water … what would you do? You’d be terrified. You’d go to the police. You might want revenge. You’d certainly want justice. It would be entirely obvious to you that a crime had been committed.
The real crime here is the corruption of our political system by wealthy corporations. They know the truth but deploy vast resources to spread doubt and uncertainty. Go read Merchants of Doubt about how the same scientists who spread doubt about the links of cancer to smoking have been deployed in the global warming debate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt
This is fraud and corruption and is a crime. No need to invent a new system of justice.
More like genocide or mass murder.
It’s the destruction of something a human can never create.
Unfortunately, genocide is much less punished than run-of-the-mill murder.
If you are “strong” enough to commit genocide, you are usually “strong” enough to reject punishment.
So you think nothing should be done?
(Because that’s the usual sentence for genocide)
Rights of nature laws have been rapidly expanding for a couple decades now, have stopped massive deforestation and environmental exploitation in legal cases where nature advocates legally argue for and sue on behalf of the rights of nature.
So not exactly like murder, but in 40 countries nature can legally fight back.
Rights of nature aren’t popular yet because we aren’t living at the end of history where everything has been worked out, we’re right at the beginning of human civilization; most people are still struggling to survive, countries pop in and out of existence, a huge percentage of the world is currently officially at war while there are countless unofficial armed, economic and political conflicts everywhere.
An active minority of Maslow-secure, aware people have only just started to figure out how important the environment is and how to protect it in a resource-greedy world where the priority is immmediate profit over longevity.
Yes, and that’s a great idea. We need to value Earth over commerce and profits.
JFC, capitalists did the work for us! They paid unwittingly for research into ‘ecosystem services’
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What the author seems to be proposing is something like true crime media but for environmental crimes.
And if you’re tempted to turn around and say that environmental crimes don’t happen because of individuals, but because of “the system”, I hear you. Social structures, ideologies and politics have a profound impact on human behaviour. Using this term – the system – can feel like a profound contribution to a difficult discussion, underpinned by the desire not to over simplify. But exactly who, or what, is the system?
A serial killer also lives in a society, and we can blame society for any hardships they may have faced. But if on a true-crime show I were to simply cite “the system” as a motive for murder, people would want me to be more precise. We understand that choices are involved, and motives are personal, not just systemic. Otherwise, wouldn’t we all be criminals?
Seems like a cool idea.
Veritasium has had a couple of videos that are basically this recently:
How One Company Secretly Poisoned the Planet (54:08)
Exposing Why Farmers Can’t Legally Replant Their Own Seeds (46:59)
This is the Natural Disaster to worry about (41:07)
Would be interested if there are channels dedicated to this kind of thing though
I am reminded of hospital acquired infections being treated like car crashes or plane crashes.
Car crashes kill massive numbers of people each year, just under 5 per 100,000 people per year here in Australia. That is way down and we are quite low globally, with the EU overall around 9 and 14 for the USA. We have taken fairly agressive steps to curb road deaths and made real progress, but a certain number of deaths is accepted as necessary. A crash is investigated for fault attribution and insurance but not for preventing a repeat.
Plane crashes are totally different. If something caused a plane crash we figure it out, make a mitigation, and make it never happen again. Flying is one of the safest modes of transport and it keeps getting safer.
In hospitals most of them had the car crash mentality for hospital acquired infections. A hospital putting in a plane crash mentality investigator for their Infection Prevention chair will have very different outcomes, especially over time. Someone got an infection from bad clean technique? Make it a checklist item. Someone still got another infection? Change gloving technique so that you wear two layers and only touch the outer gloves with clean inner gloves. Another case? Have a second staff member assist with your donning of PPE and going through the checklist. Each step reduces the risk, each mitigation makes everyone safer. Eventually you have so few infections it is hard to test new processes.
For anyone wondering edgydoc.com is the site for the aforementioned doctor and he is a blast. But yeah, if you treat a consequence as a cost of doing business nothing changes. If you make failure an existential risk you can eliminate problems. Corporations are run by people. Those people should be accountable for the crimes of the company.
Fantastic post, thanks for writing that all up!
This is a great reminder that even large or complex problems can be solved if you break them down and analyze them methodically. Rather than saying “we’re doomed, everyone abandon ship!”, you can stop and think for a moment.
We should always be willing to ask ourselves how much we want a problem to be solved, because it’s entirely possible that there is a reachable solution to that problem and it could be in our best interest to address it rather than putting it off.
We mostly don’t treat murder like murder.
We do if you’re poor or a minority.
Yeah, even if you’re not a minority, if you’re one of the peasants, you’re gonna catch hell for murder.
If you’re rich, you can probably get away with it.
However, I was referring to corporations. If you’re a corporation, you can murder as much as you want, and when it comes time to pay for your crimes, well, you’re not really a person.
but we are just going to do nothing until we can’t grow food any more and starve to death, assuming we aren’t part of the next genocide victim group after palestine is wiped out by our tax dollars
We should at least treat it like suicide. Required inpatient treatment.
The magnitude of your crimes will be measured in area and volume!
(So, yes. Fuck up my watershed, you are talking to all of us downstream)
Problem being is that almost everyone of us is guilty. Few are doing the heavy lifting to outweigh their impact. I do quite a bit, but I’m under no illusion that my ecosystem work outweighs my consumption.
For example, we grew loofas this year. Hopefully we’ll harvest enough not to have to buy kitchen scrubbies or bath sponges till next year’s harvest. (Dayuum they work great!) But we still had to buy fertilizer and water, both activities using energy and resources. Better on balance? I think so.
Rake your leaves? Guilty.
Take nearly any transportation? Guilty.
Apply herbicide or pesticide to your property? Guilty.
Monoculture lawn? Guilty.
Eat food? Guilty.
Wear clothes? Guilty.
I’m sure you folks could add to that list all night long.
Remember when ecosystems absolutely rebounded when COVID forced the humans indoors for a little while?
Keep in mind, though depopulation would help, it would bring about economic doom. Still, crashed economies would help nature as we wouldn’t be moving and consuming so much.
Best we can do is act our best individually and hold the major offenders accountable. Fines won’t get it, we need a corporate death penalty. Illegally dumping in the river? Your business will be taken apart and sold down to the last fucking stapler. No one can swoop in and buy it, go back to business as usual. Complete. Corporate. Dismemberment. CEO and top officers, believe it or not, jail.
