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.
I don’t know what you mean by “like murder”.
Do I think we need more capital punishment? Absolutely not. We should never kill person that’s already restrained from doing harm, even if their intent is clear.
Do I think there could be more meaningful liability? Yes. I think restorative justice means not just MUCH heavier fines (large percent of gross income for the entire period they are in violation) that are earmarked for environment restoration / pollution control efforts, but also time spent doing the work, on-site to restore / clean / contain for everyone in the decision/authority chain, across organizations.
I also think anyone that has been convicted/punished from wrong environment decision/action more than once could be subject to monitoring, publication, and shaming. Whatever education is part of the restorative justice is not enough, and society has to engage in prevention as a defense.
They should be treated more as “crimes against persons” than “property crimes”: probably.
Considering we all live in Earth’s climate, yes.
Yes
Why can’t we attack these criminals ourselves and claim self defense? They are going to destroy the world just to make rich people a tiny bit richer.
Yes please! Jail them, and let them pay! Why should we as ordinary people pay if the big polluters like the oil and gas industry lied for decades and made their ceo’s rich? Use the money for measures against climate change and to help the poor. The poor people are hit the hardest by climate change and will have to pay in blood and misery…
- yes
- you have to criminalize the ones who did the deciding, the ones who signed-off on the destruction: the executives. Nothing else will ever produce the required deterrent/effect.
_ /\ _
You should read The Ministry for the Future to see how they handle climate criminals (CEOs of fossil fuel industry associations, far right lobbyists, etc.)
Kim Stanley Robinson’s books are well worth exploring
It would be a massive improvement if we treated their crimes like fraud and theft, but it’s nice to dream.
Crimes against humanity, if it kills thousands of people.
Murder should be judged by its effects, not by the means. Killing other people for personal profit is at least very close to murder.
This assumes it is a top down decision in the first place. Often it is not such a decision. To assume an intellectual hierarchy is a fallacy. You will face an extremely grey area of prosecuting tens or hundreds of people with no clear person to blame. In other words, dichotomous logic is always wrong and reflective of a lack of fundamental logic skills and life experience. The solution is real capitalism where every infraction is cause for failure., and no favoritism exists. Size should be an insurmountable burden in real capitalism. Then a well informed citizen, like a real democracy, is the regulating factor instead of an untenable and inept authoritarian bureaucracy.
Like how corporations and global leaders are punished for murdering people?
L M F A O
