Climate Annihilation Through the Lens of Genocide.

Climate annihilation is the most dangerous emergency humankind faces. To address the threat, it is important not to limit our options concerning those responsible for the annihilation by over-reliance on antiquated and inadequate legal structures.

The Treaty of Rome was the product of bitter disputes and significant compromises. The United States successfully objected to several proposals by European nations to render the World Court more effective. Given this, the Treaty’s dated statutory language should not act to limit an open and honest discussions about climate annihilation as a form of genocide.

 In 2021 the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies released a statement, published on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), urging scholars in their field to recognize the catastrophic impact of climate change through the lens of genocide. Read the statement on the Center’s website. Support for the proposal has been extensive.

a.     Academics: https://clarknow.clarku.edu/2021/04/13/clark-genocide-scholars-push-for-paradigm-shift-on-climate-change/               

b.     Climate justice attorneys: https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/115230184/climate-change-is-genocide

c.     Journalists: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/climate-change-as-genocide-inaction-equals-annihilation/

https://monitormag.ca/articles/the-all-too-ugly-truth-climate-change-is-generational-genocide

 A helpful way to evaluate whether climate annihilation is a form of genocide is to review the approach used by Rafael Lemkin, the dogged Jewish prosecutor from Poland who first coined the term “genocide.” Mr. Lemkin posits genocide as a process, not an event.  https://www.dirkmoses.com/uploads/7/3/8/2/7382125/moses_lemkin_culture.pdf

 History demonstrates that genocide does in fact acquire movement and momentum, only stalling when there were no more bodies to take, no more artifacts to destroy, no more habitats to defile. The catastrophic impact of climate change in Africa in terms of human misery and death, as well as ecological destruction, deserves analysis through the lens of genocide, as does the death and destruction awaiting younger generations in both the Global South and Global North.