Name that Perp: What Constitutes a Climate Criminal?
With the biosphere on the brink of catastrophic collapse, it’s natural to wonder what or who is at fault. Surely there must be perpetrators out there, but can we identify them? Who brought us to the edge of this precipice and can they be brought to justice?
Naturally, these questions pull us deep into complex legal conversations and in the process, generate even more questions. What constitutes a climate or ecological criminal? In conventional conversation, we think of crime as a violation of a written statutory law, but what if there is no written law? Or, what if the law itself is anthropocentric and ignores the reality of life beyond the world of human affairs? Or, what if written law has not yet caught up with recent understandings of atmospheric and ecological science?
We can and will argue these questions in coming years, but one easy way to make sense of our predicament is to return to the familiar lifeboat metaphor — the biosphere being our craft, our life-supporting vessel on a vast sea of space. Suddenly, things become clear: If a person or organization is willfully chopping a hole in our lifeboat for their own personal benefit, that person or organization should rightly be considered criminal. After all, their behavior has consequences that extend far beyond the hole itself, all the way to the viability of the craft and the survival of the passengers and their descendants. Chopping holes in the hull is an ultimate crime, far more heinous than many of the common transgressions that human beings are routinely punished for.
Intent and knowledge matter, to be sure. If someone is chopping a hole in the boat and is unaware of the consequences of his or her actions, such behavior might be excused, especially if the person or organization repents and resolves to do better. But if a person or organization is aware of the consequences of their hole-chopping behavior and persists, we are right to condemn, incarcerate, or banish that person and their corporate allies. In a real lifeboat, this would all be perfectly clear. Anyone who injures the boat itself would rightly be called out, immobilized or, if necessary, thrown overboard.
To be sure, most modern humans are climate criminals to some degree. Almost all of us use fossil fuels in one form or another and most of us have benefited from the destruction of habitat for agriculture, housing and energy. But on balance, most of us are petty criminals. Our acts of over-consumption may be ugly and uninformed, but most are misdemeanors. The real problem lies with the felons, the ecological criminals who act with wanton disregard for people, habitat and future generations. Our job is to identify these perpetrators and shine a light on their criminality.
But there are two levels of criminality that concern us. Direct attacks on the integrity of the lifeboat are bad enough, but there’s also the question of story, narrative, consciousness and attention. The most egregious ecological criminals don’t just take direct action against the biosphere with deforestation and fossil fuel development, they also distort public understanding of ecological truths. In other words, they don’t just attack the lifeboat itself, they also attack our knowledge and understanding of our shared human predicament.
These are acts of willful deception, misinformation, distraction and outright lies. We might describe these actions as narrative crimes or crimes against consciousness. Not only are they deadly, they are epic transgressions against democracy, social welfare and survival, of both present and future generations.
These voices distort our consciousness with statements like “There is no hole chopping going on” and “Even if there was some hole-chopping going on, it’s all quite legal and sustainable.” Likewise, “The lifeboat belongs to us, so it doesn’t matter what we do to it” and “Hole chopping behavior is essential to our economy. Chopping holes in the boat is what is keeping us alive. More holes are better.” “Pay no attention to the rising water. New technologies will patch whatever holes might possibly exist, and we’ll all get rich in the process.”
This kind of narrative crime is extremely destructive, not just to the lifeboat herself, but also to future generations of people and non-human life. These are crimes against human intelligence and as such are arguably even more destructive than the physical acts of drilling, bulldozing, strip-mining, trawling, clear-cutting and polluting. Because once the passengers on the lifeboat become blind, distracted or delusional, there’s very little chance of repair or redemption. To put it another way, the integrity of the lifeboat depends on a well-informed public with a firm grasp of basic scientific and ecological truths. Anyone who violates this trust is by definition, criminal.
Sadly, this kind of narrative crime can be extremely difficult to prosecute. Perpetrators can always claim free speech rights or declare that hole chopping behavior is a matter of interpretation. Even worse, they can buy all the air time they need to perpetrate (and perpetuate) their falsehoods. All of which means that our pressure must be relentless, both within the rule of law and also in the domain of culture and media. We may not be able to incarcerate ecological felons outright, but we must shine light on the facts of hole-chopping behavior, as well as the obfuscations and distortions. Speak out and speak up for the integrity of the lifeboat. Call out the perpetrators and make them answer. If we can’t bring them to justice, at least we can expose them as the criminals that they are.
