Why “climate criminals”? What crimes have they committed?
We use a conventional, colloquial meaning for “climate criminals” in everyday conversation and rely on the strict, legal definition when arguing the important legal questions in that context. Strictly speaking, a “criminal” (noun) is a person who has committed a crime,[i] but the word also serves as a useful adjective in different contexts:
relating to crime or to the prosecution of suspects in a crime;
involving or being or having the nature of a crime ("criminal intent”);
of the nature of or involving crime;
guilty of a crime;
dealing with crime or its punishment (“a criminal proceeding”);
senseless; foolish (“a criminal waste of resources”);
exorbitant; outrageous (“these prices are criminal”);
bringing or deserving severe rebuke or censure ("a criminal waste of talent");
a deplorable act of violence; or
contrary to conscience or morality or law.
When used as an adjective, “criminal” can mean “condemnable,” “reprehensible,” “vicious,” or “deplorable.”
We define “climate criminals” as the corporate, political, and media leaders who have directed their organizations to engage in activities to catalyze global warming over the past few decades despite knowing the consequences and repercussions. They are reprehensible, venal, deplorable individuals. “Selfish” and “conceited” don’t even begin to describe them.
They intentionally covered up businesses activities they knew would harm people; they didn’t make mistakes, they weren’t negligent or reckless in their actions, they intentionally engaged in a criminal conspiracy to hide the truth about the immense harms of our climate crisis.
These are not rational decision-makers, people who made calculated decisions based on proper risk assessment after evaluating all of the facts. Human-caused climate[ii] change was scientifically proven many, many years ago. Climate criminals don’t just negligently fail to provide proper notifications to consumers about the risks of the goods or services their businesses produce. Climate criminals know that the organizations they lead are directly responsible for global warming, climate change, and the resulting climate collapse that we are just now beginning to directly observe and experience. We are well past the point of intellectually honest debate about the causes of global warming and to what extent human activity contributes to it. Climate criminals also often constitute the leadership of the rapidly dwindling community of “climate deniers.”
A few examples of climate criminals:
Every person named in the infamous November 12, 1982 Exxon Memo who:
remains a C-suite executive with Exxon or any other corporation; and
still asserts that global warming is not caused by human activity, or that human activity is not a significant contributing factor to global warming.
Jamie Dimon is a climate criminal. So are Darren Woods and Rupert Murdoch.
We will continue answering questions regarding GCCP goals, priorities, and perspectives in a series of blog posts. For next week’s blog we attempt to answer this question: “Even if climate criminals are identified, aren’t they entitled to the presumption of innocence and the opportunity to defend themselves?”
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[i] See, e.g., Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_(disambiguation)), Merriam Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/criminal), and the Free Online Dictionary (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/criminal), all last accessed on October 10, 2022.
[ii] Also called “anthropogenic climate change” was scientifically demonstrated by 2010 at the latest. See, e.g., William R. L. Anderegg anderegg@stanford.edu, James W. Prall, Jacob Harold, and Stephen H. Schneider, Expert credibility in climate change, PNAS 107:27 (April 9, 2010) (https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1003187107; accessed on 10 October 2022).
