Generational Genocide (2)

Foreword

Heating the planet kills people. The more time advances, the worse it gets. The worse it gets, the more people will die.

Planetary heating is not an accident. It hasn’t happened by itself. The terms global warming, global heating or climate change do not make it obvious that the physical phenomenon is actually a consequence of deliberate actions.

We have two separate processes taking place: the actions and the results. The planet is heating up – that’s the global heating – and then there are the acts of heating the planet. There are no words to describe these actions as a whole, and thus we have lacked tools for thinking about them as a specific phenomenon.

Current overheating is maintained by the older generation, while those who will suffer are mostly the younger people. Changing the climate is an act of generational violence.

Suppose the current plan of the older generation is fulfilled; as decades advance, hundreds of millions if not billions of people will die. Every young person, in one way or another, will suffer. 

We call the act of heating the planet a generational genocide.

Generational Genocide is Genocide

The term “genocide” may have a variety of meanings and using it raises difficult emotions for many people. It is not a word to be used without careful reflection.

However, what it means and what it does not mean is far from a settled issue. It is defined in different ways in different jurisdictions, in academia, and by civil society actors as well as by peoples who have fallen victims to genocide.

Importantly, what is considered to be genocide and what is not always directs the way the public perceives any form of collective violence. Genocide is described as the “greatest crime,” or as “the crime that shocks the conscience of humanity.”

Thus, any act of violence that gets a label of genocide tends to raise moral outrage and exceptional involvement from civil society and the international community. Correspondingly, acts of violence that are happening on the societal or institutional level that are considered other than genocide, irrespective of the scale, raise minimal collective reaction.

Examples include various acts of military, corporate, structural and environmental violence, which are not considered serious, irrational or “bad enough” to “shock the conscience of humanity.” 

This dichotomy of the most serious crime on the one hand and, on the other hand, all the rest of the crimes downplays the loss and tragedy of all the victims of these ostensibly “less shocking crimes” – and consequently inhibits the prevention of these crimes as there’s an absence of wide and persistent moral and emotional involvement from society / the public. 

In the commonly held view of genocide, genocide is considered separate from other forms of collective violence especially by its quality of exceptional, malicious intent. Popular conception is that genocide is driven by the mad, almost inexplicable, intent of the perpetrators. This perceived irrationality or “madness” is what feeds the moral outrage of the public.

Respectively, once there is a “rational” explanation, or excuse, for any action leading to a mass loss of human life, the reaction is very different.

The problem here is that this understanding of genocide is wrong. Genocides always have triggers, drivers and motivations, which are more or less rational for those committing the crime. These include defending a group’s assumed interests against actual or imagined threats.

Calling the causing of global heating a generational genocide causes suspicion exactly for the reason that the acts of causing global heating are perceived as completely rational, in addition to being seen as generally desirable and normal.

Perpetrators never intend to commit a genocide per se. Rather, genocide is a label given by other people, in retrospect or otherwise, for actions they deem as having no acceptable – or understandable for that matter – motive.

The Treaty of Rome established international jurisdiction over the most serious of crimes, including crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide. Article 6 on the crime of genocide states as follows:

For the purpose of this Statute, "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, such as:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Global heating is a proxy whereby intentional, polluting activities kill young people. It is a consciously produced consequence that inflicts serious bodily and mental harm to people. 

Global heating also leads directly to such conditions of life that bring about the physical destruction of a group, in whole or in part. It is arguable whether also sections (d) or (e) would apply here.

Now, it is important to realize that it is arbitrary as to which actions are included in the legal definition of genocide, as well as to which kinds of groups of people qualify as potential victim groups of genocide. 

The concept and its definition have been developed to systematize and describe historical events in retrospect, not possible or actual present and future events. This dictates that the concept itself has a significant lag in its development. 

The current definition is a product of political negotiation and compromise. For example, some ways of conduct as well as some groups, such as political and social groups, were omitted from the initial definition for superpower political reasons.

As yet, generations or age groups are not defined as legal victim groups. This is understandable if we think about who legislates and creates international jurisdiction. 

Generational genocide is a new form of genocide, and as such should be codified – either as incorporated into the existing definition of genocide or separately – in the international law system. 

 Intentionality

The ultimate purpose of the older generation is not to destroy the younger generation. But the destruction is caused, in legal terms, intentionally. This is because the perpetrators are aware of their actions causing the consequences in question, for example, the ones depicted in the law against genocide (a), (b) and (c).

Intent is defined as follows:

Article 30 Mental element

1. Unless otherwise provided, a person shall be criminally responsible and liable for punishment for a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court only if the material elements are committed with intent and knowledge. 

2. For the purposes of this article, a person has intent where: 

a)     In relation to conduct, that person means to engage in the conduct; 16 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court 

b)    In relation to a consequence, that person means to cause that consequence or is aware that it will occur in the ordinary course of events.

3. For the purposes of this article, "knowledge" means awareness that a circumstance exists or a consequence will occur in the ordinary course of events. "Know" and "knowingly" shall be construed accordingly.

The most blatant case that stands as evidence for the intentionality of the generational genocide is the establishing of the so-called safe limits of 1.5ºC and 2ºC of warming above the 1850-1900 global temperature average. These limits never were, and clearly are not now, safe. As the IPCC refused to give any scientific definition for what amount of warming is dangerous and what is not, the top-level diplomats got to decide.

They decided that every victim before and at the 2ºC of warming is acceptable for them. They decided to facilitate the murder of millions of people. The whole of the rest of the older generation stood by and did virtually nothing to stop this.

There is no ambiguity about 2ºC being genocidal. Every victim of global heating under the 2ºC limit is most obviously a victim of intentional murder. It then means the present policy of world governments that has the world on track for over 3ºC by 2100 is the greatest genocide ever, with today’s children and all future generations as the victims of deliberate murder.

As for the general person of the older generation, the genocidal activities are carried out in the name of personal interests, lifestyle and ideologies. In this aspect, generational genocide is closely similar to conventional genocide. Another group of people is seen as expendable in order to secure the special interests of one’s own group.

The interest of the younger generation to not be destroyed is incompatible with the realization of the current lifestyle and ideological preferences of the older generation. 

“Ideologies” in this case means the many political and economic ideologies that are being used against meaningful climate action, of which the ideology of continuous economic growth and the current free market ideology could be the most noteworthy ones.

 It All Starts with Breaking the Silence

In our world dominated and run by older people it is necessary to question and transform the established language and terms by which we understand what the planetary heating is about. Every framing of the current situation has the power to either conceal or reveal the generational power structures and violence that are at the core of the planetary heating.

GCCP’s efforts in taking climate criminals to the International Criminal Court are of extreme importance. Having top-level powerholders investigated, and hopefully prosecuted and sentenced, is an essential step in demonstrating to the public the fact that planetary heating is intentional and murderous annihilation of innocent people.

Young people have had very little time and resources to change the manner in which the everyday functions of life are organized. We do not hold institutional positions, and we do not have capital, or our own police or military forces. What we do have, however, is the freedom and capacity to think. And the power of truth is now on our side.

Helping younger generation realize their situation, while making older generation think and feel of their lifestyles and moral behaviour for what they are – repulsive – is now the necessary way forward.

It all starts with breaking the silence and speaking the truth. And that means speaking these words: Heating the planet is a generational genocide.