Introduction To Global Climate Criminals

As you read this, several hundred wealthy and powerful men and women are working diligently to murder you. And you’re not alone. If unchecked, climate annihilation will destroy human civilization — indeed, the extinction of the human species and most other living beings is already a possibility. And as usual, those who are poor will die sooner and suffer the most. Now more than ever, we must tell the Truth.

We all sense that something is wrong. We realize that the elites have manipulated us and it’s too late. We no longer have time to address climate conditions we could have fixed, and understand that it’s no longer about climate collapse, but climate annihilation. There is no question these elites are malicious, morally wrong, and economically short sided. Furthermore, their conduct appears to be based on hate; they disrespect and oppress the poor, especially indigenous peoples, to the degree they are being killed. We believe that hate plus climate annihilation equals crimes against humanity. But we are not the International Criminal Court.  We aren’t judges; we’re activists who will present a case to the ICC Prosecutor’s Office. Therefore, we use the phrase "Climate Criminals" in the conventional sense to describe individuals we suspect of being involved in crimes against the planet, particularly our climate and ecology, and similar bad acts -- such as crimes against humanity. We don't know for certain whether we can prove these climate criminals committed acts that violate provisions of the Treaty of Rome, but believe we can; and we're going to work diligently with scientists, climate activists, and human rights activists to do so.

Climate criminals escape prosecution because they spend billions of dollars each year maintaining a culture where they are regarded as celebrities, star industrialists and sensitive corporate leaders. We can’t escape them. They manage an extractive economy that ignores national borders and intrudes into every aspect of our lives: our food, travel, entertainment, art, where we live, and our work, privacy and limited political options. Remember when Big Tobacco tried to blame those who became addicted to their products for getting cancer, all the while knowing and hiding the science that proved smoking caused cancer? Climate criminals do the same, making us feel guilty because we are forced to participate in the system they created. For example, our personal “carbon footprint” was dreamed up as a PR campaign for British Petroleum (the company that gave us the Deepwater Horizon oil spill) by the advertising giant, Ogilvy. It’s called “greenwashing.” “Focus on lifestyle,” they demand, “you’re only a consumer” and not a complete human being. But we are not responsible for climate crimes, nor are the billions of future generation humans and other species who may never exist. We can’t ignore what climate criminals are doing; instead, we must demand that the International Criminal Court prosecute them. 

Climate criminals know exactly what they are doing. What’s happening is no accident or misunderstanding. Climate criminals intentionally engage in practices that cause great suffering or serious injury to physical or mental health. As for many of the men and women listed below, their crimes are committed in furtherance of an organizational policy. In other cases, although there is no formally adopted policy, crimes can be inferred from the totality of the circumstances of their conduct. Furthermore, they understand the suffering they create; for example, the deportation or forcible transfer of populations; then they lie about the consequences and make incredible amounts of money while doing so. They have the power to stop climate collapse and know this, but refuse to do so. And we have little hope of bringing them to justice through the U.S. court systems.

When we talk about “Climate Criminals,” we typically mean venal corporate and government leaders who are able to hide their personal crimes behind shields against liability. In the United States, almost all government leaders enjoy the protections of “sovereign immunity” granted to the Federal Government. And almost all corporate leaders enjoy the protections of the corporate shield against personal liability for the company’s actions. We hope to persuade the International Criminal Court to take legal actions against these Climate Criminals because it would be impossible or frustratingly impractical to pursue criminal charges against them through the legal systems of their  home countries.

Furthermore, a significant share of greenhouse gas emissions results from, or is associated with, conduct that violates existing criminal law. For example, the emissions created by deforestation and forest degradation almost always involve criminal activity. And other emissions they create, although not directly based on criminal conduct, are often associated with criminal acts: corruption, trade violations, financial crime, and fraud. Although Article 7 (1) of the Rome Statute states that crimes against humanity do not need to be linked to an armed conflict and can also occur in peacetime, in fact there are many concrete causal links between deliberate acts of climate annihilation and armed conflicts in many different locations across the globe.

The Global Climate Crimes Project’s initial focus is media moguls and their ilk, men and women who deliberately spread false information concerning climate collapse. Their tactics are diverse but in some cases effective: lying to prevent important information from getting out; devaluing true information; attempting to undermine our perceptions of the truth; withholding information about a lie in order to shield the liar; creating deceptions that impede remedial legislation; forcing us to submit to things we know are untrue; deliberately effectuating the unequal distribution of privacy so that the rich hide behind lies while the rest of us are deprived of privacy through surveillance; maintaining deliberate silence in order to cover up the seriousness of climate collapse; gaslighting those who can see what is already happening in the world, and establishing a totalitarian control over information and public discourse so that the public ends up refusing to believe anything and not wanting to deal with the problem. These criminals are categorized as “Deniers” in the following pages. Their objective is simple: to erase the distinction between fact and fiction, to obfuscate the truth, and to create false statements that are a kind of poison that subjects us to the evils committed by the criminals who are polluting the Earth.