He's serious. A lot of us hope the denialists are put on trial for crimes against humanity.
Put oil firm chiefs on trial, says leading climate change scientist· Testimony to US Congress will also criticise lobbyists
· 'Revolutionary' policies needed to tackle crisis
Ed Pilkington in New York The Guardian, Monday 23 June 2008 James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.
Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech (pdf) to the US Congress - in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming - to argue that radical steps need to be taken immediately if the "perfect storm" of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable.
Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading.
In an interview with the Guardian he said: "When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that's a crime."
He is also considering personally targeting members of Congress who have a poor track record on climate change in the coming November elections. He will campaign to have several of them unseated. Hansen's speech to Congress on June 23 1988 is seen as a seminal moment in bringing the threat of global warming to the public's attention. At a time when most scientists were still hesitant to speak out, he said the evidence of the greenhouse gas effect was 99% certain, adding "it is time to stop waffling".
He will tell the House select committee on energy independence and global warming this afternoon that he is now 99% certain that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has already risen beyond the safe level.
The current concentration is 385 parts per million and is rising by 2ppm a year. Hansen, who heads Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, says 2009 will be a crucial year, with a new US president and talks on how to follow the Kyoto agreement.
He wants to see a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants, coupled with the creation of a huge grid of low-loss electric power lines buried under ground and spread across America, in order to give wind and solar power a chance of competing. "The new US president would have to take the initiative analogous to Kennedy's decision to go to the moon."
His sharpest words are reserved for the special interests he blames for public confusion about the nature of the global warming threat. "The problem is not political will, it's the alligator shoes - the lobbyists. It's the fact that money talks in Washington, and that democracy is not working the way it's intended to work."
A group seeking to increase pressure on international leaders is launching a campaign today called 350.org. It is taking out full-page adverts in papers such as the New York Times and the Swedish Falukuriren calling for the target level of CO2 to be lowered to 350ppm. The advert has been backed by 150 signatories, including Hansen.
guardian.co.uk
DENIAL OF GLOBAL WARMING - Is this a crime against humanity?
For at least the last 20 years our society has been aware that we, humankind, might have been having a negative impact on our environment through our carbon emissions and the destruction of natural habitats.
Very early on, the debate fractured into two camps, those for whom it was obvious that there was a problem and that this problem could only get worse and the consequences intensify the longer we left it to act; and those for whom nothing but absolute proof would be good enough to convince them that there was a problem in the first instance, before any action could or should be taken.
Despite the enormity of the task and the incredible complexity of the problem that faced them, the scientifc community has over the last two decades invested huge amounts of manhours in data gathering and computational modelling capability to derive an unambiguous conclusion - there is a problem, we are to blame and we have to act quickly or we face horrendous consequences if we do not.
2 years ago
Additional Details
The debate fractured in the first instance because vested interest and greed in big corporations, Governments and individuals alike prompted these people/institutions to cast doubt, to demand an almost impossible level of proof and the confuse, delay and obfuscate on the issue, to such a degree that at some points in the process it looked like we might never get to the obvious answer that was staring us in the face all along.
Now that the results are in, we still see people in total denial of the issue. Wading into the debate time and again still saying that there is no issue here and that we can carry on regardless, despite the enormity of the risk that we would take following their direction.
As to continue to deny that there is a problem continues to cause doubt and uncertainty, and as such engenders inertia to act when we all must face or responsibilities on the matter. This places all our futures at risk and in jeopardy. Surely, this is therefore a crime against humanity!
2 years ago
Some links for you to follow on Global Warming, the science, the economics, morality and other 'monsters behind the door'.
(1) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007
grida.no.
(2) THE STERN REPORT
hm-treasury.gov.uk.
(3)AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH:
climatecrisis.net
(4) GLOBAL DIMMING
bbc.co.uk.
Also, and for the record this question was not about whether global warming exists or whether we are causing it or whether we should or could do anything about it. That debate is now OVER. This question postulates that denial about Global Warming is a henous act which endagers society and future generations - aka a crime against humanity. I think it does and although there are one or two good comments addressing this the rest is simple denial.
answers.yahoo.com |
