Academics: Nature Needs Seats at UN and ‘Crimes Against Biodiversity’

By Published on July 1, 2016

The best way to fix global warming is to punish “crimes against biodiversity,” and give 25 seats at the United Nations (U.N.) to nature, according to an academic article published Thursday.

The article, written by Anthony Burke and Stefanie Fishel, professors who study international relations and gender studies respectively, concludes massively empowering the U.N. is the best way to slow global warming.

“A ‘crimes against biodiversity’ law would act like a [crime against humanity] for the environment,” Burke and Fishel’s article states. “Unlike international laws that punish genocide, our suggested law would not require proof of intent to commit the crime, but merely a strong link between the activity and the destruction of biodiversity or industrial and systemic harm to animals.”

Calls to prosecute “crimes against biodiversity” have already begun in America. The Democratic party’s platform for the 2016 US elections includes a provision calling for the Department of Justice to investigate companies who disagree with Democrats on global warming science. Currently, Democratic attorney generals from California, Massachusetts, New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands have launched investigations of oil companies and at least two of them have demanded records on conservative think tanks and scientists skeptical of global warming. Such targeting has only fueled calls that these investigations are an attack on free speech.

“An Earth system council would function much like the UN Security Council — it would, in effect, be an ‘ecological security council,’” Burke and Fishel’s article states. “We suggest it could have 25 voting seats, 13 of which would go to state representatives elected for fixed terms, allocated among the major world regions.”

Incredibly, Burke and Fishel want to make these changes even though they admit that the previous U.N. attempts to solve global warming haven’t helped much, saying, “we say this knowing that the current global system is inadequate to respond to many human crises, but with the conviction that environmental justice often overlaps with social justice.”

This incredible expansion of the U.N.’s power would have a mandate to “preserve, protect and repair global ecosystems” and would implement resolutions that would bind every member of the U.N. to “respond to immediate [environmental] crises while also stimulating action on systemic environmental degradation and ecosystem repair.”

The U.N. is already attempting to limit the temperature rise associated with global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Scientists say that this limit is both politically motivated and not scientifically plausible. Previously, the U.N. defined a temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius as the threshold for “dangerous global warming” and stated a lower target was unfeasible and “naive.” The 1.5 degree target is so close to temperatures today that it is effectively impossible to meet.

 

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