“High crimes against humanity and nature”?
Controversial climatologist James Hansen heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He said recently in testimony to Congress that oil and coal company executives should be tried for “high crimes against humanity and nature”:
Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming.
CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.Conviction of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal CEOs will be no consolation, if we pass on a runaway climate to our children. Humanity would be impoverished by ravages of continually shifting shorelines and intensification of regional climate extremes. Loss of countless species would leave a more desolate planet.
If politicians remain at loggerheads, citizens must lead. We must demand a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants. We must block fossil fuel interests who aim to squeeze every last drop of oil from public lands, off-shore, and wilderness areas. Those last drops are no solution. They yield continued exorbitant profits for a short-sighted self-serving industry…
Zealotry can be amusing, but more often it is disturbing and strange. Dr. Hansen appears to be an example of the latter. The science is hardly settled in the matter of global warming or cooling, and there are no “ravages of continually shifting shorelines.”
Wanting to put businessmen on trial for imaginary crimes is disquieting enough in itself. Creating the new category of “high crimes against humanity and nature” suggests a grandiosity unbecoming in a man of science. That he could let his rhetoric get so far ahead of the facts is itself ample reason for skepticism about Hansen’s dire pronouncements.
Bonus question: what does Hansen think about America exploiting its vast reserves of shale oil?
July 12th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
For questions about Hansen’s scientific work, enter his name into a site search here.
Hansen claims to be testifying as a “private citizen”. IMO a civil servant should not have that prerogative regarding his/her assigned area of responsibility. The honorable thing would be to leave the government and dissent after resigning.
Oil executives are private citizens and Hansen is a government official. IMO Hansen’s calls for prosecution are a firing offense, and I wonder if they’re unlawful.