Failure to take action on climate change is not a criminal offence - Julian Burnside

L

ong have I believed that a government’s failure to respond effectively to unfolding crisis of global warming constitutes a crime against humanity.

Julian Burnside clarifies
 "crime against humanity" idea.

The Abbott Government’s continued apathy toward this dilemma and its new slogan of “jobs, growth and community security” was simply too much.

Jobs and growth are the root cause of global warming and to administer a country to ensure that more jobs are available and that growth continues unabated, threatens the security they seek is a crime, a crime that threatens not just Australia, but the world’s population.

Wracked by a sense of impotency, I decided to send a short note to Melbourne QC Julian Burnside, who responded almost immediately with accurate, but less than encouraging news.

In an email to the Queen’s Counsel I wrote:

Hello Julian,

The Abbott Government’s apathy about and complete inattention of global warming, that manifests itself as climate change is massively distressing and will bring such devastation upon Australia, and the rest of the world in such extreme manner, that it represents a crime against humanity.

It is my ambition to put the government under such sweeping public scrutiny that is would be forced to change its attitude, change its position and so make dramatic and immediate changes to how it responds the question of human-induced global warming.

I have no idea how to initiate or prosecute such a process, but I want to level a charge of a crime against humanity against the Abbott Government for its denial off and total inaction in responding to the unfolding dilemma of global warming.

For more than a decade I have listened to many of the world’s best climatologists discuss what we will face, read countless books on the topic and on Friday night just gone I was at a University of Melbourne event at which an increase of pre-industrial temperatures of three, four, five and six degrees this century was discussed by many people, including climate Professor David Karoly, with a disturbing sense of inevitability.

They are temperatures humans have never experienced and so have absolutely (a Tony Abbott term) no idea of how to live under such extremes. The government ignores these potentialities and vigorously presses on with projects that disregard every warning from the world’s best climate scientists.

To worsen its apparent disinterest in this advice, the Abbott Government pays only lip-service to the carbon dioxide reduction numbers it will take to Paris in November/December this year and so its mitigation efforts point out, quite clearly, that it is, in Joe Hockey’s terms, a “leaner”, meaning that it if free-loading on the efforts of other nations in the world.

If you are prepared to take on this task pro bono, I only too happy to put my name to it, sign the document, indicting the Abbott Government.

It’s happened overseas let’s make it happen here,

 

Robert McLean,

Shepparton.

 

Mr Burnside, who has a sister living in Shepparton, Jenny O’Connell, wrote back in an email:

Dear Robert

Nice idea; two problems.

1.      Failure to take action on climate change is not a criminal offence, so far as I can see.  It is not a crime against humanity as that offence is defined in our Criminal Code

2.     If it was a crime against humanity as defined in our Criminal Code, the Attorney General of the Commonwealth has to give consent before a prosecution can be brought.  What are the odds on that happening?

Sorry.

Very best wishes

Julian.

 

Those living in rather difficult circumstances at the end of this century and who look back to today will wonder why we failed to pursue the “crime against humanity” notion, but Julian Burnside makes it clear why it was impossible to prosecute the idea, and so the Abbott Government.