The predominant moral issue of the 21st century ... will be climate change. 
​Fossil fuel addiction, if unabated, threatens our children and grandchildren, and most species on the planet.  
​ (James Hansen 2010)
CLIMATE CRIME
Climate change deaths
Already in 2009 an estimated 300,000 people a year were being killed by climate change, according to research the  the Global Humanitarian Forum's Human Impact Report. In the 2012 the humanitarian organization DARA's Climate Vulnerability Monitor   estimated 400,00 are killed by global climate change every years, in a study  ​​​independent of the Human Impact Report.

This condemns billions of people to devastating losses of water, food, and health. UNEP in its 2009 4th Global Environmental Outlook made worldwide headlines, saying global climate change impacting on top of other ongoing unmitigated global environmental degradations threatens the very ​​survival of humanity .
 
Changing the Planet's Climate -  the Crime of All Time 
1.5 minute video
CLIMATE CRIME CLIMATE CRIME CLIMATE CRIME CLIMATE CRIME CLIMATE CRIME CLIMATE CRIME CLIMATE CRIME 
2016 Climate Justice  The international momentum towards climate litigation
Climate crime in the academic literature 2012 CLIMATE CHANGE: A STATE-CORPORATE CRIME PERSPECTIVE 
The Dec 2015 well intended UN Paris Agreement turns out to be  a global death sentence as only a handful of countries have emission targets that may meet the  Agreement's aim.   Climate Action Tracker rates countries by their national emissions targets in terms of 1.5° C and 2° C compliant by 2100. Only Morroco and the Gambia have national emissions targets consistent with a 1.5° C limit by 2100, while only Bhutan, Costa Rica Ethiopia, India and the Philippines have emissions targets consistent with 2° C by 2100. 2C at 2100 increases slowly to 3.5C long after 2100. 

​Paris Climate Accord: Crime Against Communities
The 2016 Republican platform explained in the Grist report  continues US Republican Party's  opposition to prevent total climate and oceans catastrophe from continued fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions.     
The 2016 US ​Republican election sweep and Trump elected for president.
The biggest and worst news for the global  climate and oceans is the 2016 Republican sweep of the US election, with the win by D. Trump. The USA has a climate government. Australia has also. It is much more than a political shock. It is an Earth shattering event, because of the Trump ​election platform on energy and his profit above planet ideology, on which he has moved swiftly as President. 

​​​​The US Republican Party for years has been the political arm of the dangerous climate change denial campaign.

Here, is what D. Trump promised to do regarding energy in his election campaign.
  • ​Unleash America’s $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, plus hundreds of years in clean coal reserves.
  • Open onshore and offshore leasing on federal lands, eliminate moratorium on coal leasing, and open shale energy deposits.


Deadlocked international climate negotiations 
​The first  UN Conference of the Parties (COP) was 1995 hosted by Berlin. Ever since a large number large fossil fuel producing and using countries have managed to sabotage any progress by delaying strategies. The ad hoc in effect  unanimous UN consensus allows countries to veto proposals for real progress. 

​​ The international climate negotiations under the United ​Nations 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change continue to make no substantial progress due to continued obstruction by large ​industrial fossil fuel using and the fossil fuel producing countries. 

​Under the 2015 Paris Agreement non binding national emissions targets, global emissions  ​are projected to substantially increase by 2030 leading to a global ​warming by 2100 of over 3° C by by 2100 (Climate Action Tracker) , which will be much higher after 2100 (climate system inertia) 
Deadly increasing and accelerating greenhouse gas atmospheric pollution data trends (State of Our Climate)
Record high global greenhouse gas emissions (including ​CO2)
Global expansion of fossil fuel extraction and distribution  (BP 2018 World Energy Outlook)
​W​ith the exception of Sweden ​all countries are expanding their fossil fuel extraction and distribution, including low income developing countries
Global climate change locked in commitment is 1.5C by 2100 and 2C long after 2100 (IPCC 2014 5th assessment​)
Almost all governments are subsidizing fossil fuel production 
Global fossil fuel subsidies amount to US$Trillions a year (IMF)
UNPRECEDENTED ​CRIME...
Dr. Peter Carter and Elizabeth Woodworth
Foreward by James E. Hansen

April 2018 Clarity Press
Overt and covert climate change science denial
​In various ways practically all governments are denying the science  ​of global climate change by continuing with energy policies that are  ​driving the acceleration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and ocean  ​acidification, failing to enact atmospheric greenhouse (GHG) regulations, and susidizing fossil fuels.  The worst example is the continuing increased fossil fuel subsidies​. In 2017 global fossil fuel emissions ​increased to a new record high.
​​
The general evidence for the crime of all time keeps building
Some progress is being made recognizing the terrible crime, but our  constitutions laws and institutions could never have foreseen such a situation. 
The 2015 Encyclical of Pope Francis on the environment and human ecology received wide well deserved attention, and he since has declared changing the climate a sin against God. 
The Public Trust Doctrine
​The Public Trust Doctrine: Assessing Its Recent Past & Charting Its Future (2012 Richard Frank)
​Thanks Largely to US research by Mary Wood (Nature's Trust), atmospheric litigation under the public trust doctrine is being heard by courts, in the US by action brought by Our Children's Trust.
Already committed and continued greenhouse gas pollution driven climate and oceans disruption are unprecedented crimes against huge most vulnerable ​​human populations. There are reasons why this could called climate economic genocide. It is Ecocide. 
The 6th mass extinction (acceleratingis a most terrible crime linked to global climate disruption, by each making the other worse. Climate change is just starting to boost the rate of this accelerating mass extinction. Greenhouse gas oceans disruption will increase loss of marine life. A​​ccording to the IPCC 2018  1.5C report the world's coral reefs are practically doomed. Extinction of course is forever​. 
IPCC  process of informed consensus- proves the Crime
It is a documented fact that all world governments are fully aware of the climate change science and the current state of the climate. This is because through the roof of process of the intergovernmental panel on climate change IP CC all world governments acknowledge and improve of the line by line scrutiny by government policymakers who sit on the panel. The short IPCC Summaries for Policy  Makers are written to be understandable by any policy maker and the even shorter Headline Statements to be understood by anyone (educated).  The downside of this everyone has to agree consensus is that it gives fossil fuel supporting governments the power to water down and exclude science published  in the IPCC assessments.

Climate change commitment science
A crucial ​ aspect of the science (documented since the 1st 1990 IPCC assessment) and the crime is that global warming today is much lower than the future 'committed' or locked in warming is, due to several lag times from global policy action to put global emissions into a rapid decline up to the time when global warming stops completely or stabilizes. All of these lags that increase future warming are caused by the atmospheric GHG concentrations at the time. Today's degree of climate change WILL increase substantially and then last for a thousand years. As S Solomon explained (Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions, 2009) we can predict future disastrous ​changes to the planet and impacts to populations that will be permanent.  

These are, (1) the time for policy to effect a rapid reduction in global emissions, (2) the time taken by the vast oceans to take up and distribute GHG heat energy to the planet surface, (3) unmasking of fossil fuel air pollution cooling aerosols (when all fossil fuel energy use stops), all on top of the very long lifetime of atmospheric CO2 emissions in the atmosphere (1oos of years). These have been explained in IPCC assessments from the 1990 assessment, so are well known. Extra warming will be added by (4) amplifying feedback emissions as the warming Earth surface becomes a net carbon emitter. The obvious example is more forest fires with surface warming. This was a reason for the 2C limit, but now is an imperative for 1.5C, because planet carbon sinks are switching to carbon sources that if which includes the Arctic. Policy therefore has to be based on preventing/mitigating committed climate change, which today is 1.5C 2100 and over 2C long after 2100 to temperature equilibrium. 
Climate Emergency
​Climate justice and awareness would be helped considerably if the global climate /planet emergency of today's climate change and committed future climate change was acknowledged, but it still is not. The reason given is that it would not motivate people! 
Carbon death and destruction are forever
​Atmospheric greenhouse emissions global climate and ocean disruption are 'for ever' because CO2 emissions last in the atmosphere practically forever. 20% of a CO2 emission is still in the atmosphere after 1000 years. A small proportion of methane (CH4) emissions are converted to CO2 in the atmosphere. The other  main greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) lasts 120 years. Because of climate change commitment always being much higher than the realized warming, when an impact occurs it is irreversible and will get worse. 
Climate Change Inequity 
​It is a long-time well-known fact that tens of millions of the most vulnerable by socio-economic deprived inhabit regions that are most climate change vulnerable, and they are the most climate change innocent. (maps)  Climate change is projected to be a poverty multiplier, which means that its impacts make the poor poorer and increase the total number of people living in poverty (IPCC 2018 1.5C . 3-177). Climate change (to 2C) could force.. people into extreme poverty, with the numbers attributed to climate change alone between 3 million and 16 million, mostly through impacts on agriculture and food prices (IPCC 2015 1.5C 3-112).

​​Even though  "limiting global warming to 1.5°C, compared with 2°C, could reduce the number of people both exposed to climate-related risks and susceptible to poverty by up to several hundred million by 2050" (IPCC 2018 1.5C, SPM B51), the national emissions targets condemn the world to 3.2C, presumably on the basis of IPCCs false fossil fuel biased costs. 
Climate change mitigation cheating
​Called false solutions by some, for many years the industrially developed wealthy countries have used methods of pretense on reducing their emissions. Carbon trading, carbon off-setting assumed  carbon capture sequestration (CCS) from the fossil fuel industries and assumed Bio-energy CCS to even remove CO2 emissions (CCS) and bioenergy(BECCS), REDD,  are ways countries have avoided replacing fossil fuel energy with clean renewable e
nergy. 
Security Threat Multiplier
The UN  NATO and the ​US military has recognized that climate change will disrupt global and regional security as as the ultimate threat multiplier.  Also as the IPCC ​says "Climate change can indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts in the form of civil war and inter-group violence by amplifying well-documented drivers of these conflicts" (IPCC 2014 AR5 WG2 SPM-20)
Climate Refugees
​Climate change is already causing food insecurity that is leading to bloody conflicts. In a rapidly climate disrupted world refugees will not be welcome and today's food aid will not be forthcoming. These climate refugees will die if not killed.

​Out-migration in agricultural-dependent communities is positively and statistically significantly associated with global temperature (IPCC 2018 1.5C 3-11). Climate refugees do not have the small benefit of refugee status, like refugees from war. A 2018 World Bank report predicts ​climate change will push tens of millions of people to migrate within their countries by 2050.
It is now also a crime against all today's children  who are the most vulnerable to all impacts of global climate change,and to all future generations. 
Food and water insecurity  (climatechange-foodsecurity)
The 2007 IPCC  4th assessment ​documented loss of food and water security  at
​up to a ​ billion of those vulnerable at 1.5C.  All the IPCC assessments have consistently said (from the 1990 1st assessment to the 2018 1.5C Report IPCC 1.5C 2018 that huge populations in most vulnerable regions would suffer crop declines and also they have all said (incl. IPCC 1.5C 2018)​​ that temperate region countries could benefit by  increasing crop yields under global climate change up to 2100, but this is based on models that cannot capture the large number of large adverse impacts and therefore under estimate. More recent research shows that these temperate regions are vulnerable to crop yield declines by 2050, which is also shown by a close examination of the IPCC models.  
Economics as cause of global climate change and crime
In environmental health assessments policy makers make their final decisions on the economic assessment. Standard economics (even the IPCC) is hugely fossil fuel biased. The 2006 UK Stern Commission's ​Economics of Climate Change remains one of the best climate change assessments.  It concluded that global climate change was the greatest and most far reaching market failure ever, mainly due to the economic practice of externalizing socio- environmental costs allowing the polluter to avoid paying the costs of pollution, leaving the score and leaving these two future generations. The Stern Commission determined that there was no comparison in the costs of ignoring climate change and the relatively small costs of mitigating. However, the IPCC assessments of the economics are by the same economics of market failure and have not included the full cost/benefits of mitigating global climate change. The 2014 AR5 cost/benefit was hugely fossil fuel biased. .. "mitigation scenarios of about 450 ppm CO2eq by 2100 entail losses in global consumption—not including benefits of reduced climate change as well as co-benefits —of 1 % to 4 % in 2030, 2 % to 6 % in 2050, and 3 % to 11 % in 2100 relative to consumption in baseline scenarios that grows anywhere from 300 % to more than 900 % over the century."  The 2018 IPCC 1.5C Report was poisoned by the perverse false flawed fossil fuel biased economics saying "  Modelled pathways limiting global warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot project abatement costs over the 21st century...roughly 3-4 times higher than in pathways limiting global warming to below 2°C (IPCC 2018 SPM C.2.7) and "Estimates of the costs of adaptation might be lower at global warming of 1.5°C than for 2°C." (Standard abatement cost is the cost of reducing environmental negatives such as pollution.) 
Global climate change as economic genocide 
The world must act fast to prevent outbreaks of climate change driven genocides as insecurity of food and water in the most climate change vulnerable regions increases driving conflict, and there is evidence that the climate change complacency of the Global North results from what is in a fact an economic genocidal attitude to the vulnerable Global South. US and other leaders and some experts believe that global climate change is a zero sum​​ game of winners and losers. Already it is not- we are all losing. In fact the Global North may be more vulnerable to extreme weather crop yield  shocks. Nevertheless Far North policy makers rely on the IPCC assessments and so can only believe they will win and Global South lose.  

Certainly this could apply to world governments that by their statements and actions deny the reality of dangerous global climate change and act to oppose ​​progress in replacing fossil fuel energy with clean renewable energy, and act to produce and trade as much fossil fuels as possible.

It is a fact that Global North countries persist in refusing to live-up their specific and well-defined socio-economic and technological obligations  to the most climate change vulnerable populations in regions (that are specifically listed) in the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Also, none of the industrially developed countries have national emissions targets filed with the United Nations consistent with a 1.5° C global warming limit or 2°C, and this only by 2100. This condemns the world to a 3.2 °C global warming by 2100 (Climate Action Tracker 2018), which is over 5.5°C long after 2100. 

Climate change as cultural genocide

Already committed sea level rise will drown all low lying islands in the world , and that will destroy the long standing culture of the island populations. 

The IPCC 2014 assessment and 2018 1.5° C repair report says that short falls in food production affecting the most vulnerable regions could be made up by these countries purchasing food from temperate regions, ignoring the fact that the same reports say that the GDP's of these vulnerable countries will drop under climate change. Marshall Islands foreign minister Tony de Brum has compared the prospect of forced migration of atoll nations to genocide.  Jürgen Zimmerer  Professor of History at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and President of the International Network of Genocide Scholars published Climate Change and Genocide: Environmental Violence in the 21st Century, 2015. climate change will greatly increase the risk (if not inevitably cause) genocide as regional food insecurity increases. ​​Genocides tend to be linked with increasing food insecurity. The Nazi holocaust was an economic strategy and had origins in post WW1 German food insecurity, explained in 2015 by ​Timothy Snyder professor of history at Yale University- The Next Genocide. People are recognizing the climate change genocide. 



​​
Millions at Risk
​Martin Parry  ​(IPCC expert) 2001
Tens of millions at risk The 2018 IPCC 1.5C Report shows that the lives of tens of millions are at risk (see chart above). 
Information sources
Climate Liability News​ 
Military-industrial-financial complex
Formally the world is at peace because there are no wars declared between nations. However carbon pollution of the atmosphere is a result of the rapid expansion of the military-industrial-financial complex born out of two world wars. The economy of powerful nations remains  to a large degree a ​war based economy and human rights ignoring economies and governments in the name of national security. ​Terror rules our world carried out by states and against states. War is legalized mass murder and the war on terror a terrible oxymoron.

The multiple of all evils
​​ The massive military budgets of big nations dwarfs budgets for environmental assessment, protection, and restoration. US confederate general Stonewall Jackson called war The sum of all evils. Changing the planet's climate is the multiple of all evils 
Interpol recognizes environmental crime
On September 2016  the International Criminal Court ​included ​crimes that are committed by means of, or that result in, the destruction of the environment,...under the Rome Statute, which already cites widespread, long-term and severe damage to the ​natural environment (2 b 4)
from IPCC AR4 2007 
The crime of all time is what I call global climate change (particularly as today's already 'committed' unavoidable increased global climate change). The crime is due to fossil fuel air and atmospheric pollution. It is incomparably worse than any other crime (millions of lives)​. Between 2030 and 2050 (now unavoidable), climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year (WHO 2018) . As fossil fuel ambient air pollution it causes about 3 million deaths a year (WHO 2014). It is global- no region will be spared. It is totally preventable. It is committed for financial profit by large corporations. Governments  subsidize it (US$Trillions/year). Climate change deaths will never stop and will keep increasing for many decades. The only plan is for emissions to increase- intentionally by at least 16% to 2030. 
It is also a crime against (all) Humanity and Nature (the divinity of creation, or sacred Earth). Excessively high summer temperatures, ground level ozone and frequent extreme weather can exceed the tolerance of crops and collapse world agriculture. 

​​
Due to multiple large sources of planetary amplifying feed-backs (global surface warming causes more global warming)  climate heating and disruption could be the end of civilization, the human race and most life. This has been recognized by the UN Sec General António Guterres (2018 UN statements). 
The essence of the crime of all time is the ignored dire Earth emergency - climate and oceans.

​Atmospheric CO2 and global warming are accelerating
National Geographic Causes and Effects of Climate Change
​a best general video 
This extract is from IPCC 2007 4th Assessment Ch. 5 p. 299 is greatly distressing and it seems the same attitude prevails today, as it is thje IPCC 2018 1.5C Report.

​​"While moderate warming benefits crop and pasture yields in mid- to high-latitude regions, even slight warming decreases yields in seasonally dry and low-latitude regions​​"

​​"Food and forestry trade is projected to increase in response to climate change, with increased dependence of most
developing countries on food imports"

​​"...the magnitude of these climate impacts will be small compared with the impacts of socio-economic development
With reference to Table 5.6, these
studies suggest that economic growth and slowing population growth projected for the 21st century will, globally, significantly
reduce the number of people at risk of hunger in 2080 from current levels. Specifically, compared with FAO estimates of 820 million undernourished in developing countries today, estimate reductions by more than 75% by 2080, or by about 560- 700 million people, thus projecting a global total of 100-240 million undernourished by 2080 (A1, B1 and B2). By contrast, in A2, the number of the hungry may decrease only slightly in
2080, because of larger population projections compared with other SRES scenarios. These projections also
indicate that, with or without climate change, Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of halving the proportion of people at risk of hunger by 2015 may not be realised until 2020-2030."



No matter what the formal law may say, ethically (and religiously) global climate and oceans' disruption by greenhouse emissions is the worst crime and greatest evil ever, which all people can and should attest to.
It is a crime against (ALL) humanity. 
​It is  Sin against God (Pope Francis)
5 Feb 2019 Kate Aronoff  It’s Time to Try Fossil-Fuel Executives for Crimes Against Humanity

The Crime of All Time
2018 book Climate Change Criminology
By Rob White

Jus Cogens legal approach
June 2019 UN climate, human rights & poverty report
Sept 2019  CLINTEL 500 denying the climate emergency 'warn UN Secretary-General Guterres' 
4 Nov 2019 The Planet’s Most Destructive:
​The Climate Culprit 100
Dec 2019 Oilsands Firms ‘Morally Responsible’ for Deaths and Destruction from Climate Disasters.  Philippines Commission on Human Rights
6 July 2020 The Crime of All Time Update
Institutional/Structural  evil 2015 Book
Milgram experiment(s) on obedience to authority
2021   IPCC report’s verdict on climate crimes of humanity: guilty as hell