Ireland Abortion Activists Want to Criminalize “Ecocide” Against Plants

International   |   Wesley J. Smith   |   May 10, 2013   |   6:46PM   |   Washington, DC

Radical environmentalists want to criminalize the development of the land and resources as a “crime against peace,” they call “ecocide.”

The ecocide drive is distinctly anti-human in that it would make the crime equivalent under international law to true evils such as genocide and ethnic cleansing. Moreover, it makes an explicit moral equivalency between the importance of flora/fauna and people. If ever adopted, it would shut down Western economies, throwing us into worse shape than we are in now–while keeping the destitute mired in their misery by preventing developing nations from creating wealth through activities like mining, timber harvesting, and large scale farming.

I keep warming about this movement, and most people are still rolling their eyes with the old mistaken idea that it could never happen. (Anyone with that mindset is Rip van Winkle.) Now, the Irish Green Party has explicitly endorsed criminalizing ecocide. From the Green Party News story:

A motion to end ecocide (the extensive destruction of ecosystems) was passed unanimously at the 2013 Green Party Annual Convention in Galway on 13 April 2013. The motion was presented by Cathy Fitzgerald, Carlow/Kilkenny Green Party and Forestry policy spokesperson.

Commenting on the decision to pass the motion, Cathy Fitzgerald said: “I am delighted with the unanimous support from our Party to call for an end to Ecocide. There is growing international legal realisation that current environmental laws and regulations ‘permits’ environmental destruction rather than preventing it. The Law of Ecocide seeks to address environmental degradation from a new perspective and has significant implications to assign legal responsibility to heads of state, corporations and others that cause long-term environmental destruction. This would apply to environmental problems like fracking pollution of ground water, land and air pollution, etc.

Except, ecocide would not just punish pollution, but also development. From my piece, “Ecocide, A Crime Against Peace?:”

But what is ecocide, precisely? Practically any business activity that environmentalists loathe, from large scale resource development to nonrenewable energy generation, along with any accidental ecological disaster would potentially qualify as a crime against peace. As envisioned by ecocide’s rising star, Polly Higgins, who recently addressed the United Nations promoting a Universal Declaration of Planetary Rights, the This Is Ecocide website states:

Ecocide is the extensive destruction, damage to or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished.

Note that “peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants” is a very broad term, intended to include everything from grass, fish, and insects to mice, snakes, and people. And diminishment of “peaceful enjoyment” would not require actual pollution, but could mean a declining supply of forage or a loss of foliage caused by almost any use of the land, perhaps even simple urban growth. 

CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!

 

Ecocide campaigners held a mock trial in the chambers of the English Supreme Court and found fictional CEOs of Alberta Tar Sand oil developing companies guilty of felonies. That is where this is aimed; squelching human thriving and prosperity in order to “save” Gaia. Attention needs to be paid and serious educational and political pushback commenced before this misanthropic madness grows.

LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D., is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture and a bioethics attorney who blogs at Secondhand Smoke.