Endangering humanity: an international crime?

Abstract

In the Anthropocene, human beings are capable of bringing about globally catastrophic outcomes that could damage conditions for present and future human life on Earth in unprecedented ways. This paper argues that the scale and severity of these dangers justifies a new international criminal offence of ‘postericide’ that would protect present and future people against wrongfully created dangers of near extinction. Postericide is committed by intentional or reckless systematic conduct that is fit to bring about near human extinction. The paper argues that a proper understanding of the moral imperatives embodied in international criminal law shows that it ought to be expanded to incorporate a new law of postericide.

Keywords:

• Anthropocene
• international criminal law
• human extinction
• human security
• global catastrophe
• intergenerational ethics

Acknowledgements

This paper has benefitted from discussion with and comments from people at workshops at the Osgoode Hall Law School, York University (Toronto), the Future of Humanity Institute (University of Oxford), Centre for Ethics, Law and Public Affairs (Warwick University), The Arctic University of Norway (Tromso), Goethe University (Frankfurt), the School of Public Policy, University College London, and the Institute for Futures Studies (Stockholm). Comments and feedback from the following people in particular helped to improve the paper: Amanda Greene, Keith Hyams, Karim Jebari, Rob Jubb, Cecile Laborde, Nick Martin, Julia Mosquera, Tom Sorrell, Victor Tadros, Patrick Tomlin, Ed Page, Dominic Roser, and an anonymous referee for the journal.

Notes

1. For example, the Stern Review posited an extinction probability of 0.1 per cent per year which is equivalent to a 9.5 per cent risk of human extinction within the next 100 years (Stern 2006, 47). Subsequently, Stern commented, ‘I got it wrong on climate change – it’s far, far worse’ (The Observer, 26 January 2013).

2. I take it that danger on this scale is not on all fours with common-or-garden activities through which we impose reciprocal risk, such as driving a car, and that consequentialists and contractualists alike can have good grounds for condemning conduct creating global catastrophic dangers (Kumar 2009).

3. This ‘imagined’ scenario was written before Donald Trump became President Elect of the U.S.A. The reality of his Presidency could, of course, be far worse than this scenario.

4. The governance of climate engineering is being addressed by a Report (jointly written by an Academic Working Group to which I belong) under the aegis of the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment (http://www. http://ceassessment.org/), to be published in 2017.

5. This is not beyond dispute. See Jarvis Thomson (1986).

6. Korsgaard’s discussion does not address extinction.

7. The Report identifies seven areas in which human security can be damaged:

(1) Economic security, requiring ‘an assured basic income’.

(2) Food security, ‘requiring physical and economic access to food’.

(3) Health security, requiring freedom from disease and access to health services.

(4) Environmental security, requiring protection of the environment and natural resources as a habitat for human beings.

(5) Personal security, requiring freedom from violence inflicted by states, groups, and individuals.

(6) Community security, requiring the protection of groups – family, ethnic, religious etc. – insofar as these groups do not perpetuate oppressive practices.

(7) Political security, requiring the protection and creation of political societies that honour basic human rights (United Nations Development Programme 1994, 25–33).

8. Thanks to Helen Frowe for first suggesting this case to me.

9. The VHEM are a real movement. See http://www.vhemt.org/.

10. This requirement would be an extreme example of what Waldron calls the potential ‘voraciousness’ of the ideal of security; that is, how the pursuit of security could ‘skew the balance between security and other important rights in damaging ways’, Waldron (2011, 218–219; Lazarus 2015, 439).

11. A third approach, not discussed here, is David Luban’s account of international criminal law as an instrument for making good the failures of states to perform the functions according to which they are justified (Luban 2004).

12. There is also a third version of the human rights approach that rejects the collective element as a necessary condition for criminalisation under international criminal law (Renzo 2012). Because this approach does not deny that crimes with a collective element are the business of international criminal law it does not challenge my arguments that postericide ought to be supported by theories of international criminal law that focus on human rights, and insist on a collective element.

13. May admits there could be exceptions, and gives the bombing of Hiroshima as an example (2005, 87).

14. They deny that systematicity is strictly necessary: failed states do not act systematically and can commit international crimes (Altman and Wellman 2004, 48–49). Here, there is a further contrast with May, who makes systematic conduct (by states or state-like organisations) a necessary condition for criminalisation in his ‘ideal model’ of international criminal law (May 2005, 89).