EXCERPT FROM THE INTRODUCTION:

    Given this availability of solutions (which are largely absent from
    the North American media), we authors concur that the political,
    media, and moral failures to act decisively have now become willful
    crimes against life itself.  

    This conscious refusal to act with purpose helps to answer the
    questions, “Where is the human outcry for earth’s life-support?  
    Why have we failed to seize control of our survival?”

    Trappist monk Thomas Merton explored a similar mystery in the
    1960’s. During the nuclear madness of the Cold War, he coined the
    term “the unspeakable” to describe a vacuum that can be utterly
    void of compassion and responsibility.

    This moral abyss is still very much alive within the deep military-
    industrial state that Eisenhower warned about in 1961. The public
    needs to acknowledge and understand this nihilistic mind-set,
    which will be discussed in a brief section, “Confronting the
    Unspeakable.”

    Pope Francis, in his 2015 Encyclical Letter – which was backed by
    all the major world faiths – referred to climate change as “a sin
    against God.”  

    Following the Pope’s declaration, the UN Paris climate summit was
    signed by 195 countries – yet astonishingly our North American
    national governments persist in activities of deep  denial, as they
    rush ahead with new pipelines.

    And incredibly, against decades of IMF and World Bank pressure to
    phase them out, governments continue to subsidize fossil fuels to
    the globally suicidal extent of trillions of dollars worldwide, as if
    our political leaders wished to destroy our future.  

    Simply stopping these subsidies would be an instant game changer.

    Another powerful strategy is legal action against governments for
    the crime of omission to protect the right to life of their
    populations – a public trust duty that dates back to Roman times
    and early British common law.

    This book is presented in two parts:  Crimes Against Life and
    Humanity, and Game Changers for Survival.  It will present:

    1)        the escalating emergency caused by rapidly increasing CO2,
    methane, and nitrous oxide;

    2)        the ongoing political and media efforts to suppress climate
    change as a crisis:  by denial, by under-reporting solutions to it,
    and by fixating on adaptation to daily extreme weather events
    while failing to urge radical emissions reduction; and

    3)        the emerging and largely unreported opportunities for major
    sectors of the economy to transition to renewable energy, while
    increasing jobs and profits.

    4)        A special chapter called “Mission Impossible,”  introduces
    entirely new thinking on how powerful and transformative action
    can begin immediately.

    In spite of all obstacles, we are encouraged to see powerful game
    changers on the horizon:  for one, the markets are forging ahead
    to bring wind and solar energy into mainstream dominance over
    fossil fuels.

    Another is the signatories to the Subnational Global Climate
    Leadership (alias Under 2°C), which represents 1.2 billion people
    on six continents, and 37% of the global economy.  Its 175
    jurisdictions pledge “emission reductions for a trajectory of 80 to
    95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.”  

    Completely blacked out by the media since its inception in 2015,
    this outstanding initiative has been called a game changer by
    former UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon.

    Predictably, many such survival responses are being downplayed
    and ignored by the corporate media, which, although it now reports
    incessantly and superficially on climate change, is still criminally
    tied to the profits and employment generated by oil, natural gas,
    and coal.

    It is very late – but not too late – to recognize and address the
    crime of ecocide in the form of business-as-usual.  There is still
    time for the planet to recuperate, but we must start emergency life-
    saving measures to reduce CO2 emissions to near-zero.  (These
    measures are explored in the chapter “Mission Impossible.”)

    The truth embedded in climate science is unstoppable, and
    solutions whose time has come simply need to be elevated into
    general consciousness and translated into government action,
    which is a central purpose in writing this book.


UNPRECEDENTED
CRIME
Climate Science Denial
and Game Changers for Survival

Dr. Peter D. Carter and Elizabeth Woodworth
Foreword by Dr. James E. Hansen

ISBN: 978-0-9986947-3-3
$27.95  February 2018

















E-book Order: $18.00
ISBN: 978-0-9986947-4-0
Share/Bookmark
EARTH NOW FACES A PERIOD OF VAST CLIMATE CONSEQUENCES
Elizabeth Woodworth is highly
enaged in climate change
science and activism,
publishing on
Global Research,
co-author of
Unprecedented
Climate Mobilization, and co-
producer of the COP21 video “
A
Climate Revolution For All.”  
She is author of the popular
handbook on nuclear weapons
activism,
“What Can I Do?” and
the novel,
The November Deep.
For 25 years, she served as
head medical librarian for the
BC Government. She holds a
BA from Queen's and a Library
Sciences Degree from UBC.
Dr. Peter Carter is founder of the
Climate Emergency Institute.  He
has served as an expert reviewer
for the IPCC's fifth climate change
assessment in 2014. He has also
presented on climate change
issues (especially the implications
of global climate change on food
security for the world's most
vulnerable regions and
populations) at science and policy
conferences in Canada, the United
States, Europe, Asia and South
America. He is a former family and
emergency medicine practitioner
before retiring to focus on the
climate crisis for the sake of his
sons and their children.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword by Dr. James E. Hansen

Introduction

PART I:  CRIMES AGAINST LIFE AND HUMANITY       

Chapter 1:  Extreme Weather Events Long Predicted               

Chapter 2:  Science Betrayed:  The Crime of Denial

Chapter 3:  State Crime Against the Global Public Trust              

Chapter 4:  Media Collusion   

Chapter 5:  Corporate and Bank Crime                 

Chapter 6:  Moral Collapse and Religious Apathy

PART II:  GAME CHANGERS FOR SURVIVAL

Chapter 7:  Energy Subsidies and Tax Reform

Chapter 8:  Human Rights Based Legal Challenges

Chapter 9:  Game Changers in Technology & Innovation

Chapter 10:  Market Leadership

Chapter 11:  Civil Resistance Strategies

Chapter 12:  Mission Impossible

SCIENCE APPENDIX:  Evidence of the Climate Emergency

INDEX


BUT THERE'S MUCH TO BE OPTIMISTIC ABOUT!
CONSIDER THIS:

  • NOAA’s Annual Greenhouse Gas Index shows that
    since 1990, the radiative heat forcing of the three
    GHGs combined has increased by 40%.

  • Melting ice is expected to raise sea level one meter
    by 2100, inundating small islands, coastal cities and
    crops worldwide - including the US eastern seaboard
    and Florida.

  • The Arctic, whose tundra vegetation has been a
    carbon sink, has now switched to being a carbon
    source due to carbon emissions from thawing
    permafrost.

  • Between January 2011 and December 2014 the
    Greenland Ice Sheet estimated loss was an average
    of 269 billion tons per year of snow and ice – the
    equivalent of 110 million Olympic-size swimming
    pools' worth of water each year.
REVIEWS

"In Unprecedented Crime, Woodworth and Carter remind us that
action is happening and that new avenues of legal pressure can
be pursued—another arena that’s heating up for the better.
Indeed, after months of failed government attempts to delay and
dismiss,
Juliana v. United States [Dr. James Hansen's case against
the US government for knowingly promoting a climate- and future-
damaging fossil fuel industry] has finally been rescheduled for trial
on October 29. It’s being billed as the “trial of the century...”
Amy Reiswig, Focus on Victoria

"...there's a breathtaking array of technologicalsolutions to the
climate crisis outlined in the book. They include a detailed
explanation how improvements in battery technology is making it
far easier to store renewable electricity. And, of course,
Unprecedented Crime documents phenomenal progress in the
development of solar, wind, and geothermal energy...".
Charlie Smith, The Georgia Straight

"A fascinating exposé of the climate crisis awaits you in Peter
Carter and Elizabeth Woodworth’s, “
Unprecedented Crime: Climate
Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival
.”  It is a
comprehensive look at the climate crisis through a legal frame,
discussing the relevant national and international statutes and
lawsuits, with a focus on the perpetrators of the climate emergency
that confronts us all."
—Margaret Klein Salamon, Common Ground

"Seldom are missed books truly missed opportunities — but
nothing could possibly be worse than missing an opportunity that
could have saved your life, and those of your family and friends.

U
NPRECEDENTED CRIME: Climate Science Denial And Game
Changers For Survival
is just such a book that you shouldn’t miss
in this increasingly post-truth age. With chapter-after-chapter gut
punch, it is a volume that reads like a UN science team jointly
making a life-and-death 911 call recording to a planet of primed
and waiting emergency responders: 'We’ve hit bottom. The
situation is dire. Time is short. Ignore the criminal deniers, bankers,
media and politicians! We need to urgently mobilize millions now!'”
—Howard Breen, resilience.org

"Criminal justice can contribute to addressing the climate crisis. A
significant share of greenhouse gas emissions is associated with
conduct amounting to violations of existing criminal law. Targeting
climate change by enforcing criminal law can be extremely efficient.
It can be done on the basis of existing laws, through existing
institutions and with minimal additional cost. Peter Carter and
Elizabeth Woodworth’s book is a timely and important contribution
to the debate regarding how criminal prosecutions, both at the
national and international level, could be used to repress and
deter climate damaging conduct at a large scale and on a lasting
basis."
Reinhold Gallmetzer,
Appeals Counsel at the International Criminal Court
and founder of the Center for Climate Crime Analysis


"The science is not in dispute—CO2 emissions are on the rise
again and GHGs are accumulating at an unprecedented rate---
humanity is changing Earth’s climate. Even if the national
emissions targets established by the 2015 Paris accord were fully
implemented (unlikely as is demonstrated by Canada’s
performance, for example) the world is on track for a catastrophic
3.2 Celsius degree mean global temperature increase by 2100.
In
short, climate change deniers, corporate stake-holders and
recalcitrant governments are essentially defending a
position that will raise sea levels by more than a metre,
destroy ecosystems essential for human survival, displace
or kill tens of millions of innocent people and otherwise
undermine global civilization.

"In these circumstances, are not foot-dragging decision-makers—
more even than deniers—guilty of at least environmental
negligence (defined in Canadian common law as unreasonable
conduct in '...failing to do something that a reasonable person
would do” to prevent such damage)?  Or perhaps the charge
should be criminal negligence...'".
William E Rees, PhD, FRSC,
Professor Emeritus, UBC/SCARP, Faculty of Applied Science

"Peter Carter and Elizabeth Woodworth build a damning case
against fossil fuel companies and their political agents, showing
that discounting of global warming in pursuit of short term profit is a
crime against humanity. In this excellent, well-researched book, the
authors map the global effort needed to survive the challenge of
global warming—and perhaps to emerge wiser for our labors.
Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game
Changers for Survival
is an indispensable read for the citizens and
policy makers who will fight for civilization’s endurance and
advancement."
Lawrence Torcello, Associate Professor of Philosophy,
Rochester Institute of Technology

"At this mind-blowing moment in time, when humanity faces
irrevocable climate tipping points, we need all citizens to call out
the climate emergency and take action. This book is a call to arms."
Mary Christina Wood, Professor of Law and Faculty
Director,
Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center,
University of Oregon

“This book is more than timely — it constitutes a last call on the
fast approaching calamity for humanity and for nature. The current
CO2 rise rate of 2 to 3 parts per million [per year] is the fastest
recorded over the last 66 million years. Given amplifying CO2 and
methane feedbacks from warming oceans, drying land and
[melting] permafrost, without effective efforts at CO2 draw-down, it
is hard to see how the rise in global temperature can be halted,
with tragic global consequences.”
See more in-depth analysis
Dr. Andrew Y. Glikson, Earth and Paleoclimate Scientist,
Australian National University

“Green criminologists are increasingly focusing attention on the
critical issue of corporate and state crimes related to climate
change. This important book makes a significant contribution to
those efforts by pulling together a wealth of material to examine
one such form of climate criminality, the unprecedented crime of
climate science denial. This is a timely analysis given the current
political crisis in the U.S., with excellent descriptions of some Game
Changers for Survival.”
Ronald C. Kramer, Professor of Sociology, Western
Michigan University

“This book makes an important contribution to the public debate
about climate change because it effectively explains why the
climate change disinformation campaign funded by some fossil fuel
companies and free-market fundamentalist foundations should be
responded to as an unprecedented virulent crime against
humanity. Although the book makes clear that enormous harms to
life and ecological systems are already attributable to this
disinformation campaign, if the obstructionist power of the
disinformation campaign can be neutralized, policy responses are
now available that could effectively minimize future climate-induced
catastrophic harms.”
Donald A. Brown, Scholar In Residence and Professor,
Sustainability Ethics and Law,
Widener University Commonwealth Law School
Contributing Author, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change,
5th Assessment

In 2017, the heat waves, extreme wild fires, and flooding
around the world confirmed beyond doubt that climate
disruption is now a full-blown emergency.

We have entered Churchill’s “period of consequences”, yet
governments have simply watched the disasters magnify,
while rushing ahead with new pipelines and annual trillions in
fossil fuel subsidies.

Governments simply cannot say they did not know. The
events we are seeing today have been consistently forecast
ever since the First Assessment by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, which was signed by all
governments back in 1990, which The Lancet has described
as the best research project ever designed.

Unprecedented Crime first lays out the culpability of
governmental, political and religious bodies, corporations,
and the media through their failure to report or act on the
climate emergency. No emergency response has even been
contemplated by wealthy high-emitting national governments.
Extreme weather reporting never even hints at the need to
address climate change.

It then reports how independently of governments, scores of
proven zero-carbon game changers have been coming online
all over the world. These exciting technologies, described in
the book, are now able to power both household electricity
and energy-dense heavy industry.

We already have the technical solutions to the CO2 problem.
With these solutions we can act in time to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions to near-zero within 20 years.

These willful crimes against life itself by negligent
governments, oblivious media and an insouciant civil society
are crimes that everyday citizens can nonetheless readily
grasp  – and then take to the streets and to the courts to
protest on behalf of their children and grand-children.

This thoroughly researched and highly-documented book will
show them how.

    “Peter Carter and Elizabeth Woodworth make an
    overwhelming case that the public, especially
    young people, are victims of 'Unprecedented
    Crime'. And the fossil fuel industry, they explain,
    are not the only perpetrators.  There has been
    extensive collusion and denial.

    Fortunately, Carter and Woodworth do much
    more than expose the crimes against humanity
    they also present actions that people can take to
    alleviate the consequences for today's public
    and for future generations.”
    Dr. JAMES E. HANSEN
    formerly chief cimate scientist at NASA
INTERVIEWS
Rising Up
Climate Change, a “Code Red”
Global Emergency - Part 1 of 3
With Ikonoclast Episode 18 –
Unprecedented Crimes with Dr.
Peter Carter
Action - Part 3 of 3 at the 2018
#WeDontHaveTime Climate
Conference
discover
grassroots
activist reading
excerpts from  
their book!  
Enlighten the
corner where
you are!