Can you cut 1 Tonne of carbon pollution out of your life?
Take the challengeMiriam Clements grew sick and tired of standing by and watching natural resources being taken for granted, so she started looking for a solution.
She opened her own strategy and events agency, Sustainability, Quality, Purpose (SQP), through which she has been able to research and prepare submissions that are assessed by some of the world's highest authorities.
Recently, one of her cases was accepted for formal review by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Clements' argument was that that the expansion of coal mines and coal-seam-gas fracking in Australia was endangering the environment and people of the regions in which the activities were taking place.
A key focus for Clements is demonstrating that the contamination of water, air and land by industry (eg. mining, manufacturing etc.) violates international treaties and statutes, and as such can be challenged in the ICC.
Clements, 37, believes strongly that the expansion of dirty industry is illegal and unethical due to the huge cost to the health of both the environment and humans. She is determined to hold individual decision makers accountable for the harm that they cause in their pursuit of profit.
For Clements, this highlights how in today's world, we are so often forced to compromise the health and wellbeing of our planet as a result of the actions and values of our politicians, industries and other stakeholders. Indeed, the treatment of our natural resources, from water to land, reflects how decision-makers deem the destruction of ecosystems (and consequentially human life) is necessary, acceptable or worthwhile in order to turn a profit.
This poses the question: is the destruction of our world a justifiable cost of doing business?“Industrial contamination is definitely a foreseeable calculation of harm that the decision makers deliberately inflict on the population and ecosystem, and there is law which generically recognises such behaviour as a preventable crime”- Miriam Clements
Despite ongoing damage to the environment reported daily in the international press, Clements remains determined to bring about real change. "The unique factor is that I have applied existing law to the crime of industrial environmental destruction and its consequential devastation of human life, where it has never previously been argued in this way".
"If this law was to come to life… it quite genuinely changes all the rules. Gross environmental destruction would no longer be legal."
Although there is clear evidence of industries damaging the environment (BP oil spill, anyone?), Clements' battle continues. This isn't helped by the huge political and economic influence of polluting industries.
"Given the extreme profits available to these traditional business models like coal and gas, unless decision makers are faced with accountability, it is unlikely that they will change."
If Clements' case is successful, individuals involved in the development of dirty industries may be held criminally liable for "the physical destruction of life systems essential to survival".
While she faces criticism that her approach is naïve or utopian, Clements remains hopeful: "Regardless of the extreme opposition I have faced, for me, the law is clear."
Photo credit: Anke Janssen
“You don’t need to be a lawyer to understand that the contamination of dirty industry extraction is bringing about physical destruction of the local people’s health and economies.”- Miriam Clements
She describes her vision as simple: a logical and intelligent society would begin to identify and hold accountable those individuals of power and wealth who are making the decisions to destroy our life systems, due to corruption, greed or an indifference to life.
"The necessity to recognise the illegality of our political, investment and corporate class's willingness to destroy is significantly overdue."
Clements says that the next step in defending Australia's ecosystem (including the Great Barrier Reef) is to submit a subsequent evidence profile, which includes contributions from local lawyers, economists and scientists, who will validate the argument she has registered with the court.
Clements says that one of the greatest things about the law is that if a few cases are ruled on then all other investors, companies and governments around the world will come to quickly understand that their conscious destruction of that which sustains life will lead their loss of their freedom and finances.
What can you do to help?
Check out Victory Australasia, Victory Amazon and Victory Arctic
To read Miriam's SQP-ICC argument submitted to the court for Australia, click here. You can also check out here campaign website and stay updated on Facebook.
Images: bruniewska/ Shutterstock
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