Images of the immense, dark stain of oil covering the waters of the Gulf of Mexico made their way across the globe last year as one of the largest oil spills in history unfolded. Other images - of the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’, a gigantic pile of litter floating in the North Pacific Ocean; of countless felled trees in the Amazon; of tar sands in Canada - have gained much fewer headlines, but are likely to remain as monuments to the price tag of wanton human appetites.
Seeking to avert similar calamities, and demanding justice globally, London-based lawyer and activist Polly Higgins in April 2010 submitted to the U.N. a legal proposal to add widespread environmental wreckage - dubbed ‘ecocide’ - as a fifth crime against peace. The International Criminal Court (ICC) was set up in 2002 to hear cases involving four crimes against peace: genocide, war crimes, crimes of aggression, and crimes against humanity.
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