With the world set to pass the 1.5˚C temperature limit in the Paris Agreement, and as the UK Government, hot on heels of COP27, approves plans for a new coal mine, which Caroline Lucas MP has described as a “crime against humanity”, a former Government lawyer has renounced his professional status over what he describes as “the British courts’ support for climate genocide”. Tim Crosland, who is now the Director of the climate justice charity, Plan B, said:

“My maternal grandmother was a German Jew who escaped to England in the 1930s – just in time. Out of 15,000 German judges under the Nazi regime, only one, Lothar Kreyssig, actively denounced the genocide as unlawful. Others were later tried and convicted at Nuremberg for their complicity in crimes against humanity.

The British Government knows full well that human-made climate change will annihilate whole peoples, whole regions of the world, and whole generations. It knows it will devastate our own country too. Yet it remains so captive to the fossil fuel industry that it permits the City of London to support 15% of global carbon emissions, accelerates new oil and gas licences in the North Sea and has just announced the opening of a new coal mine in Cumbria. This is genocide. It is the ultimate crime against humanity and life on earth. It is only possible because of the complicity of the courts and certain members of the legal profession.

I have witnessed at first hand the Supreme Court’s willingness to lie, in order to conceal from the public the deadly consequences of Heathrow expansion. And I watch on in horror as the courts send more and more of my friends and colleagues to prison – courageous and truthful people – for peacefully defending the life and lands that they love.

A barrister has the professional duty to respect the authority of the courts. But I cannot respect these courts any longer. Consequently, I have formally renounced my status as a barrister as an act of protest and conscience.”

Press release in full