It is in the news that the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines is an environmental catastrophe. There are calls for this to be treated as a war crime:
Methane leaking from yet-to-be explained damage on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines is likely to be the biggest burst of the potent greenhouse gas on record, raising new fears of the effect on the climate emergency.
The worst-case scenario is estimated to be 778 million cubic metres of gas leaked, according to the Danish government.
Jackson and David Hastings, a retired chemical oceanographer in Gainesville, Florida, each calculated that would be an equivalent of roughly half a million tonnes of methane. The Aliso Canyon disaster [the largest known terrestrial release of methane in US history] released 90-100,000 tonnes.
“Whoever ordered this should be prosecuted for war crimes and go to jail,” said Rob Jackson, a Stanford University climate scientist.
Given the two unlikely events that we get credible evidence as to who ordered the attack and an opportunity for that person(s) to be tried in the appropriate international court, could these actions lead to charges in the same way that breaching the Geneva Convention would?
