Scotland could become one of the first countries to establish a specific crime for mass environmental destruction as championed by late Scots barrister Polly Higgins.
No, they'd be able to afford the best lawyers. It's the poor who would be punished the most. We already have fines for not recycling properly, even though the rubbish all gets mixed back together in Turkey or China and burned anyway. We have to use soggy paper straws with our drinks while the rich blanket the atmosphere in burned fuel from the private jets.
Thats a true revolutionary cry. But since being "rich" is quite a relative term, you might wake up in the realization that most of the world considers you rich and your lifestyle complicit in the mass destruction of the global environment.
That's quite the stretch. Don't regulate the rich cause we might be caught up?
I don't take private flights from one side of a city to another. I don't own a yacht (or 6). I don't own a fleet of vehicles with a staff that drives them around. I don't throw away more food than most people eat. I don't horde dozens of acres of land that contain nothing but wasteful lawn.
There's a pretty stark contrast between the ultra wealthy, and the vast majority of people living in highly developed countries.
This is a form of slippery slope fallacy. Rich in this context refers to portion of society contributing to pollution on a massively higher scale than even an upper middle class American. How many 'rich' Americans regularly fly private jets or take yachts? How many average joes own and operate a cruise line or a refinery?
I think with regards to poorer people in other countries, they'd be on the same page with 99.99% of Americans about who's considered so rich that they alone pose a threat to global health.