International Criminal Law Is not a Panacea - Why Proposed Climate Change ‘Crimes’ Are Just Another Passenger on an Overcrowded Bandwagon

There have been various responses to global warming. More recently, attempts have been made to utilize international criminal law. This article focuses on the criminalization of global warming as it might most directly affect humanity: climate change induced displacement. This article considers how criminalization takes place at the domestic and international levels and the additional constraints with respect to the latter, particularly as regards victims and perpetrators. It then examines how far existing international criminal law, especially as set out in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, might already apply to climate change induced displacement. Finally, it challenges the appropriateness of further extending international criminal law for this task; criminalizing climate change induced displacement could be “simply too all-encompassing to be meaningful”, helpful or effective.