CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

According to the National Geographic Society: “The human footprint is one of the most destructive forces in Earth’s history, fundamentally altering the planet at an unprecedented scale. Humanity consumes resources far faster than they can regenerate, driving rapid environmental degradation, mass biodiversity loss, and climate shifts that many scientists classify as a new geological epoch.”

Yet, the planet is smiling, a big fat smile. It’s happy for the first time since, who knows when? Humans are taking measures to protect her precious ecosystems. The world community is waking up to the full extent of anthropogenic abuse by making it a crime to despoil our home planet.

Finland’s Social Democratic Party (SDP), at its 2026 SDP Party Congress, supported the criminalization of ecocide. SDP has become Finland’s largest party. It supports a strong national, regional and international framework to criminalize mass environmental destruction, known as ecocide.

Their resolution highlights the damage of large-scale destruction of nature with consequences impacting human health, livelihoods, natural resources and food production.

The Human Footprint Consumes 1.75 Earths

In fact, as far as the planet is concerned, help cannot come soon enough. After all, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Standards and Technology (“NIST”) which is highly regarded on a global scale as a premier, pro-science research institution and the country’s lead national laboratory for measurements, calibrations, and public safety standards: “We humans need 1.75 Earths to support our current rate of consumption! That is unsustainable, and we have to make changes… If we’re going to secure a sustainable future on the only planet we have to live on, we must transition to a circular economy.” (We Need a Second Earth to Support Our Current Consumption. We Can Do Better if We Think ‘Circular’, NIST, April 19, 2023)

The “1.75 earths” consumed by the human footprint leaves little room for error, in fact, no room. Thus, a universal ecocide law becomes much more relevant and necessary to help prevent excessive overdevelopment and/or nonsensical abuse, e.g., fossil fuel CO2 emissions are turning the planet into a roasting oven, red-faced and bloated. This is excessive and nonsensical and not necessary. Yet, CO2 has been regularly setting new record highs year-after-year in concert with record heat around the globe.

In that regard, on January 14th, 2026, the UN weather agency warned:........

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