Episode 3 kicks off with Roger asking Tim how, as a lawyer, the legal system can be used in the context of governments leading us into a future 4 degree world where whole continents, and the billions of people who live there, will find them totally uninhabitable.
Tim outlines three factors in the present day, which show the degree to which huge transformational change is necessary right now and desired by the majority of the world’s peoples, and that of the overwhelming majority of the scientific community. However, as Tim goes on to outline, governments are turning away from the scientific and economic knowledge, instead pursuing a disastrous course, leading to the breakdown of the state itself.
As Tim continues, he articulates the difference between treason and ordinary crimes. The former being on a completely different level to that of the latter, which in the context of the Climate and Ecological Emergency, will lead inevitably to the dissolution of the entire legal system as the state crumbles under the effects of climate and ecological breakdown.
Tim proceeds to take us through the political idea of treason and how that is then formalised into law, detailing some examples of how the state manouveurs in order to make its own actions not be subjected to its own laws.
As becomes clear, whilst the Treason Act of 1352, which is still applicable today, doesn’t define treason as a threat to the state, based on the outcome of the trial of Charles 1st it would on the abstract level apply to any actions by a ruler that threaten the state itself. Essentially, this was the watershed moment that our very democracy was founded upon, and as Tim points out, we find ourselves back in that moment right now with governments doing the bidding of a corporate elite, which will ultimately lead to the total breakdown of the state and the societies governments purport to protect.
For the full details of the case being brought by Plan B against the British government, as well as their legal argument, please click here