When a person’s house is on fire, firefighters bring axes to gain entry into areas that aren’t easily accessable, or if they get trapped in a room, they can create an exit. No homeowner in their right mind would press charges against the fireman for damaging their property. In Great Britain, this is known as a “lawful excuse.”

This legal idea was used by several Greenpeace members, who said that by damaging a coal fired electrical plant, they were preventing greater damage caused by global warming.

They were aquitted.

The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will have shocked ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone Crown Court cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage.

…

The not-guilty verdict, delivered after two days and greeted with cheers in the courtroom, raises the stakes for the most pressing issue on Britain’s green agenda and could encourage further direct action.

James Hansen testified during the eight day trial, where he “called for an moratorium on all coal-fired power stations, and his hour-long testimony about the gravity of the climate danger, which painted a bleak picture, was listened to intently by the jury of nine women and three men.”

I wonder if the government offered any kind of counter argument or if they simply allowed Hansen to preach the Gospel without challenging it. Seeing as there is no mention of rebutal, I have to assume they didn’t.

Consider the ramifications of this verdict. Now, eco-terrorists have an excuse to destroy that which they feel is destructive to the environment. They not only have an excuse, but legal precedent, to destroy that which they disagree with. This goes back to the premise that socialism cannot exist without force.

The best thing Gordon Brown could do is to scrap all the coal fired plant for nuclear. The green-mafia have no excuse to dislike nuclear since it emits no carbon dioxide. But I’m sure they’ll still fight it.