UK Guardian: Authors of paper accepted for publication in Harvard Environmental Law Review argue firms are ‘killing members of the public at an accelerating rate’
Oil companies have come under increasing legal scrutiny and face allegations of defrauding investors, racketeering, and a wave of other lawsuits. But a new paper argues there’s another way to hold big oil accountable for climate damage: trying companies for homicide.
The striking and seemingly radical legal theory is laid out in a paper accepted for publication in the Harvard Environmental Law Review. In it, the authors argue fossil fuel companies “have not simply been lying to the public, they have been killing members of the public at an accelerating rate, and prosecutors should bring that crime to the public’s attention”. … The paper also argues that the case for climate homicide has been bolstered by attribution science, which seeks to ascertain how much the climate crisis has worsened individual extreme weather events. Some studies have even been able to attribute a specific number of extreme weather deaths to the climate crisis. The duo argue that this growing body of science is among the most powerful tools to prove that oil companies’ actions have more than met the standard for a prosecutor to bring a homicide case. Bringing homicide charges against oil companies for deaths caused by the climate crisis would be unprecedented, but corporations have been tried for homicide before. California prosecutors charged the utility PG&E with manslaughter for its role in the deadly Camp Fire that leveled the town of Paradise in 2018. And federal prosecutors charged BP with manslaughter following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. In both cases, the companies pleaded guilty and paid billions in fines and penalties.
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https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4335779
Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil For Climate Deaths – Harvard Environmental Law Review, Vol. 48, No. 1, 2024
70 Pages Posted: 25 Jan 2023 Last revised: 24 Mar 2023
More on co-authors of paper David Arkush here and here.
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‘Climate homicide’: Could Big Oil be sued for disaster deaths? ‘Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Death’ urges new paper in the Harvard Environmental Law Review – The paper, “Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Death” — written by Arkush and Donald Braman, an associate professor at George Washington University Law School — will be published next spring in the Harvard Environmental Law Review.
“We concluded there aren’t really any legal or factual barriers to prosecution,” Arkush said.
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Lawyers Seek To Add Stock Of Lawyer Jokes By Demanding Oil Companies Be Prosecuted For Homicide – William M. Briggs: So if using oil is murder—and it has to be murder and not manslaughter, for our authors know of what they do—then lawyer Donald Braman and “public citizen” David Arkush are murderers. Perhaps they’ll turn themselves in? If it isn’t ink, it’s the gas they put in their cars, or the fuel in the planes in which they fly, or in heating or cooling their home, or running the electricity to pay for their Netflix accounts, or in manufacturing the clothes they wear, or in the plastic which surrounds them in their own homes, or in growing the food they eat. There is no way these sad individuals can remove the charge of hypocrisy, or escape the logic of their own argument. …
If this “lethal harm”, caused by use of oil, is indeed “unparalleled in human history”, then our authors, who knowingly participate in this lethal harm, damn themselves. None of this can, or must, be taken seriously. The charge is absurd. It is asinine. It can only be the result of, as I said, lowly greed, or worse, profound stupidity and irresponsibility.
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Opening Excerpt: … Rather than bolster the overall case that ‘Big Oil & Coal’ conspired in disinformation campaigns to deceive the public about the certainty of catastrophic global warming, this paper is just another log thrown into the fire of an apparent conspiracy promulgated by a core clique of enviro-activists to deceive the public into believing the industry ran disinformation campaigns. …
Concluding paragraph: This so-new-that-it-isn’t-even-officially-published-yet “Climate Homicide” draft paper doesn’t do a solitary thing to resolve any of the problems seen in any prior “Big Oil disinformation / crooked skeptic scientists” accusations, it only begs for more questions on who prompts these kinds of ham-handed efforts, who provides the worthless evidence citations, and who pays for these efforts.
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Tony Heller of Real Climate Science Debunks:
https://realclimatescience.com/2023/03/climate-homicide/
Death rates from natural disasters including “all geophysical, meteorological and climate events” are down 95% over the past century, and academics want to sue oil companies for deaths caused by meteorological events.
POLITICO Pro | Article | ‘Climate homicide’: Could Big Oil be sued for disaster deaths?
Natural Disasters Data Explorer – Our World in Data
Fossil fuels keep billions of people alive day to day around the world. They provide our heat, light, communications and transportation. They make it possible for trucks to bring food. People who want to ban fossil fuels are advocating genocide.
On March 23, 1913 “scores” of towns were wiped out by tornadoes in six states. Omaha was largely destroyed.
24 Mar 1913, Page 13 – Arizona Republic at Newspapers.com
23 Mar 1913, Page 9 – The Daily Deadwood Pioneer-Times at Newspapers.com
24 Mar 1913, 1 – Evening Times-Republican at Newspapers.com
