Fossil fuel firms could be tried for homicide

> Now, researchers are promoting a new legal theory that says fossil fuel companies – which, data show, are the leading contributors to planet-heating pollution – could be tried for homicide for climate-related deaths.

> The radical idea, first proposed last year by consumer advocacy non-profit Public Citizen, may sound far-fetched, but it’s gaining interest from experts and public officials.

All these titles, "researcher," "expert," "public official," seem chosen to lend this idea credibility, but it's fundamentally unreasonable. It's lawfare that would subvert the justice system for to serve the nakedly ideological ends of some radical activists.

Fossil fuel companies may be guilty of something criminal, but it's not homicide. I mean, how could you prove that someone actually died of climate change? And even if you could, how could you prove that it was due to the actions of a particular legal entity, and not a collection of pretty much all legal entities put together? Are you going to prosecute every person who's driven a car since they first heard about global warming?

It's pretty much a recipe for selective prosecution against certain political enemies designed to destroy them.

> “I strongly support the effort to go after these bastards,” Christopher Rabb, a Pennsylvania state representative said at a recent UPenn event. The researchers say other public officials have expressed interest behind the scenes as well.

That guy literally sounds like a threat to democracy and should be impeached.

Anyone proposing this is either twisting or seriously misunderstanding the meaning of the word "homicide," an intentional killing. At most, a company could be pursued for manslaughter, death as a side effect of a business activity.

In practice, companies are not normally held responsible for even directly attributable killings. Instead, they pay fines to the government as Boeing did with their 737 MAX crashes. Individuals definitely don't go to jail, or even lose their jobs in many cases.

>Now, researchers are promoting a new legal theory that says fossil fuel companies – which, data show, are the leading contributors to planet-heating pollution – could be tried for homicide for climate-related deaths.

>The radical idea, first proposed last year by consumer advocacy non-profit Public Citizen, may sound far-fetched, but it’s gaining interest from experts and public officials.

This should scare the hell out of everybody; it sure scares the hell out of me.

wouldn’t you also have to sue car drivers, consumers, and everyone else who touches the fossil fuel industry? (which is everyone)

also, what about lives saved / sustained through the use of fossil fuels? Do you subtract each climate related death by the number of ambulance trips and plastic used in medical products?

just thinking out loud here

I thought corporations had limited exposure to being held for criminal activities compared to other countries due to how companies are not recognised as individuals or something… or was that just within a “arresting/imprisoning the executives”? Because evidently corps have been found guilty in the past as per the article -

> Energy companies have been charged with homicide for environmental crimes before, Arkush noted. California prosecutors charged the utility PG&E with manslaughter after a tree fell onto an aging transmission line and sparked a deadly 2018 wildfire in Paradise, California. Federal prosecutors also charged oil company BP with manslaughter after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed 11 workers and resulted in the largest oil spill in the history of marine oil-drilling operations. Both companies pleaded guilty and paid billions of dollars in penalties and fines.

So which company we can't? I'm sure we could do same with Amazon, Google and AWS. As surely their data centres and their energy use has also killed people?

What about green parties for blocking nuclear power? Where should we actually end it?

So I'm not getting what would be the result from cases like this. IMHO the whole point of criminal law is to hold an actual person responsible for their behavior. Holding an organization responsible for a crime doesn't seem to hold any weight because the lives of the people responsible are not put on the line. If money is all that's involved, there is no human component in the accountability process. Will these cases change anything?

Retroactive prosecutions are a great way to make sure that there will never be another new industry or allowed innovation.

Eh. I'm not a big fan of this kind of "lawfare" if the same results can be achieved otherwise. If the problem is lobbying I'd rather focus on the details of that - I'm sure you can find much more direct exchanges of cash for legislation if you're willing to look.

I am also reminded of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Saro-Wiwa - for a while people were trying to organize a campaign against Shell, because they were involved in collaborating with the Nigerian government who were very keen to run people off their land for oil exploration.

The base seems to be the other linked guardian article:

"Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions"

Meaning those who extract the oil, are also 100% responsible for me burning it, to drive my car. Meaning they are responsible, if people die because of heat. Which is convenient, because now me and everybody else driving their cars can have a clear consciousness! It is all the fault of the evil oil companies! /s

I mean, they certainly don't play nice and partly have a very dark history. But if all of humanity demands oil and our current economy cannot run without oil, then I think it is just cheap and not helpful to put it all on the oil companies. We do not seriously want them to stop extracting oil at this point. This is just dishonest.

So capture and redirect some of their profits, yes please, but a cheap blame game is not what think will help anyone.

sue Bayer/Monsanto first