• Title: Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Deaths

• Author:

  • David Arkush
  • Donald Braman

• Abstract

• Paraphrase
  • Prosecutors regularly bring homicide charges against individuals and corporations
    • whose reckless or negligent acts or omissions
    • cause unintentional deaths,
    • as well as those whose misdemeanors or felonies cause unintentional deaths.
  • Fossil fuel companies learned decades ago that
    • what they
      • produced,
      • marketed, and
      • sold
    • would generate “globally catastrophic” climate change.
  • Rather than alert the public and curtail their operations,
    • they worked to
      • deceive the public about these harms and
      • to prevent regulation of their lethal conduct.
  • They funded efforts to
    • call sound science into doubt and
    • to confuse their
      • shareholders,
      • consumers, and
      • regulators.
    • poured money into political campaigns to elect or install
      • judges,
      • legislators, and
      • executive officials hostile to any
        • litigation,
        • regulation, or
        • competition
      • that might limit their profits.
  • Today, the climate change that they forecast
    • has already killed thousands of people in the United States,
    • and it is expected to become increasingly lethal for the foreseeable future.
  • Given the
    • extreme lethality of the conduct and
    • the awareness of the catastrophic risk
      • on the part of fossil fuel companies,
      • should they be charged with homicide?
  • Could they be convicted?
  • In answering these questions,
    • this Article makes several contributions to
      • our understanding of criminal law and
      • the role it could play in combating crimes committed at a massive scale.
  • It describes
    • the doctrinal and
    • social predicates of homicide prosecutions
  • where corporate conduct endangers much or all of the public.
  • It also identifies important advantages of
    • homicide prosecutions
    • relative to
      • civil and
      • regulatory remedies,
    • and it details
      • how and
      • why
    • prosecution for homicide may be the most effective legal remedy available in cases like this.
  • Finally, it argues that,
    • if our criminal legal system cannot focus more intently on climate crimes soon
    • we may leave future generations with significantly less for the law to protect.

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