Title: Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Deaths

Author:

• David Arkush
• Donald Braman

Abstract

• 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.