New climate paper calls for charging big US oil firms with homicide | Oil | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/22/big-oil-companies-homicide-harvard-environmental-law-reviewThe paper is rooted in part in the growing body of evidence fossil fuel companies knew of the harm their products caused and misled the public about them.
Attorneys general and cities have used that information to sue oil companies for financial damages caused by rising seas, wildfires and heat. But the new paper argues that oil companies’ climate research and continued fight to delay climate regulations amount to a “culpable mental state” that has inflicted harm on people, including death.
“Once you start using those terms, you come to realize that’s criminal law,” said Donald Braman, a law professor at George Washington University and Arkush’s co-author. “Culpable mental state causing harm is criminal conduct, and if they kill anybody, that’s homicide.”
Braman argued that pursuing homicide charges would have a greater impact on fossil fuel companies than the cases currently wending their way through court in part because the penalties would be steeper. Rather than paying a fine, homicide charges could open up an array of other outcomes that could materially alter how companies operate.
Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil For Climate Deaths by David Arkush, Donald Braman :: SSRNhttps://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4335779Prosecutors 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. And they 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—and soon—we may leave future generations with significantly less for the law to protect.