Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t mark1w, Cam_s; Environmental activists have written a paper on a computer made of coal and oil products, to demand the prosecution of big oil execs.
New climate paper calls for charging big US oil firms with homicide
Brian Kahn Wed 22 Mar 2023 21.00 AEDT
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”.
“What’s on their ledger in terms of harm, there’s nothing like it in human history,” said David Arkush, the director of the climate program at consumer advocacy group Public Citizen and one of the paper’s authors.
The 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.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/22/big-oil-companies-homicide-harvard-environmental-law-review
The abstract of the paper;
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: 2 Mar 2023
David Arkush
Public CitizenDonald Braman
George Washington University – Law School; Justice Innovation Lab; DC Justice Lab
Date Written: January 23, 2023Abstract
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. 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.
Read more: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4335779
For starters I want to state I’m OK with Harvard Law publishing this paper. Such accusations should be discussed and rebutted.
And the obvious rebuttal is the impact of industrialisation on life expectancy. Thanks to fossil fuel, we don’t work ourselves to death by our 40s. We have the wealth to heat our homes in winter and cool them in Summer. Our children are well cared for and receive high quality food. Parents have the wealth to send children to school, to let them enjoy their childhood, instead of making them work the fields at a young age, to join the daily battle for survival as soon as they are able to do useful work.
So whatever harm fossil fuel has done, and I’m not denying it produces toxic pollutants which kill people, by any rational measure this harm is far outweighed by the good access to cheap energy provides.
What about the charge that fossil fuel companies concealed information from the public? Every charge I have examined to date in my opinion turned out to be nonsense. The “secret” internal memos I’ve seen to date were derivative, derived from publicly available data.
If anyone is unconvinced, the remedy is obvious – stop using their product. If fossil fuel is so evil, switch it off. Reject it. Stop using it. Such lifestyles are entirely possible, groups like the Amish reject modern technology for religious reasons. Yet somehow most anti-fossil fuel advocates seem to find reasons to keep using the evil.
Until anti-fossil fuel advocates personally take the step of expelling evil fossil fuel products from their lives, in my opinion their protestations of harm must be viewed as hypocritical and absurd.
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Sent to Donald Braman under the subject heading, “prosecutorial malfeasance.”
“Propagation of Error and the Reliability of Global Air Temperature Projections”
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2019.00223/full
Climate models have no predictive value, Don.
Oil company executives could not possibly have known in 1980 what they cannot know today.
That is definitive exculpatory proof.
Is there a name for lawyers who prosecute a case without thorough investigation?
Go ahead and publish “Climate Homicide.” See who ends up looking the fool to history.
Yours,
Pat
Patrick Frank
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
These things are, we conjecture, like the truth;
But as for certain truth, no one has known it.
Xenophanes, 570-500 BCE
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I am so sick of these self-righteous posers.
“Oil company executives could not possibly have known in 1980 what they cannot know today.”
That sums it up nicely.
The Oil companies didn’t know anything detrimental about CO2 then and they don’t know anything now. There is no evidence CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life. There wasn’t any evidence in 1980, that said different, and there is no evidence now.
Just because climate change alarmists claim CO2 does harm does not make it so. Unsubstantiated assertions such as this are not evidence of anything.
CO2 and the Oil companies are innocent victims of ignorance and/or selfishness.
Do you truly believe: “innocent victims“.
Yes, I do. Do you truly believe the oil companies are guilty of something because they produce oil? What would that be?
I am not American and I am a complete dummy in matters of finance and law but reading this article makes me think if…
” accountable for climate damage: trying companies for homicide … ”
… if it is possible as well to make accountable “green” companies and pension funds that invest on them, and most certainly their managerial staff, for the years of life stolen to people who see their savings vanish when those companies go broke. Accountable for premature deaths and suffering. Because these are factual events, not the kind of model-driven homicide claims against oil companies.
I’d agree, Joao. And bring them to account for those killed by those policies. Such as the several tens of thousands in the UK who have died of hypothermia in their own homes, due to Winter fuel poverty.
“…killing members of the public at an accelerating rate’
I have a feeling these geniuses don’t know the meaning of “acceleration”.
The only ‘evil’ thing in all of this is: The Love of Money
I believe the Amish are adverse to electricity. They will use diesel engines, which do not run with electricity as gas engines do, so long as they are started with some mechanical means.
I’d be surprised to see an Amish driving a car of any kind. They usually use horse and buggy.
A moment’s research will tell you that the Amish use electricity across the board. For ideological reasons, they won’t connect to the grid but use FF generators to charge batteries. FF-powered farming machines are also used. Gas refrigerators are in use. Etc. & etc. They use buggies, not automobiles to virtue signal their separation from the outside world.
Nobody is forced to use the products of big oil.
A ridiculous charge.
CO2 is a benign gas, essential for life on Earth, Fear of CO2 is unwarranted and unreasonable.
Prove otherwise.
Prove it?
I think someone thought my post was in answer to Tom’s but it was not. I challenge those up and coming lawyers to actually prove that CO2 causes anything other than greening and secondly to prove that a miniscule temperature rise causes any of their so called climate changes.
“I challenge those up and coming lawyers to actually prove that CO2 causes anything other than greening”
That’s what I would be saying if I were in the courtroom.
And when the alarmists produce their “evidence”, I would have a field day showing that their evidence was really only speculation assumptions, and unsubstantiated assertions, none of which are evidence of anything, and I would expect a good judge to understand that they are not seeing evidence of anything. Instead, they are hearing proclamations without substantiating evidence.
A good judge would see the deception.
With this paper, Harvard Law School becomes yet another candidate to be taken off grid. Solar panel need to be placed on the roofs of their buildings as an electricity source to replace the grid.
None of the HLS students or faculty members will be allowed to drive an ICE vehicle to school (or anywhere else), and all of their food must be home grown and cannot have been produced and processed using fossil fuels.
If you preach the “evils” of fossil fuels, then practice what you preach. Otherwise, shut up.
You left out of your list some important products the morons at HLS should be forbidden in order to be true to their cause. Clothing, these days, are made up of all sorts of oil products. Not to mention, the cotton in some clothing is processed using machines which get their power from fossil fuels. Of course, denied clothing the HLS idiots would be exposed to the elements and most would scare the bejesus out of us in their nudity. lol. Can’t imagine any of them out killing animals for skins using rocks.
I guess they forgot that John D. Rockefeller saved the whales by producing kerosene.
Eric, you start out well with your summary of the VAST benefits of fossil fuels, but you repeat your pattern (seen previously in your summary on nitrogen fertilizers) where you say, “I’m not denying it produces toxic pollutants which kill people, ...”
If you ingest or bathe in gasoline, of course you’ll get sick or die, but that is not “toxic pollutants” exposure. Of course, there will always be accidental releases that can and do cause localized and transient harm. However, I have worked in the investigation, assessment and control of fossil fuel emissions to soil, water and air for decades. All are controlled to a great degree such that they do NOT produce clinical effects, either acute or chronic that are demonstrably significant in the population. We are all exposed to many substances (dose and frequency) that easily exceed the risks posed by fossil fuel production, storage and use.
I understand your device “I’m not denying” that attempts to defuse the expected counter arguments, but it connotes to the reader a much larger concern than truly exists. Zero risk? No. But to borrow from our friend Peta’s narrative, poor diet, refined sugar and processed foods cause far greater damage to public health than a few errant molecules of hydrocarbons or combustion products in the environment.
The counter argument is that adopting the position published here would lead to far, far greater death and misery due to the lack of reliable, affordable and clean fossil fuels. I would suggest that it is the authors of this “legal” piece themselves that should be prosecuted for homicide should their dystopian views actually take hold.
How about charging all the vehicle manufacturers (hybrid and electric included) too as road traffic accidents are among the top causes of years of life lost. Also let’s put all the farmers in jail for the horror that is the obesity/diabetes epidemic – something that would not exist without their food production. Or let’s go right to the source and jail all mothers for giving birth to babies that will eventually die.
Harvard, I am told, used to be an academic institution. I guess they are now just a cult of political advocacy, intent on tearing down everything good that organized society has built.
And here I thought climate and disaster related deaths have dropped 94% in the last 100 years.
A “burden” that must be aborted, perhaps cannibalized/redistributed, then sequestered in darkness.
That said, take a knee, beg, “donate”. Good boy, girl, whatever.
Followed the links to authors David Arkush and Donald Braman, and can’t find where either is admitted to the bar or even has a JD. The other papers they’ve published look like trash too.
Can’t help but wonder if a first year Harvard student couldn’t tear this one apart. But it’s nice to be paid for demanding, hysterically (or perhaps drunkenly), that some class of individually unidentifiable people should “do something” that the writers don’t have to do themselves. Doesn’t Soros have pocket prosecutors everywhere? Wouldn’t you think some or all of them have laughed this off already.?
“Doesn’t Soros have pocket prosecutors everywhere?”
Yes, he does. Soros has bought numerous District Attorneys across the U.S. Find the cities where crime is out of control and more than likely a George Soros funded District Attorney is in office fixated on letting all the criminals out of jail.
Something needs to be done to counter the George Soros, leftwing billionaires of the world. They are using their money to actively undermine the freedoms of us all. Soros and his District Attorneys have turned American cities into killing zones with their refusal to lock up the criminals and keep them locked up.
We need to reinstitute the “Three Strikes and You are Out!” law where after the third violent felony conviction, the sentence is Life in Prison Without Parole.
We should also give life in prison to anyone who shoots or otherwise harms a police officer, and those who kill police officers should automatically get the death penalty on conviction.
That will slow down crime a little bit.
Keep the criminals locked up and they can’t commit more crimes. And in most areas, the criminals are usually the same people, and make up a very small percent of the population who are committing most of the crime. We should concentrate on taking these people out of our society and keeping them out.
Preaching to the choir – but Gapminder has that beautiful graphic showing income and life expectancy for all the world’s countries from 1800 till now. It’s funny how coal, oil and gas have caused life expectancy to increase for all.
https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$bubble$encoding$frame$value=1802;&trail$data$filter$markers$jam=1800&nga=1800&tto=1800&brb=1800&bhs=1802;;;;;;;;&chart-type=bubbles&url=v1
Which just goes to show how delusional the climate change alarmists really are.
The Climate Change Alarmists live in Bizzarro World, not in the real world.
Any word on whether the greens in Europe who left the citizens without heat this past winter will be charged?
I can still by cigarettes at a gas station mini-mart?
Please stop saying daft things like “If anyone is unconvinced, the remedy is obvious – stop using their product. If fossil fuel is so evil, switch it off. Reject it. Stop using it.”.
That remedy is already being applied, and ruthlessly. It is the remedy being imposed on everyone else by those who rule us. It isn’t going too well for the general population, and it looks like getting so much worse that ordinary people’s lives right across the western world will be destroyed by it (viz, Sri Lanka).
That’s not a remedy, it’s destruction. I used the word “daft” because the notion is very very daft. Unfortunately, the word ‘daft’ doesn’t sound dangerous. Let me assure you that in this case it is very dangerous indeed. So for goodness sake, stop being daft.
“So whatever harm fossil fuel has done, and I’m not denying it produces toxic pollutants which kill people, by any rational measure this harm is far outweighed by the good access to cheap energy provides.“
That statement loses the debate. Why the hell would you concede your opponents’ premise like that? You won’t deny that fossil fuel produce toxic pollutants that kill people? Fine. Then I will. I deny it. Someone would have to *eat* fossil fuels to accumulate enough toxic pollutants to die from them. People who drill for the stuff and mine the stuff and refine the stuff and transport the stuff aren’t being killed by the stuff. I spent 25 years sucking diesel fumes from aircraft k-loaders, trucks, and tugs running around airline ramps and I haven’t been killed yet. The same can be said of every employee of my former company. Please to produce the people killed by fossil fuels’ toxic pollutants through the normal daily use of those products.
“Authors of paper accepted for publication in Harvard Environmental Law Review argue firms are ‘killing members of the public at an accelerating rate’”
Name one.
“Accelerating rate”
They can’t even name one, much less more than one.
They are going before a judge making this claim?
If I were the judge, I would be insulted that these lawyers would think I’m so gullible as to accept an assertion as being evidence.
The first thing I, or the Defense, would ask them is to prove their claim.
The specific job of a judge is to separate fact from fiction. If the judge is unbiased, then the climate change alarmists are going to have a tough time in court proving their csse. I would say an impossible time, since there is no evidence the climate alarmists can provide to prove their case.
A good, unbiased judge should be able to see this clearly.
Now, where do we find a good, unbiased judge?
Story Tip, I have noticed lately that when challenging people on the lack of trends in climate events, they seem to be relying a lot more these days on the “science of attribution”. Basically, as there are no real world trends to backup their climate alarm claims, they just use models to say that event “X” is ten times more likely because of climate change. I fail to see why that would not be reflected in the trends, but that does not seem to concern them.
“science of attribution”= Guessing.
An educated guess perhaps, but still it is guessing. Nothing definitive. Nothing that national policy should be based on.
homicide
hŏm′ĭ-sīd″, hō′mĭ-
noun
The killing of one person by another, regardless of intention or legality.
A person who kills another person.
A person who kills another; a manslayer.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
It would seem that Harvard is using a word that they don’t know the meaning of. Sort of makes a person wonder about the accuracy of the article the headline/title relates to.
“The Harm” has fed 7 billion people daily.