Researchers Call For Charging Big Oil With Homicide

What’s the story?

• A new paper published in the Harvard Environmental Law Review calls for holding big oil companies accountable for homicide. 
• The authors argue that the 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.” The paper is rooted in the growing conversation that fossil fuel companies have known about the harm they have been causing for decades. 
• The report lays out the case for multiple types of homicide charges, which range from manslaughter to murder. David Arkush, one of the paper’s leading contributors, said the companies come “extremely close” to meeting the definition of murder because of their awareness of the harm. 

What they’re saying

• Donald Braman, a law professor at George Washington University and co-author, spoke of the “culpable mental state” that has inflicted harm on people, including death, as the companies delay climate regulations.

“Once you start using those terms, you realize that’s criminal law. Culpable mental state causing harm is criminal conduct, and if they kill anybody, that’s homicide.” 

• Braman continues to explain that homicide chargers would have a significant impact and outstanding penalties for the industry, further than just paying fines. 
• The authors argue that attribution science — a field of research frequently used in climate studies to discover how much climate change is responsible for extreme weather — helps the paper’s case. Various studies have found that climate change is connected to the worsening of extreme weather events and their death tolls.
• In response to the study, a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute wrote in an email: 

“The record of the past two decades demonstrates that the industry has achieved its goal of providing affordable, reliable American energy to US consumers while substantially reducing emissions and our environmental footprint. Any suggestion to the contrary is false.”

What’s next?

• While pursuing homicide chargers would be challenging, it isn't unheard of. BP was charged with manslaughter after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed over 10 people and paid billions in fines and penalties. 
• If a case were to be brought forward against oil companies, there would need to be a strong argument for the harm done. Christopher Kutz, professor at the University of California, Berkely, said there could be “a black hole of liability.” 
• Guyora Binder, a professor at the University of Buffalo, called the paper exciting but agreed that finding causal responsibility would be difficult.

“It’s a little reminiscent of the issues with tobacco and opioids where you have multiple manufacturers and you can’t trace which one contributed to which death…It’s not clear that if you remove any one of [the fossil fuel companies], that the deaths resulting from global warming don’t occur.”

• The paper's authors included a recommended sentence — restructuring the firms as public benefit corporations. This sentence would rapidly decrease fossil fuel production to reduce further damages from climate change while ramping up investments in clean energy and protecting vulnerable communities. 

Do you think major oil companies should be charged with homicide?

-Jamie Epstein