Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil For Climate Deaths

Abstract

Prosecutors regularly bring homicide charges against individuals and corporations whose reckless or negligent acts or omissions 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 prevent regulation of their lethal conduct. They funded efforts to call sound science into doubt and confuse their shareholders, consumers, and regulators. They poured money into 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 fossil fuel companies’ conduct and their longstanding awareness of the catastrophic consequences, 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 multiple corporate actors have engaged in conduct that endangers much or all of the public. The Article finds that in jurisdictions across the United States, fossil fuel companies could be prosecuted for every type of homicide short of first degree murder, a charge it does not evaluate. It also concludes that prosecutions could offer highly effective remedies and that prosecutors should be motivated to seek them.

Keywords: climate change, homicide, criminal law, prosecution, accountability, causation, fossil fuels, big oil, negligent homicide, manslaughter, murder, felony murder, misdemeanor manslaughter, fraud, RICO, racketeering, conspiracy, prosecutors, public benefit corporation, environmental crime