Can Oil Companies Be Charged With Climate Deaths?

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The Sierra Club has come up with the novel idea that fossil fuel companies could be charged as criminals because of climate deaths. It raised the possibility in an article titled, “Climate Change Is Killing People. Could Fossil Fuel Companies Be Held Criminally Responsible?” The authors commented that some legal experts believe civil lawsuits alone may not be sufficient punishment for deadly pollution.

The Sierra Club’s case for the prosecution is laid out in a Public Citizen paper. The authors of the paper write, “To ground this assessment in real-world analysis, it focuses on one specific factual scenario: the lethal heat wave that struck the American Southwest in July 2023, causing hundreds of deaths in Maricopa County.” The county includes greater Phoenix, which reported over 600 heat related deaths last year, Some medical experts believe the figure is higher.

Fossil Fuel Criminals

The argument for charging fossil fuels with manslaughter or some greater crime is that they knew their products caused global warming and decided not to make this public. They ignored the facts in exchange for profits. The demand for oil is at record levels.

The Sierra Club analysis includes a comment by Donald Braman, an associate professor of criminal law at George Washington University. “I don’t think that fraud captures the degree to which that conduct is antisocial and destructive to our society. I think that the criminal law speaks much more clearly to that type of conduct.”

Big Tobacco

Will this work? The courts are fickle. Many who want to punish fossil fuel companies for their dangerous actions and the fact they knew the effects of their products on the population want a victory like the one that the government at both the state and national level won against Big Tobacco. This triggered damage payments in the tens of billions of dollars. That was enough for many who wanted the effects of cigarette smoking to be acknowledged and redressed. Is that enough to punish Big Oil? Some of the Sierra Club members think that it is not enough.