{"id":34107,"date":"2024-06-01T11:54:25","date_gmt":"2024-06-01T18:54:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=34107"},"modified":"2024-06-01T11:54:26","modified_gmt":"2024-06-01T18:54:26","slug":"youd-be-amazed-how-many-people-want-big-oil-charged-with-homicide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/06\/01\/youd-be-amazed-how-many-people-want-big-oil-charged-with-homicide\/","title":{"rendered":"You\u2019d Be Amazed How Many People Want Big Oil Charged With Homicide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Heather Souvaine Horn\/The New Republic<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"You\u2019dSmokestacks at a petroleum processing plant. (photo: Getty)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

31 may 24<\/strong> (RSN.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A new poll shows overwhelming support for holding oil and gas companies accountable via the courts.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Sixty-two percent of likely voters think oil and gas companies \u201cshould be held legally accountable for their contributions to climate change,\u201d according to a new poll<\/a> published this week. Not only do 84 percent of Democrats think that but also 59 percent of independents and even 40 percent of Republicans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are striking numbers. As I wrote in this newsletter last month<\/a>, all too often pollsters ask people vague questions about whether people support \u201csteps\u201d to address climate change, without specifying what those steps are. That didn\u2019t happen with this poll, which was conducted by the progressive think tank Data for Progress<\/a> and consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen<\/a>. This was the exact question: \u201cDo you think that oil and gas companies should be held legally accountable for their contributions to climate change, including their impacts on extreme weather events and public health?\u201d In addition to the aforementioned political divides, women said \u201cyes\u201d more often than men, young people more often than old people, and Black or Latino people more often than white people\u2014but that still adds up to a striking degree of support for accountability for fossil fuel companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor did the poll stop there. It also asked<\/a> whether people supported not just civil lawsuits but criminal prosecutions for \u201creckless or negligent homicide.\u201d This is a relatively new idea, and a somewhat edgy one for a lot of people. But 49 percent of respondents said they supported this too, compared to only 39 percent who said they\u2019d oppose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New Republic<\/em> has been covering legal approaches to climate accountability for years now: both<\/a> the civil<\/a> suits<\/a> and more recent approaches. Public Citizen\u2019s Aaron Regunberg and David Arkush made the case<\/a> for criminal prosecutions, and specifically homicide charges, in March. \u201cIn criminal law, homicide means causing a death with a culpable mental state,\u201d they reasoned. \u201cIf someone substantially contributes to or accelerates a death, that counts as \u2018causing\u2019 it. If they did so intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly, that counts as \u2018culpable mental state.\u2019 So the basic questions in a climate homicide trial are as follows: Did fossil fuel companies substantially contribute to or accelerate deaths, and did they do so at least recklessly, if not knowingly or intentionally?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Criminal charges can do things that civil lawsuits can\u2019t. \u201cIn today\u2019s thinking,\u201d Regunberg and Arkush wrote, \u201ctort law\u2014the law of civil wrongs\u2014seeks economically efficient outcomes: The question is about whether one party should give another some money. Criminal law, by contrast, is concerned with society\u2019s fundamental values\u2014with morality.\u201d And that\u2019s reflected in the effects of these types of law: \u201cWhere tort law prices misconduct, criminal law prohibits it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regunberg and law professor Donald Braman subsequently proposed<\/a> another novel legal approach: civil asset forfeiture. That\u2019s a tool that\u2019s typically used by cops to confiscate property they suspect of being used for committing crimes\u2014a system that disproportionately penalizes poor people and minorities, and in which it\u2019s often very hard to recover the seized assets even if no crime is ever proven. But it was originally intended, Regunberg and Braman wrote, to be used against \u201clarge-scale criminal enterprises.\u201d Since legal experts are now arguing that fossil fuel companies\u2019 activities \u201ccould fall under the category of criminal violations such as reckless endangerment, criminal mischief, conspiracy and racketeering, and homicide,\u201d Regunberg and Braman wrote, it stands to reason that the \u201cpipelines, refining plants, and oil reserves\u201d that are \u201crecklessly endangering entire communities\u201d could be confiscated by the police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then there\u2019s Kate Aronoff\u2019s latest<\/a>. Given that fossil fuel companies have manufactured and promoted plastics for decades\u2014even misleading the public about plastics recycling<\/a>\u2014there really ought to be a way, she argued, to hold them accountable at the international level for microplastics, which have now been found not only in \u201cfood, water, blood, and placenta\u201d but also in human testicles. \u201cIn a recent book<\/a>,\u201d she wrote, \u201cSpanish economist and environmental adviser David Lizoain makes the case<\/a> for bringing fossil fuel executives in front of the International Criminal Court, and understanding rising temperatures\u2014and the resulting mass deaths\u2014as climate genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The international legal system is, on the whole, much more favorable to companies than it is to their potential victims, Kate argued. And that\u2019s arguably true in the domestic arena as well. Which brings us back to the recent poll: If this many people favor legal accountability, perhaps that may be about to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: https:\/\/www.rsn.org\/001\/youd-be-amazed-how-many-people-want-big-oil-charged-with-homicide.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heather Souvaine Horn\/The New Republic Smokestacks at a petroleum processing plant. (photo: Getty) 31 may 24 (RSN.org) A new poll shows overwhelming support for holding oil and gas companies accountable via the courts. Sixty-two percent of likely voters think oil and gas companies \u201cshould be held legally accountable for their… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34107"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34107"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34108,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34107\/revisions\/34108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}