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Opinion

Climate Murder? Media Picks Up Novel Legal Theory Suggesting Big Oil Is Homicidal

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5 minute read

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Nick Pope

 

A new narrative is making its way through major media outlets about major oil corporations: climate change that they purportedly caused is taking lives, and they could be held liable for homicide.

In recent weeks, numerous outlets have run stories or opinion pieces promoting or otherwise examining the novel legal theory, which is the subject of a new paper published by the Harvard Environmental Law Review, according to a Tuesday E&E News report detailing the architects’ efforts to market their idea to prosecutors. The Boston GlobeThe GuardianNewsweekInside Climate News and other outlets have all recently published pieces promoting the idea that leading oil companies could or should be charged with murder for their role in climate change, which the theory’s architects claim has caused thousands of deaths in the U.S.

David Arkush, who runs Public Citizen’s climate program, and Donald Braman, a professor at George Washington University’s law school, articulated the theory in a March paper. Public Citizen is a left-of-center organization founded by failed Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader that, among other things, pressures American International Group (AIG) to stop providing insurance coverage for fossil fuel companies, according to its website and Influence Watch.

“Activists and journalists have called executives of major oil companies ‘mass murderers,’ lamenting that ‘millions of human beings will die so that they can have private planes and huge mansions,’ and a growing chorus of communities devastated by [fossil fuel companies’] lethal conduct have begun to demand accountability,” the authors state in their paper. “But as of this writing, no prosecutor in any jurisdiction has charged [fossil fuel companies] with any form of homicide over climate-related deaths. They should.”

The paper also suggests that the American Petroleum Institute (API), a leading trade association for the oil and gas industry, was involved in the industry’s purported attempts to obscure the effects of emissions.

“The record of the past two decades demonstrates that the industry has achieved its goal of providing affordable, reliable American energy to U.S. consumers while substantially reducing emissions and our environmental footprint,” a spokesperson for API told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Any suggestion to the contrary is false.”

The two authors contend that energy corporations were aware of the warming that emissions from their products and operations would cause for decades, and that those companies decided to mislead the public and obscure what effects those emissions may have. A similar narrative lies at the heart of climate lawsuits that have been filed against energy companies in numerous jurisdictions across the U.S. in recent years.

Arkush wrote a Wednesday piece for Newsweek laying out his theory and referencing these climate lawsuits, opining that the fossil fuel industry’s purported “crimes may be among the, if not the, most consequential in human history.” The Boston Globe ran a similar opinion piece authored by Arkush and another official for Public Citizen on March 17.

The Guardian ran its own piece about the climate homicide theory on March 21, using the headline “Fossil fuel firms could be tried in US for homicide over climate-related deaths, experts say.” Clean Technica, a site that promotes green energy, ran a March 16 piece on the new legal theory with the headline “Climate Criminals — Prosecuting Big Oil For Environmental Crimes.”

Inside Climate News published an April 4 story on the subject, using the headline “Should Big Oil Be Tried for Homicide?” and including excerpts from interviews with the two architects of the climate homicide theory. The pair suggested that the aim is not to punish individuals or seek vengeance, but instead achieve results that would prompt companies to shift their investments away from fossil fuels, according to Inside Climate News’ story.

However, Inside Climate News did quote legal experts who expressed skepticism about the theory’s merits.

“I do not believe that a criminal prosecution on homicide charges against the major oil companies is appropriate or can be sustained,” John Coffee Jr., a professor at Columbia Law School who specializes in corporate law, told the outlet.

Nick Pope is a contributor at The Daily Caller.

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Frontier Centre for Public Policy

It’s Time To Stop Church Arsons And What Fuels Them

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

Religious freedoms and the right to worship have been a recognized hallmark of civilized societies for centuries. The preamble of Canada’s constitution says our country is built on the principles that acknowledge the supremacy of God and the rule of law. In defiance of both, almost 600 Canadian places of worship have suffered arson in recent years. Nothing could be more unCanadian.

The stats were revealed by Member of Parliament Marc Dalton following a formal inquiry to the federal government. The response showed 592 arsons had been set on places of worship between 2010 and 2022. they rose from 58 in 2020 to 90 in 2021, then down to 74 in 2022.

The peak coincides with claims made in May of 2021 that the remains of 215 school children had been discovered on the site of the former Kamloops Residential School.

Although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a subsequent wave of church burnings “unacceptable and wrong” he also called their likely motivations “real and fully understandable.” This hardly doused the flames.

These arsons far outnumber those made on Canadian churches in the 1920s by the Ku Klux Klan, which opposed non-Protestants and non-whites. In those years the KKK desecrated Sarnia’s St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. They killed ten people when they set Saint-Boniface College in Winnipeg on fire. They also burned the Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame de Quebec. In 1926, three Klan members were jailed after they blew up St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Barrie, Ont.

The Klan soon fizzled out, seemingly unlike these recent church burnings. The 110-year-old Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Allégresses Catholic church burned down in Trois-Rivières, Quebec last month, but whether arson was involved has not been confirmed.

The presence of bodies underneath the former residential school in Kamloops has not been confirmed either. A 1924 septic field could also account for soil anomalies found there by ground-penetrating radar. Eight million federal tax dollars spent to investigate the site have yielded no remains and details on how the money was spent are sketchy. It’s high time the site was excavated to confirm or rule out the graves and do autopsies on any corpses found there.

Federal funds also fuel the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN), the Orwellian title for a group that fuels resentment against socially conservative organizations with negative characterizations. On August 7, CAHN published “40 Ways To Fight The Far-Right: Tactics for Community Activists in Canada” thanks to $640,000 from Ottawa.

“White boys and men make up the majority of people involved in hate-promoting movements,” the handbook explains. Pro-life and pro-parent groups, CAHN says, are among those “characterized by racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, anti-2SLGBTQ+ views, and pro-colonialist/ anti-Indigenous bigotry.”

CAHN says the Catholic-dominated, pro-life organization Campaign Life Coalition is a “hate movement.” Liberty Coalition Canada, a legal defence organization, and the activist organization Action4Canada are similarly denigrated for their alleged belief that Canada was founded on Christian values and attempts to reassert such values.

Meanwhile, the CAHN guide advocates “antifascist” doxing, including infiltration of right-leaning organizations. getting people fired, and ending friendships.

Dalton’s Bill C-411 the “Anti-Arson Act” would do more to deter hate-motivated crimes than CAHN ever will. The legislation would punish those who set fires and explosions at religious places. A first offence would get a mandatory five-year jail sentence, while subsequent offenses would prompt seven years.

When respect for the supremacy of God and the rule of law fail, rights give way to wrongs. It’s time to stop the fires and the disputable claims that fuel them, and restore respect for people of faith, their right to worship, and their places of worship.

Lee Harding is a Research Associate for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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DEI

University System of Georgia to ban DEI, commit to neutrality, teach Constitution

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The University of Georgia in Athens

From The Center Square

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“The basis and determining factor” for employment will be “that the individual possesses the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities associated with the role, and is believed to have the ability to successfully perform the essential functions, responsibilities, and duties associated with the position for which the individual is being considered.”

The University System of Georgia’s Board of Regents has recommended a number of new and revised policies for its institutions, such as a commitment to institutional neutrality, the prohibiting of DEI tactics, and a mandatory education in America’s founding documents.

The University System of Georgia (USG) is made up of Georgia’s 26 public colleges and universities as well as Georgia Archives and the Georgia Public Library Service.

“USG institutions shall remain neutral on social and political issues unless such an issue is directly related to the institution’s core mission,” the board’s proposed revisions read.

“Ideological tests, affirmations, and oaths, including diversity statements,” will be banned from admissions processes and decisions, employment processes and decisions, and institution orientation and training for both students and employees.

“No applicant for admission shall be asked to or required to affirmatively ascribe to or opine about political beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles, as a condition for admission,” the new policy states.

Additionally, USG will hire based on a person’s qualifications and ability.

“The basis and determining factor” for employment will be “that the individual possesses the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities associated with the role, and is believed to have the ability to successfully perform the essential functions, responsibilities, and duties associated with the position for which the individual is being considered.”

Beginning in the 2025-2026 academic year, the school’s civic instruction will require students to study founding American documents among other things.

USG students will learn from the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, the Articles of Confederation, the Federalist Papers, the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, as well as the Georgia Constitution and Bill of Rights.

When reached for comment, the Board of Regents told The Center Square that “these proposed updates strengthen USG’s academic communities.”

The recommended policies allow a campus environment “where people have the freedom to share their thoughts and learn from one another through objective scholarship and inquiry,” and “reflect an unyielding obligation to protect freedom, provide quality higher education and promote student success,” the board said.

The board told The Center Square that it proposed strengthening “the requirements for civics instruction” with the inclusion of “foundational primary sources” because of higher education’s duty to students.

Colleges and universities “must prepare [students] to be contributing members of society and to understand the ideals of freedom and democracy that make America so exceptional,” the board said.

As for ditching DEI, the board explained that “equal opportunity and decisions based on merit are fundamental values of USG.”

“The proposed revisions among other things would make clear that student admissions and employee hiring should be based on a person’s qualifications, not his or her beliefs,” the board said.

The Board of Regents also said it wants to “ensure [its] institutions remain neutral on social and political issues while modeling what it looks like to promote viewpoint diversity, create campus cultures where students and faculty engage in civil discourse, and the open exchange of ideas is the norm.”

USG’s Board of Regents recently urged the NCAA to ban transgender-identifying men from participating in women’s sports, in line with the NAIA rules, The Center Square previously reported.

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