Connect with us
[the_ad id="89560"]

Opinion

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

Published

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.

Before Post

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

2025 Federal Election

Inside the Convoy Verdict with Trish Wood

Published on

From Trish Wood is Critical

Peaceful convoy — violent voters. They convicted the wrong people.

TAMARA LICH, CHRIS BARBER AND THE OTHER TRUCKERS INSPIRED THIS: POLICE AND PROTESTORS HUGGING AND SINGING OH CANADA. THE TRUDEAU GOVERNMENT WAS ALREADY SMEARING THEM AS DANGEROUS.

 

In April of 2025, one day after the conviction of Lich and Barber for leading a protest with no violence, our politicians and media finally got what they wanted — division, and citizens absolutely hating each other. Watch these videos if you can, over and over again until it sinks in. View the one above and then the one below and decide who is harming the country.

Two middle-aged women had an “elbows up” fisticuffs yesterday near the waiting-to see-Mark-Carney line before an event. As you might figure, I was not surprised and knew violence was coming — not from a terror group and not from truckers. They pit us against each other with the full collaboration of paid-for media. We are broken, brainwashed and angry. We do not understand why our friends, neighbours and family vehemently support ideas that we know will harm the country.

They think we are monsters. And so it goes. Watch and compare to the scene above. And think about who was convicted this week.

Click image to see video

Image

Our ideas can’t be discussed civilly and we must remain in our silos so as not to pose a threat to the elites — the way the Freedom Convoy did. This was Tamara and Chris’ mistake. They brought people together.

Liberals, and I would hazard all contemporary pols are not working to actually make our lives better. They seem to have their own agenda — even Trump whom I had some hope for.

Our lives get worse. They enrich themselves spending money overseas for wars we the people don’t want. And it seems they all walk away from “public service” with mucho brass in pocket.

The video of the fighting women shows the bread and circuses is now us. This ancient Roman idiom is defined as:

Bread and circuses” refers to pacifying people with food and entertainment to prevent them from taking action on civic duties.

During COVID-19, until January of 2022, they thought they had this modus operandi all locked-down. Canadians were compliant and some were even enjoying their marathons of garbage Netflix shows and soggy Door Dash deliveries. We were staying home, staying safe, getting fat and dependant on the government. Except the men and women who worked hard to keep the country running — like truckers. And those of us with a fully operative bullshit detector — you know, actual journalists.

There were many suicides, overdoses and other tragedies. Some of us allowed a sick parent to die alone. Our spiritual health declined and we closed off the part of our brain that safeguards our need for fellowship.

And then the Convoy happened and pulled back the curtain to reveal The Great and Mighty Oz manipulating the whole damn thing.

Yes, the Convoy’s presence in Ottawa was dangerous to the elites but not for the reasons they say. Of course it was disruptive for the citizens. Isn’t that what protests are supposed to be? But many forget that they were indirectly saving lives. I know it because people have told me.

The reason the Convoy had to be dramatically taken down and then punished for three years is because they reminded us – that we could push back and we were not alone. But when tyranny comes, united opposition must be crushed.

In the courtroom on Thursday, Justice Perkins-McVey went out of her way to speak highly of Tamara’s non-stop admonitions to the convoy that they stay peaceful, cooperate with police and put love at the top of their agenda. It was in almost every communication Tamara made to a big, burly group of mostly men who listened and then, even during the police violence were nearly Gandhi-like in their resistance. You can see it in the videos.

John Lennon would have been proud and in fact Imagine was played for the protestors who at one point sang along. But according to Judge Perkins-McVey, Lich’s commitment to keeping the peace will work only as mitigation during sentencing in a couple of weeks. She was found guilty of mischief in a definition so broad it includes everyone no matter what they actually did. I still can’t believe it.

The other revelation, I’m being sarcastic here, is that Chris Barber swears when he is talking to other truckers. I was uneasy that Perkins-McVey read out word-for-word an expletive-filled rant by an exhausted and frustrated Barber in which she herself repeated his words in the courtroom, F-bomb for F-bomb, making him sound like a crude, aggressive person. Which he is not. I could see he was embarrassed as his words were never meant for consumption in a setting like that.

It wasn’t necessary and to me, it felt like a swerve to appease the Crown. I have never heard Chris speak that way in front of civilians, even myself and I have been known to F-bomb in front of him on occasion – a kind of tacit permission that he has never accepted. In the heart of Ottawa, a city beset by gentility, it became clear in Courtroom Five that the subtext might be interpreted as — the crudeness of these working class protestors was an assault on the city’s good name and manners.

For all they did in Ottawa and for the country, Barber was reduced in that courtroom to an angry man who couldn’t control his potty-mouth. Talk about prejudicial. Maybe she was giving the defence a gift for the appeal. I hated it on a visceral level. This was not the kindly, thoughtful judge I had been observing through the course of the trial. How could she not know the affect she was having? Perhaps she did.

 

Ready for more?

 

Continue Reading

Carbon Tax

The book the carbon taxers don’t want you to read

Published on

By Franco Terrazzano

Prime Minister Mark Carney wrote a 500-page book praising carbon taxes.

Well, I just wrote a book smashing through the government’s carbon tax propaganda.

It tells the inside story of the fight against the carbon tax. And it’s THE book the carbon taxers don’t want you to read.

My book is called Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax.


 
Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax 

Every now and then, the underdog wins one.

And it looks like that’s happening in the fight against the carbon tax.

It’s not over yet, but support for the carbon tax is crumbling. Some politicians vow to scrap it. Others hide behind vague plans to repackage it. But virtually everyone recognizes support for the current carbon tax has collapsed.

It wasn’t always this way.

For about a decade now, powerful politicians, government bureaucrats, academics, media elites and even big business have been pushing carbon taxes on the people.

But most of the time, politicians never asked the people if they supported carbon taxes. In other words, carbon taxes, and the resulting higher gas prices and heating bills, were forced on us.

We were told it was good for us. We were told carbon taxes were inevitable. We were told politicians couldn’t win elections without carbon taxes, even though the politicians that imposed them didn’t openly run on them. We were told that we needed to pay carbon taxes if we wanted to leave a healthy environment for our kids and grandkids. We were told we needed to pay carbon taxes if we wanted to be respected in the international community.

In this decade-long fight, it would have been understandable if the people had given up and given in to these claims. It would have been easier to accept what the elites wanted and just pay the damn bill. But against all odds, ordinary Canadians didn’t give up.

Canadians knew you could care about the environment and oppose carbon taxes. Canadians saw what they were paying at the gas station and on their heating bills, and they knew they were worse off, regardless of how many politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and academics tried to convince them otherwise. Canadians didn’t need advanced degrees in economics, climate science or politics to understand they were being sold a false bill of goods.

Making it more expensive for a mom in Port Hope to get to work, or grandparents in Toronto to pay their heating bill, or a student in Coquitlam to afford food won’t reduce emissions in China, Russia, India or the United States. It just leaves these Canadians, and many like them, with less money to afford everything else.

Ordinary Canadians understood carbon taxes amount to little more than a way for governments to take more money from us and dictate how we should live our lives. Ordinary Canadians also saw through the unfairness of the carbon tax.

Many of the elites pushing the carbon tax—the media, politicians, taxpayer-funded professors, laptop activists and corporate lobbyists—were well off and wouldn’t feel the brunt of carbon taxes. After all, living in a downtown condo and clamouring for higher carbon taxes doesn’t require much gas, diesel or propane.

But running a business, working in a shop, getting kids to soccer and growing food on the farm does. These are the Canadians the political class forgot about when pushing carbon taxes. These are the Canadians who never gave up. These are the Canadians who took time out of their busy lives to sign petitions, organize and attend rallies, share posts on social media, email politicians and hand out bumper stickers.

Because of these Canadians, the carbon tax could soon be swept onto the ash heap of history. I wrote this book for two reasons.

The first is because these ordinary Canadians deserve it. They worked really hard for a really long time against the odds. When all the power brokers in government told them, “Do what we say—or pay,” they didn’t give up. They deserve to know the time and effort they spent fighting the carbon tax mattered. They deserve all the credit.

Thank you for everything you did.

The second reason I wrote this book is so people know the real story of the carbon tax. The carbon tax was bad from the start and we fought it from the start. By reading this book, you will get the real story about the carbon tax, a story you won’t find anywhere else.

This book is important because if the federal Liberals’ carbon tax is killed, the carbon taxers will try to lay blame for their defeat on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They will try to say that carbon taxes are a good idea, but Trudeau bungled the policy or wasn’t a good enough salesman. They will try to revive the carbon tax and once again make you pay more for gas, groceries, and home heating.

Just like with any failed five-year plan, there is a lingering whiff among the laptop class and the taxpayer-funded desk rulers that this was all a communication problem, that the ideal carbon tax hasn’t been tried yet. I can smell it outside my office building in Ottawa, where I write these words. We can’t let those embers smoulder and start a fire again.

This book shows why the carbon tax is and always will be bad policy for ordinary Canadians.

Franco’s note: You can pre-order a copy of my new book, Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax, here: https://www.amazon.ca/Axing-Tax-Rise-Canadas-Carbon

Continue Reading

Trending

X