Orange haze filled the sky this summer as record wildfires swept across the Midwest and Northeast, forcing parents to keep children indoors and cancel holiday plans. Earlier that month, a deadly heat wave had already disrupted Fourth of July celebrations across the country. These are not random acts of nature.
Scientists have demonstrated the connection between fossil fuel pollution and these extreme weather events. Research using methods validated by the National Academy of Sciences found that emissions from major oil companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP made certain climate-exacerbated heat waves at least 10,000 times more likely compared with preindustrial levels. One study determined that the Fourth of July heat wave would have been virtually impossible without the climate crisis.
What makes this more than a tragedy is what the companies knew. Decades ago, internal documents show, these oil giants predicted their fossil fuels would cause globally catastrophic climate harms, more violent weather, and suffering and death from extreme temperatures. Despite this knowledge, they launched campaigns of denial and deception that locked the world into the disasters now unfolding.
The scale of harm has sparked calls for extraordinary measures. Some climate advocates have demanded Nuremberg-style trials for Big Oil, a comparison made starker by the numbers: the Nazi regime killed approximately 40 million people, while some analyses project climate change will cause more than 1 billion preventable deaths this century.
But those pushing for such trials overlook a crucial fact: prosecutors don't need new legal frameworks. The criminal statutes already exist across the country to charge oil companies today.
Laws Already on the Books
Most states criminalize reckless endangerment, which prohibits conduct that creates substantial risk of injury. Recklessness requires knowing something is dangerous and proceeding anyway. Oil companies knew their pollution would cause more violent weather, and they did it regardless. The resulting climate crisis now creates substantial risk of injury to people nationwide.
Some jurisdictions have additional criminal laws targeting conduct that creates risk of catastrophe, defined as widespread injury or damage. Pennsylvania and New Jersey both have such statutes and both suffered severely during the Fourth of July heat wave, with dozens killed and thousands hospitalized.
Precedent supports this approach. When operators of a Philadelphia pier were warned by engineers that the structure was in danger of collapse but concealed the problem instead of fixing it, they faced charges under Pennsylvania's catastrophe law. The state's supreme court upheld the charges, writing that after being made aware of imminent danger to human life, the operators took affirmative steps to hide that knowledge and expose others to risk. Substitute climate change for pier, and the ruling applies directly to Big Oil.
A third option exists in involuntary manslaughter statutes, which criminalize recklessly causing or substantially contributing to someone's death. Climate-caused deaths are accelerating. A recent analysis found that extreme heat may have caused more than 20,000 deaths in Europe in a single month alone.
The legal pathway is opening. A Washington state court recently ruled that a wrongful death lawsuit against the fossil fuel industry for a climate-induced heat wave death will proceed to discovery and trial. Prosecutors could follow this precedent and begin charging oil companies for the climate disasters already killing more of their constituents than many traditional homicides.
The political will remains the harder obstacle. But the criminal codes are ready, the evidence is documented, and the victims keep mounting. Summer temperatures that feel record-breaking today will be the coolest of the coming decades, meaning liability for oil companies will only grow.
Climate advocates may one day see a tribunal specifically designed to address the scale of Big Oil's misconduct. But justice doesn't require waiting for that day. Prosecutors have everything needed to start prosecuting now.
Author James Rodriguez: "The law exists. What's missing is the willingness to use it."
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