Climate Homicide: The Latest Attempt to Blackmail Us Into Totalitarianism
Irina Slav has a post up this morning about a Harvard Environmental Law Review report that was put out as a draft over a year ago and is now officially published. Jim Willis and I both commented on it a little on the draft here. The published report, by David Arkush and Donald Braman is titled “Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Deaths.” It is a masterpiece in projection and proof that we are in a cultural war, the seriousness of which we can hardly imagine. We will lose if we don't take the battle to them in the exact same way they are operating. It’s sue or be sued, jail or be jailed.
Here is one over-the-top excerpt from the 71-page report, which employs the word "homicide” 165 times and "murder” 52 times:
For decades, fossil fuel companies (“FFCs”) have known that their product causes “globally catastrophic” climate change. Rather than warn the public or alter their business models, they waged a multi-decade disinformation campaign to sow doubt and delay regulatory responses. Today, as experts continue developing and delivering ever more detailed and precise warnings of climate catastrophe, and vast numbers of people are killed at an accelerating rate by wildfires, floods, droughts, heatwaves, and other climate-related calamities, FFCs continue to expand the production, marketing, and sale of the products they have long understood to cause mass death…
But, this is what is truly outrageous:
The most direct method for shaping FFCs’ behavior would be through negotiated settlements tied to the criminal conduct charged. Examples of settlement terms drawn from other cases and defendants include restructuring the defendant corporation into a public benefit corporation; reforming the board of the defendant corporation to include agents that will align future conduct with the public good; requiring legally binding commitments by the defendant corporation to forego certain practices; requiring payments by the corporation to establish ongoing practical remedies to the harm it has generated; publicly disclosing all records relating to the defendant corporation’s misconduct; and requiring apologies and cash payments to those harmed.
The goal, in other words, is to blackmail fossil fuel companies into committing financial suicide, stealing shareholders’ investments and create entities they can manage for their own personal benefit. And, there’s more:
The benefits of restructuring FFCs into public benefit corporations are, as touched on above, among the most attractive options that a prosecution might seek as part of a settlement. Unlike homicide cases involving individuals, where the state can at most detain and attempt rehabilitation, homicide cases involving corporations invite a more rigorous adjustment of the culture and incentives of the guilty party. Historically, corporate criminal offenders have avoided harsh penalties because remedies that destroy the value of a business and its assets could also harm the public. But with the emergence of public benefit corporations—organizations that generate profits but do so in pursuit of the public good—states can now pursue a productive restructuring as part of a settlement.
Restructuring in this example sounds suspiciously like the "fundamental transformation” Obama is still seeking in his role as the Biden Administration puppeteer, doesn't it? And, then, there is this:
FFCs should agree to terms as sweeping as these because prosecutors have many other powerful tools, the use of which would be far less desirable to them. The first and most direct method for shaping FFCs’ behavior outside of a settlement would be through civil injunctions tied to the criminal conduct charged. If states can show that FFCs are killing their residents through criminal conduct, prosecutors could ask courts to enjoin FFCs from the relatively unrestrained and increasingly lethal activity from which they currently profit. If any FFC were unwilling to settle to the terms described above, prosecutors could attempt to enjoin the holdout from doing business in the state altogether, providing greater market share to more compliant, pro-social competitors.
A second, complementary action states could take would be to seize FFCs’ property with probable cause to believe that it was involved in criminal conduct. Derived from common law doctrine holding that any property causing death or bodily injury was “forfeit” and could be seized by the sovereign for the common good, in many states, as well as federally, law enforcement may seize property where there is probable cause that the property is involved in a crime. The action is one against the property itself, not the suspect or defendant, and thus in many states can be seized absent a criminal indictment.
The particulars of forfeiture statutes vary considerably across jurisdictions, but the general theory behind asset seizures is relatively straightforward. They “help to ensure that crime does not pay: They at once punish wrongdoing, deter future illegality, and ‘lessen the economic power’ of criminal enterprises.” If state and local prosecutors have no other timely means of slowing fatalities driven by FFCs’ conduct, they could employ the broad seizure powers that a criminal prosecution enables. They could then auction the property to competitor FFCs that agreed to terms more beneficial to the public the prosecutors are sworn to protect.
This is scary stuff and if you're sensing you’ve heard some of this before in the actions of New York's Attorney General against President Trump you're correct. This is how far the left is willing to go to achieve its goals of total domination. But, here's the thing; the group behind this outrage (one of the authors and multiple sources come from there) is an outfit named Public Citizen. Here is how I described this organization in an editor's note to the aforementioned post by Jim Willis:
Jim views this Public Citizen Foundation lawfare initiative as “seriously demented.” That’s true as far as it goes with respect to the ideas promoted, but there’s much more to the story. It is that uber-wealthy elites who fund this demented stuff are serious as could be and not demented at all. No, they’re smart as hell and devious beyond. I wrote here, here and, especially, here, about the nature of the coordinated RICO-type lawfare that is the strategy of these folks for securing unrestrained power and ever more immense wealth.
Public Citizen also worked with the Energy Foundation, the Sierra Club, the Rockefeller Family Fund and the NRDC gang to craft the fraudulent Environmental Integrity Project. The Energy Foundation is, of course, funded by the Sea Change Foundation, the dark money fractivist funder (more here) and, to top it off, Rob Weissman, the President of Public Citizen (which also does the IRS film flam using two organizations) was part of the La Jolla Junta behind the current effort to gin up a RICO case around global warming; a shot across the industry’s bow that has boomeranged back on the fractivists and, ironically, is the perfect illustration of what a RICO conspiracy really is.
Yes, we are fighting raw power, not the demented ideology espoused by those addicted to it for consumption by their shills. And, where the hell are RICO lawsuits against these conspiratorial elites? Why is the oil and gas industry sitting on its hands and trying to buy off the enemy with ridiculous PR efforts (e.g., API tactics) and silly greenwashing that everyone knows is just pouring a little bit of money down the rat hole. Stop playing stupid games and sue the bastards yourself! Get in the fight!!!!
That was a year ago and the situation has only gotten worse. It won't get better until our side goes after these bastards with RICO lawsuits. If that sounds redundant with respect to other recent posts here, it’s intentional. That’s because nothing else will work and every day spent playing defense instead of offense is a waste and only increases the effort required later.
#RICO #Homicide #ClimateHomicide #Climate #Blackmail #Harvard #PublicCitizen