Prosecutors in New York state could press criminal charges against big oil for its role in fueling hurricanes and other climate disasters, lawyers wrote in a new prosecution memorandum that has been endorsed by elected officials across the state.
The 50-page document, which was published by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen and the progressive prosecutors network Fair and Just Prosecution on Thursday, comes as the US south-east struggles to recover from the deadly hurricanes Helene and Milton, both of which scientists have found were exacerbated by the climate crisis. It details the havoc wrought on New York by 2021’s Hurricane Ida and 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, and other deadly climate events such as extreme heatwaves across the US this past summer.
These disasters are fueled by the climate crisis, which is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels. And a growing body of evidence shows that big oil knew about the climate dangers of its products but promoted them to the public anyway, the authors write.
“This conduct was not just amoral,” the memo says. “It was criminal.”
Officials who endorsed the strategy include Brad Hoylman-Sigal, the New York senate judiciary committee chair; Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president, the state senator Kristen Gonzalez; the assemblymembers Emily Gallagher and Jessica González-Rojas; and the city councilmembers Sandy Nurse and Carmen De La Rosa.
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“It is clear that the actions of big oil, major fossil fuel companies and their executives have endangered generations of Americans,” said González in a statement. “Big oil must be held accountable for their actions, and justice must be won for those who’ve suffered the devastating impacts of climate-related disasters.”
New York case law demonstrates that conduct like big oil’s can constitute reckless endangerment, the authors argue. They wrote that just a small number of oil and gas companies, controlled by just a few executives, have generated a substantial portion of all planet-heating pollution, while deceiving ordinary people about the dangers of their products in marketing, lobbying and other public-facing communications.
Internal documents show that fossil fuel companies have long understood “with shocking accuracy” that their products would cause major damage, the report says. In 1959, the physicist Edward Teller told oil industry leaders that the projected temperature rise associated with the sector’s planned emissions would be devastating for the state.
“It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10% increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the ice caps and submerge New York,” he said at a symposium organized by the American Petroleum Institute, the country’s top fossil fuel lobby group.
And in 1982, an official at the oil corporation Exxon issued an internal report that found the global heating tied to fossil fuel emissions could “cause flooding on much of the US east coast”. Such conduct amounts to reckless endangerment, said Aaron Regunberg, senior policy counsel with Public Citizen’s climate program.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
