If someone were to push a “killer heat” button, law enforcement would make stopping them a top priority. We have not treated lethal, climate-induced heat as that sort of public safety threat because we see heat waves as natural disasters.
But many of the extreme heat waves we’ve seen in recent years are not natural—they are environmental disasters that in some cases would have been “” but for human-caused climate change. These catastrophes are happening in large part because of the actions of a small number of oil and gas companies. Those companies have generated aFrom this perspective, deaths from climate-related extreme heat start to look less like tragic accidents and more like crimes.
any prosecution as a conspiracy to use the criminal justice system to further political goals. But pursuing justice for victims and their bereaved families is the fundamental function of a prosecutor. In a courtroom, facts beat spin, and the facts look clear: Victims are dead; they were killed in a heat wave that was made possible by climate change; and fossil fuel companies knowingly caused climate change.These climate disasters didn’t come out of nowhere.
Regular people are paying the ultimate price for those decisions. These victims deserve justice no less than do victims of street-level homicide. Piecing together a criminal case will take immense work, but our analysis shows that prosecutors may have a path to secure that justice if they choose to pursue