Prosecuting fossil fuel executives for reckless endangerment could help millions of victims of climate change–related disasters get justice.
Our world is becoming an increasingly dangerous place. One study recently found that extreme heat killed nearly 50,000 people in Europe last year. A single county in the United States—Maricopa County, in Arizona—reported 645 such deaths. Eye-popping sea surface temperatures are fueling a historically destructive hurricane season this summer, and lethal, record-breaking storms are lashing states from Texas to Vermont. In California, the climate-driven Park fire continues to burn a path of devastation that has left hundreds homeless, including numerous survivors of previous wildfires—people who have now lost their homes multiple times.
These aren’t “natural” disasters. 2023’s summer heat waves, for example, would have been “virtually impossible,” in one research team’s words, without human-caused climate change. That means these disasters are being driven by particular corporate actors—and particularly Big Oil companies. These companies, by generating a substantial portion of the greenhouse gas emissions that have warmed the planet, while simultaneously deceiving the public about the dangers of those emissions, have created a crisis that is putting millions of Americans at risk.
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Two weeks ago, over 1,000 survivors of climate disasters sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to “investigate the fossil fuel industry for climate-related crimes.” One of the signers, Allen Myers, said that the wildfire that burned down his family’s home “bore the fingerprints of the climate crisis” and stressed that the “fossil fuel industry knows that what they’re doing is dangerous.”
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Big Oil remains the greatest obstacle to climate action. Earlier this month the United Nations warned that fossil fuel companies are still running “a massive mis- and disinformation campaign” to delay our transition to safer energy sources. In other words, these offenses are ongoing, and the prosecutors and public safety officials charged with protecting us from criminal harm have an obligation to prosecute Big Oil executives for their reckless endangerment of the public.
People try to protect themselves from the sun and cool off in Najaf, Iraq on August 20, 2024. (Photo: Karar Essa/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“If you keep doing the same thing, you cannot expect to get any different result,” said the director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. “Unless we limit greenhouse gases, we will only see an exacerbation of these temperatures.”
Scientists with the European Union’s climate service said Friday that Earth experienced its hottest summer on record for the second consecutive year in 2024 as unprecedented and deadly heatwaves scorched large swaths of the planet, intensifying the urgency of large-scale policy changes to phase out the fossil fuels that are driving temperatures to alarming new heights.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said the three-month period between June and August saw global-average temperatures that were 0.69°C, or 33.24°F, higher than the average summer temperatures seen from 1991 to 2020.
“During the past three months of 2024, the globe has experienced the hottest June and August, the hottest day on record, and the hottest boreal summer on record,” said C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess. “This string of record temperatures is increasing the likelihood of 2024 being the hottest year on record.”
“The temperature-related extreme events witnessed this summer will only become more intense, with more devastating consequences for people and the planet, unless we take urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Burgess added.
Summer 2024 just set a new benchmark – the hottest on record. With global temperatures now regularly exceeding the 1.5°C threshold, we’re in dangerous territory. Time for urgent action is right now – not tomorrow, not next year.https://t.co/sF1WxgNyrMpic.twitter.com/w2lhhEEST1
Temperatures in Europe were 1.54°C, or 34.77°F, above the 1991-2020 average, a record temperature surge that had deadly consequences in Greece, Italy, and other nations.
But The Washington Post‘s Sarah Kaplan noted that the consequences of the record-shattering summer heat “were felt by people on every continent, from world-class athletes competing in the Paris Olympics to refugees fleeing from wars.”
She continued:
Wildfires fueled by heat and drought raged through the Brazilian Pantanal, a vital wetland known to store vast amounts of carbon. A turbocharged monsoon triggered landslides that killed hundreds of people in India’s Kerala state. The Atlantic Ocean saw its earliest Category 5 hurricane on record, while deadly floods have wreaked havoc from Italy to Pakistan to Nigeria to China.”
It was a summer of unrelenting humidity and heat too extreme for the human body to withstand. In June, at least 1,300 pilgrims visiting the Muslim holy city of Mecca died amid temperatures of 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). Another 125 people were reported dead in Mexico during a July streak of exceedingly hot nights that researchers say was made 200 times as likely because of climate change. And in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, one of the world’s northernmost inhabited areas, August temperatures soared more than 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) above the previous record.
Carlo Buontempo, the director of C3S, told the Post that “if you keep doing the same thing, you cannot expect to get any different result.”
“Unless we limit greenhouse gases,” Buontempo added, “we will only see an exacerbation of these temperatures.”
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was shot dead by Israeli forces (Photo via Wafa)
The shooting occurred while Israeli forces were violently suppressing a weekly protest against an Israeli settlement
26-year-old US activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi succumbed to her wounds on Friday after being shot by Israeli forces at a protest in Beita, to the south of Nablus. Headlines from Western mainstream media sources have already attempted to obscure who killed the solidarity activist, with CNN stating “American activist shot dead during protest in West Bank, Palestinian officials say,” CBS News writing, “American woman Aysenur Eygi killed in Israeli-occupied West Bank, US confirms,” and BBC writing. “American activist shot dead in occupied West Bank.”
Hey how’d they die, Matt? Was it magic? Who or what killed Aysenur?
The shooting occurred while Israeli forces were violently suppressing a weekly protest against an Israeli settlement. Israeli forces employed live ammunition, stun grenades, and tear gas, and also resulted in the injury of an 18-year-old Palestinian man via shrapnel. Eygi was reportedly part of the Faz’a campaign, which aims to mobilize international solidarity activists on the ground in Palestine to protect Palestinian farmers from Israeli settlers and military forces. Eygi was also an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led organization committed to resisting the occupation.
ISM released a statement condemning Eygi’s killing, quoting multiple ISM members. ISM volunteer Mariam Dag (a pseudonymn) witnessed the shooting, and said ““We were peacefully demonstrating alongside Palestinians against the colonization of their land, and the illegal settlement of Evyatar. The situation escalated when the Israeli army began to fire tear gas and live ammunition, forcing us to retreat. We were standing on the road, about 200 meters from the soldiers, with a sniper clearly visible on the roof. Our fellow volunteer was standing a bit further back, near an olive tree with some other activists. Despite this, the army intentionally shot her in the head.”
Dag continued, “This is just another example of the decades of impunity granted to the Israeli government and army, bolstered by the support of the US and European governments, who are complicit in enabling genocide in Gaza. Palestinians have suffered far too long under the weight of colonization. We will continue to stand in solidarity and honor the martyrs until Palestine is free.”
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the “brutal execution committed today by Israeli occupation forces,” stating that “the ministry views this act as part of the ongoing crimes perpetrated by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people, including genocide, forced displacement, and the targeting of individuals who show solidarity with the Palestinian cause.”
The Ministry “calls on the international community, human rights organizations, and global institutions to take urgent action to provide international protection for Palestinians. The Ministry urges these entities to fulfill their legal and moral responsibilities by addressing violations, including genocide, forced displacement, illegal settlements, and extrajudicial killings, and to hold Israeli war criminals accountable.”
It is unclear how the United States will respond, beyond offering their “deepest condolences.” Israel has killed several US citizens, including two Palestinian-American teenagers earlier this year, Mohammad Khdour and Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, both 17 years old, also shot by Israeli forces. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken again offered condolences for the teenagers “who reportedly were killed,” but did nothing more than call for an investigation.
“We’ve made clear that with regard to the incidents you’ve alluded to, there needs to be an investigation. We need to get the facts. And if appropriate, there needs to be accountability,” Blinken said at the time.
The families were unsatisfied with the US’s response. “We don’t need talking, man,” said Adnan Khdour, uncle to Mohammad Khdour, killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank. “We need something. We want to see something.” The US has never conditioned aid to Israel based on the killing of a US citizen.
Eygi’s killing recalls the high-profile case of Israel’s murder of US activist Rachel Corrie in 2003, who was run over by a bulldozer trying to demolish a Palestinian home in Rafah. The United States did nothing to punish Israel, despite US officials themselves claiming that the Israeli investigation into Corrie’s death was not “credible.” In fact, the US itself is complicit in the killing as the Caterpillar bulldozer which killed Corrie was supplied by the US as part of its aid to Israel.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation, a US-based socialist political party active in the Palestine solidarity movement, said of Eygi’s killing: “This killing, like so many others, was carried out thanks to weaponry provided by the United States. We demand the Biden administration end all aid to this genocidal regime. The killers of Aysenur should be brought to justice, alongside the killers of thousands of Palestinians.”
A Palestinian man inspects the damage to a building after Israeli forces raided the West Bank city of Jenin, September 6, 2024
[Published at Morning Star Friday, September 6, 2024]
ISRAELI forces appear to have withdrawn from three refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.
The apparent withdrawal follows a brutal operation lasting more than a week that left dozens of Palestinians dead and a trail of destruction.
Overnight, Israeli armoured personnel carriers were seen leaving the Jenin refugee camp from a checkpoint set up on one of the main roads, and reporters inside the camp saw no evidence of any remaining troops inside as dawn broke early this morning.
Israeli military officials said the operation in Jenin, Tulkarem and the Al-Faraa refugee camps was an attempt to curb recent attacks against Israeli civilians they say have become more sophisticated and deadly.
