On June 28, 2021, Juliana Leon was driving home from a doctor's appointment in Seattle, WA. The temperature hit 102 degrees, as Leon pulled off Interstate 5 and parked in a residential neighborhood, shut off her engine. Her windows were rolled down because the air conditioner in her car wasn't working.
Two hours after she parked, a passerby saw Leon slumped over and, along with EMS, performed CPR on Leon, who was pronounced dead.
In May, her daughter Misti Leon filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against seven oil companies: BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Olympic Pipeline, Phillips 66, and Shell. The suit says those oil companies knowingly sold a product that "endangered the climate."
Leon's suit isn't the only one. In 2023, several youth plaintiffs filed suit in Held v. Montana. The Montana Supreme Court affirmed a trial court’s 2023 decision holding that the Montana Constitution protects the right to a stable climate system. In Juliana v. United States, youth plaintiffs claimed climate change challenged their constitutional rights to "health and bodily safety." Such suits have been brought internationally as well, including in Portugal, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
Those accusations are absurd on their face; we cannot definitively prove that climate change is a) manmade, b) caused by fossil fuels, and c) the reason behind Leon's death or a threat to the constitutional rights of anyone. The environmentalists will not let up, however, in the pursuit of their climate agenda.
But if one non-profit group has its way, things will take a much darker and criminal turn for the worse. Public Citizen describes itself as a "consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power, and fight to ensure that government works for the people – not big corporations."
They're also pushing for legislation that would hold oil companies criminally liable for homicide.
Here's more from The Guardian:
The radical idea, first proposed last year by consumer advocacy non-profit Public Citizen, may sound far-fetched, but it’s gaining interest from experts and public officials.
“We’ve been really excited to see the curiosity, interest and support these ideas have garnered from members of the legal community, including from both former and current federal, state and local prosecutors,” said Aaron Regunberg, senior policy counsel with Public Citizen’s climate program.
The Public Citizen researchers are currently holding events at top law schools including Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, University of Chicago and New York University to promote the idea.
In a memo posted on its website, Public Citizen lays out the legal case for those prosecutions. The memo was written by "a former prosecutor, a criminal law scholar, and other legal experts." It analyzes whether Arizona could pursue reckless manslaughter or second-degree murder charges for deaths related to the 2023 heatwave in Maricopa County.
With no sound scientific backing, the memo asserts that the deaths of 403 Maricopa County residents was "virtually impossible but for human-caused climate change." The lead author of the memo, Aaron Regunberg, wrote, “As Americans reel from another lethal heat wave, it’s important to remember that these climate disasters didn’t come out of nowhere. They were knowingly caused by fossil fuel companies that chose to inflict this suffering to maintain their profits, while regular people, like the victims of the July 2023 heat wave, and of so many other climate disasters, pay the price. These victims deserve justice no less than the victims of street-level homicides. And this memo shows that prosecutors have a path to secure that justice, if they choose to pursue it."
In October 2024, Public Citizen issued a preliminary prosecution memo for New York, as well. "This conduct was not just amoral. It was criminal. Public Citizen has previously described how prosecutors could charge FFCs with homicide for deaths caused by climate disasters. Another offense that FFCs could be charged with for substantially generating and fraudulently covering up the climate crisis is reckless endangerment," the memo read. "This memorandum considers whether prosecutors in New York could charge FFCs or their CEOs with reckless endangerment for substantially contributing to the climate conditions that are creating an increased risk of lethal weather disasters in New York. Ultimately, it concludes that the case for such charges is strong enough to merit the initiation of criminal investigations by local prosecutors."
But Public Citizen isn't doing this in a vacuum. Someone is footing the bill for their push to make "climate change" a homicide charge. And that group is the New Venture Fund (NVF). Their public 990 for 2024 shows NVF is giving loads of money to Public Citizen law firm, which is bringing many of these cases. On December 1, the Free Beacon reported that NVF was behind the wire transfer of $2.3 million to a law firm used by dozens of Democratic prosecutors to lead litigation against oil companies.
Since 2021, NVF has sent more than $11 million to San Francisco-based Sher Edling and $1.3 million to the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), which trains judges on how to handle the very litigation Sher Edling brings.
According to 990 disclosures, NVF not only gave Sher Edling $2.3 million in 2024, but $2.8 milllion in 2023, $2.5 million in 2022, and $3 million in 2021.
Free Beacon says this NVF's first donation to the ELI, and it signals an "escalation in the fund's efforts to target the oil industry" through the justice system.
NVF also supports New York University (NYU). That support may extend to the school's efforts to place and compensate special assistant attorney generals in attorney generals' offices where these lawsuits are being brought. The NYU School of Law has a State Energy and Environmental Impact Center that instructs firms on how to hire NYU Law Fellows. In 2024, NVF gave NYU $5 million, and previously gave $3.5 million in 2023, $218,000 in 2020, and $276,000 in 2019.
In addition to Public Citizen, Sher Edling, the ELI, and NYU, the NVF also gives millions to other groups, including the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Resources Legacy Fund, and the Tides Foundation/Center. Those funds go to "Conservation and Climate" efforts and "Environmental Programs."
The pattern is clear: for at least half a decade, NFV has been the funding source of both the frontline litigation and the supporting ecosystem the environmentalist Left has created in an attempt to bankrupt fossil fuel companies. The push to criminalize climate change marks an escalation in their efforts, and an indication that simply attempting to bankrupt oil companies isn't working.
But make no mistake, this sets a dangerous precedent for all of us. If prosecutors start filing homicide charges against oil companies, it's game over for our way of life. Those companies, whether by their choice or judicial ruling, will shut down. That means we will no longer have access to cars, electricity, heating/air conditioning, or the millions of other products that rely on fossil fuels for manufacturing or functioning. Gone, too, are the millions of jobs in those industries. Economic and societal collapse is all but inevitable.
And that collapse is being funded and pushed right before our very eyes.
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