Anyone taking an honest look at the situation can easily see that Big Oil has committed homicide, ecocide, and other crimes.
⬛️ They sell a deadly, climate-destroying product and incessantly lie about its impacts.
⬛️ They wantonly rape the environment, condemning untold numbers of plant and animal species to extinction.
⬛️ They bribe government officials and regulators so they can remain free to bring in huge profits by selling their poison.
💀 The numbers above are conservative estimates. Actual deaths almost certainly are much higher than that now, and likely will be in the millions by 2050, if not billions.
In any sane world, those murderers would be put on trial, the companies nationalized, all assets of their executives and major investors confiscated.
@breadandcircuses I'm sure I remember a UN estimate of 300,000 a year from climate change from years ago, but updated numbers okay great. Attribution is tricky for most of these things. The Grist article links to another page that talks about relatively high estimates.
However, the total deaths annually directly from outdoor air pollution - most of it from fossil fuels - is around 5 million globally.
@matthewtoad43 You're right, it's hard to nail down exact numbers. But I'm sure that in reality the human deaths are far higher than what is generally acknowledged. Not to mention the extreme loss of biodiversity, all the flora and fauna extinctions. As I've said before, these are the greatest crimes ever committed, and it's not even close. But will justice ever be served?
@breadandcircuses Is it ever? I hope so. Litigation is one strategy (amongst many) that occasionally delivers really powerful results (while most cases fail). The tobacco companies lost, though IIRC that isn't really resolved yet.
One objection here, sorry to burst anyone's socialist bubble
>the companies nationalized,
but nationalizing alone without cutting down production as much as possible doesn't help the environment or our health. The pseudo-socialist state-capitalist economies of the past displayed enormous carelessness for the environment with abundance of resources abused and consumed. Yes, they were neither trully socialist, and far from being communist or democratic, nationalized coal and oil just doesn't cut it.
Abusing those power-resources so someone can profit and become filthy wealthy is unique to private-capitalism of the west.