The corporate oil interests pour tens of millions of dollars into renting corrupt members of Congress to make sure that their tax basis is absurdly low, their environmental regulations are as minimal as possible, and their profits are as high as they can be rigged. The fact that these schemes end up killing thousands of people each year is a matter of little import to them. Now a paper published in the Harvard Environmental Law Review, advances a new approach to holding Big Oil and its owners and managers criminally responsible.It would be excellent good news if it works.
‘Culpable mental state causing harm is criminal conduct, and if they kill anybody, that’s homicide,’ said co-author Donald Braman. Composite: The Guardian / Getty
Authors of a paper accepted for publication in Harvard Environmental Law Review argue firms are ‘killing members of the public at an accelerating rate’.
Oil companies have come under increasing legal scrutiny and face allegations of defrauding investors, racketeering, and a wave of other lawsuits. But a new paper argues there’s another way to hold big oil accountable for climate damage: trying companies for homicide.
The striking and seemingly radical legal theory is laid out in a paper accepted for publication in the Harvard Environmental Law Review. In it, the authors argue fossil fuel companies “have not simply been lying to the public, they have been killing members of the public at an accelerating rate, and prosecutors should bring that crime to the public’s attention”.
“What’s on their ledger in terms of harm, there’s nothing like it in human history,” said David Arkush, the director of the climate program at consumer advocacy group Public Citizen and […]
This is the second leak of radioactive waste in this one plant in Minnesota (see SR archive). This, and the issue of thousand year waste are why I am against any expansion of nuclear energy.
In this Oct. 2, 2019, file photo, cooling towers release heat generated by boiling water reactors at Xcel Energy’s Nuclear Generating Plant in Monticello, Minn. Credit: Evan Frost/Minnesota Public Radio / AP
A Minnesota nuclear plant where 400,000 gallons of radioactive water leaked last year is temporarily shutting down after discovering a smaller leak this week.
Xcel Energy said it will begin powering down its plant in Monticello on Friday to expedite repairs needed to permanently resolve a leak of tritium-contaminated water. The length of the shutdown has not yet been determined but should not impact customers’ electric service, the Minneapolis-based utility company said.
Xcel Energy and state agencies publicly announced last week the initial leak of roughly 400,000 gallons of water containing tritium — a byproduct of the production of electricity by nuclear power plants that emits low levels of radiation.
The initial leak was detected in late November through routine groundwater monitoring systems and occurred in a water pipe that runs between two buildings at the plant, which is located along the Mississippi River about […]
This story amazed me, but did not surprise me. One of the things about MAGAt Republican world is that MAGAt women are totally in synch with MAGAt men about limiting support for girls and women and controlling them.
Credit: ElenaBaryshnikova / Shutterstock
Idaho Republican women don’t believe girls in schools should have access to free tampons, The Daily Beast reports.
Founder of nonprofit advocacy organization, the Idaho Period Project, Avrey Hendrix — who is also a mother of four — approached Idaho State GOP Rep. Rod Furniss last month, asking if he’d be “interested” in sponsoring legislation that supports access to free menstrual products.
The congressman obliged, along with State Rep. Lori McCann (R), who is his co-sponsor. However, 10 women lawmakers, who are all Republicans, blocked the legislation from passing, according to The Daily Beast.
“It’s so shocking because they know what it’s like to go into the bathroom and not have a tampon,” Hendrix said.
According to The Daily Beast, Furniss said to his colleagues on the House floor Thursday, “Boys and girls have two Ps: peeing and pooping.” He continued, “We know that the proper role of government is to cover the two Ps. Well, surprise, we just figured out [in] 2023, that […]
American wealth inequality is shaping the country's entire culture, and destroying our democracy. The tax laws, and the regulatory laws of the country are all being rigged to favor the rich and create a society of wealth nobility and a compliant peasantry. Getting rid of democracy and replacing it with anocracy is another part of the christofascist strategy. The question I think about is: Will the majority of Americans join together while democracy still exists, and address the reality that we are becoming a multi-racial gender-equal culture and that we must recognize that and make fostering wellbeing our national goal.
Last week’s bailout of small banks (and it was a bank bailout) needs to be seen in the larger context of America’s soaring inequality.
The standard conservative explanation for why inequality has widened is that individuals are paid what they’re “worth” — and that a few Americans at the top are now worth extraordinary sums while most Americans are not.
Their argument is easily confused with a moral claim that people deserve what they are paid in the market. Yet the amounts people are paid are morally justifiable only if the legal and political institutions defining the market are morally justifiable, which they are not.
Markets depend on who has the power to design and enforce them — deciding what can be owned and sold and under what terms, who can join together to gain additional market power, what happens if someone cannot pay up, how to pay for what is held in
So we need to ask: Is it morally acceptable that the typical worker’s wage has stagnated for the last 40 years while most of the economy’s gains have gone […]
This report opens with, "America is in a maternal health crisis. According to new CDC data released this week, the rate of maternal mortality – defined as deaths during pregnancy or within 42 days of giving birth – rose by 40% in 2021." I find that so alarming I cannot put my reaction into words I can use in SR. The American healthcare system, particularly as it deals with women and children, is a disaster, the worst amongst all the world's developed democracies. It is beyond shameful. And yet while the Republicans waste their time defending criminal Trump, who ought to be in prison, nothing is being done to change this situation because they block all Democratic efforts.
America is in a maternal health crisis. According to new CDC data released this week, the rate of maternal mortality – defined as deaths during pregnancy or within 42 days of giving birth – rose by 40% in 2021. At a rate of 33 deaths for every 100,000 live births, 1,205 women died of maternal causes that year. That rate was more than twice as high for Black women, whose maternal mortality rate was 70 deaths for every 100,000 live births. The latest federal compilation of data from reviews of maternal deaths suggests that 84% were preventable.
Experts believe that 2021’s spike in maternal mortality can be attributed at least partly to the Covid-19 pandemic, though it’s not clear exactly how. Perhaps infection and exposure to the virus made pregnant women more vulnerable; perhaps the pandemic caused some women to delay or forgo prenatal care as hospitals strained to treat the surge of virus patients and shutdowns made all kinds of care harder and riskier to get.
But even before Covid-19, America has long been an outlier in maternal […]
