Rep. Jamie Raskin says Big Oil should be held accountable in court for climate change. He knows it won't be easy.
In an exclusive interview with Landmark, the Democrat said the fossil fuel industry profited off climate change deception, raising "not just profound moral problems but profound legal problems."
Earlier this year, congressional Democrats announced the end of a years-long investigation into the fossil fuel industry’s alleged role in exacerbating climate change, and urged the Biden administration to open its own, more sweeping probe.
The recommendation made by top lawmakers including Maryland’s Rep. Jamie Raskin and Rhode Island’s Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse was based on evidence that major oil and gas companies had for years misled the public about the dangers of burning their products.
By downplaying those dangers and obstructing efforts to transition the U.S. energy and transport systems to carbon free sources, the politicians said the fossil fuel industry had engaged in fraud similar to the tobacco industry’s old promotion of cigarettes. Just like it did with Big Tobacco in light of its obfuscation, the congressmen said the U.S. Department of Justice should use the courts to hold Big Oil accountable, too.
Landmark spoke with Raskin in a one-on-one interview about the investigation and what he hopes will come from the recommendation. Below is a transcript of that interview, lightly edited for clarity and length.
(If you missed our dive into Kamala Harris’s climate record, and what it might say about whether she would support a Big Oil investigation, you should take a look. After that story was published, a representative for the American Petroleum Association provided Landmark with a letter to Harris, dated Sept. 3, requesting a meeting to talk about America’s energy future — and we’ve included that letter at the bottom of this post.)
Landmark: Congressman, thanks for joining us. First of all, could you describe what you'd hope to get out of a DOJ investigation into Big Oil, in intangible terms? You've said that Congress is there to work on solutions, but you don't think that these alleged deceptions should be swept under the rug. So I'm curious how litigation fits into that and what the DOJ can do that Congress can’t.
Raskin: Well, the the key analogy in my mind is with Big Tobacco. Sometimes we think that some offenses against the public interest are so overwhelming that nobody can ever be held accountable for them, and the Big Tobacco litigation refuted that capitulationist mentality.
A Department of Justice investigation could shine a light on what Big Oil knew and when it knew it. And, whether it's culpable in producing what is turning out to be perhaps the greatest environmental calamity in the history of the human species.
Obviously all of us are implicated in it in different ways because we've all participated in the carbon economy. But if there are forces who profited from it and who understood the structural environmental damage being done to the climate system, that raises not just profound moral problems but profound legal problems. I would hope the Department of Justice would try to develop some rigorous analysis.
Landmark: It strikes me that your investigation has already uncovered quite a bit. We've already seen a lot that has been published in the press as well. I guess I'm wondering what you think is missing from the public record that we don't already know. What can the DOJ get that that isn't already out there? And why can the DOJ get that information if you couldn’t?
Raskin: I'm interested in what the decision making process was at various critical junctures when it was becoming clear that carbon emissions were destabilizing the Earth's climate system. So, to what extent were there concrete decisions made about whether or not to disclose, or whether or not to suppress relevant information?
The Department of Justice has sweeping subpoena powers. They will have far larger investigative capacity and they will have the power to bring charges, which of course we do not.
Our role in Congress, as investigators, is to investigate for the purposes of public policy, not for the purposes of holding individual actors accountable. We need to be looking forward as a legislative proposition, but the DOJ’s job is also to look backwards to determine whether there's culpability and what the proper sanctions and consequences are.
Landmark: If it goes past the investigation to federal litigation, do you have an idea of the kind of remedy you'd be looking for? Is it advertising to say, “this is what we've done”? Is it labels on the gas pump? Something else?
Raskin: Well, it's radically premature to talk about that, but the kinds of remedies that have taken place in other large scale systemic litigation are presumably the ones that courts and the Department of Justice would start off with as an analytical proposition. So, that includes restitutionary funds and educational funds, and different kinds of disclosures and warnings and statements.
I think it's just premature to try to speculate, but presumably those kinds of things would be the start of the inquiry.
Landmark: The American Petroleum Institute called your recommendation a distraction. The industry in similar state and municipal lawsuits has argued that it's really Congress and the executive branch and not the courts that should be handling climate issues. They've also suggested that they're just practicing free speech in terms of what they've said about the dangers of climate. How do you respond to all that?
Raskin: As we know from Donald Trump, nobody wants to be held accountable for anything. The forces of Big Oil and Big Gas clearly don't want to be held accountable in any way for decisions they have made to withhold, suppress and misstate scientific understandings and data that were in their possession.
So this is an essential question of the rule of law: Will there be consequences? Corporations are not lawless and ungovernable entities. At least they should not be. And corporations cannot escape the force of law for decisions that they make that injured people and society.
Landmark: You've compared this to the Big Tobacco investigation and obviously with tobacco there were statements about a product, people then used the product and it gave them very specific illnesses. It was a very direct line between those statements and the behavior that followed. Do you think it would be more difficult with climate change, which is a little bit more abstract than smoking a cigarette and getting lung cancer? Burning fossil fuels causes climate change, sure, but the impacts are diffused and and all over the place. Would that make a lawsuit more difficult?
Raskin: Well, this is why we have a legal system — to sort out complicated questions of injury and causation. But just because a sequence of events is complex does not mean that it is incomprehensible. And you know, we can determine specifically what the consequences and costs of climate change have been in terms of drought, crop damage, hurricane damage, flooding, erosion and other kinds of environmental effects. We can also use the scientific method to determine what exactly the mechanism of causation has been.
I'm not saying that will be easy, but it's certainly not impossible. And that's where we draw upon all of the progress that's been made in terms of scientific understanding of climate change and the corresponding environmental consequences.
Landmark: In terms of the politics of this moment, we’re less than 70 days away from the presidential election. Trump has reportedly asked for $1 billion dollars in political donations from oil and gas executives for his campaign. Environmental groups, meanwhile, have have said that Harris would be the perfect person to bring a case against Big Oil. I'm just curious if you can talk about the significance of this coming election in terms of potential fossil fuel charges, investigations or just action on climate change in general?
Raskin: I would hope that the election would not make any difference to the conduct and behavior of the Department of Justice. I would hope that the Department of Justice would act as an independent and objective law enforcement institution. Unfortunately, Donald Trump is in a pay-to-play mode constantly with respect to the law and law enforcement.
So, he views Big Oil and Big Gas just as campaign donors and supplicants who he can shake down for campaign money that makes its way to his various legal defense cases, as well as into his political campaign. So, if Project 2025 is the game plan for the Trump administration, as it seems to be, I don't hold out much hope that the Department of Justice would do the right thing.
(Note: Project 2025 is a document written by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Trump himself has disavowed the document, though it was written by several of his close allies. The document has been criticized for a number of reasons, including because some of the policies would strip the DOJ and agencies like the FBI of longstanding independence.)
Landmark: Have you heard back from the DOJ about your recommendation? Do you have any idea of how long it could take?
Raskin: I have not heard back from them and I know that they are very circumspect about talking about the opening of investigations. I would not expect to hear from them if that has happened. I just don't know. I'm in the dark at this point.
It's hard to speculate on a timeline. I imagine that if they do launch an investigation that at a certain point they will confirm that in a cursory perfunctory way. But they play their cards very close to the vest as a prosecuting and investigative entity and that's proper.
Read more: A spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s top business association representing fossil fuel companies, provided Landmark with a copy of the following letter addressed to Harris requesting a meeting to talk about U.S. energy issues:
