Arnold Schwarzenegger. Photo courtesy of Time.
Summary: Republican activist Arnold Schwarzenegger said he plans to sue oil companies for what they did to the environment.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the action star and former governor of California, said that he plans on suing oil companies for “knowingly killing people all over the world,” according to The Hill.
The Republican said this during an interview with Politico’s “Off Message” podcast, and he said that he has already been in talks with private law firms on how to file.
“This is no different from the smoking issue. The tobacco industry knew for years and years and years and decades that smoking would kill people, would harm people and create cancer, and were hiding that fact from the people and denied it. Then eventually they were taken to court and had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars because of that,” Schwarzenegger said. “The oil companies knew from 1959 on, they did their own study that there would be global warming happening because of fossil fuels, and on top of it that it would be risky for people’s lives, that it would kill.”
The former governor said that oil companies were irresponsible and knew their product hurt people.
“It’s absolutely irresponsible to know that your product is killing people and not have a warning label on it, like tobacco,” Schwarzenegger said. “Every gas station on it, every car should have a warning label on it, every product that has fossil fuels should have a warning label on it.”
The environmental activist is joining the likes of New York City, who has already took a stand against oil companies for their alleged role in the increase of global warming. In January, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the city would divest billions of pension funds from fossil fuel companies.
“New York City is standing up for future generations by becoming the first major US city to divest our pension funds from fossil fuels,” said de Blasio. “At the same time, we’re bringing the fight against climate change straight to the fossil fuel companies that knew about its effects and intentionally misled the public to protect their profits. As climate change continues to worsen, it’s up to the fossil fuel companies whose greed put us in this position to shoulder the cost of making New York safer and more resilient.”
Additionally, New York City sued big oil companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and ConocoPhillips. The city sought money to create the infrastructure that was needed as a response to climate change, which the city said the oil companies caused.
Earlier this month, a group of teenagers from Oregon won the ability to sue the government over their failed environmental policies, and the case is expected to go to trial sometime this year.
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