Prosecute the Climate Criminals

Imagine a time, in the not-too-distant future, when an international tribunal convenes to ask the question: Who is responsible for climate disruption? Who knew about the dangers of burning oil, gas, and coal, with their atmosphere-altering properties, but did nothing about it? Or worse, which individuals worked to promote disinformation, block changes, and delay action?

We are all responsible for climate change, especially those of us who live in industrialized countries with a higher standard of living based on a century of low-cost, easy-to-extract fossil fuels. But not all contributions to climate disruption are equal: Some take the bus while others fly private jets. And some people have considerably more political power and wealth to influence the paths we have taken and, regrettably, not taken.

We now know that certain corporations, like ExxonMobil and Shell, hold oversized responsibility for running out humanity’s clock and limiting our present options. There are individuals, often presiding over powerful transnational corporations and institutions, with the clout of medium-sized nation-states. These are the “apex predators” in the climate inaction ecosystem. Future generations will know their names: They are the climate criminals.

We want the public to learn the names of these climate criminals and understand how they are largely to blame for the devastating climate impacts happening all around us.

These alleged climate criminals deploy their power to promote climate change denial while knowing the science documenting the harms of emitting billions of tons of carbon and methane into the atmosphere. When a scientific consensus emerged in the last two decades, the climate criminals sowed doubt to foster societal paralysis and inaction.

When the public began to awaken to the harms of greenhouse gas emissions, the climate criminals worked to capture our political system to thwart any efforts to regulate carbon pollution. They insidiously used their power to block less-polluting alternatives to oil, gas, and coal.

As each year has passed, the opportunities for averting the worst disruptions of climate change have diminished. The climate criminals use their power to run out the clock on climate change. They have brought us to the point of living through rising climate disruption with unprecedented rising temperatures, droughts, wildfires, floods, and rising ocean temperatures and sea levels.

Today, on Climate Emergency Day, we are releasing the names of the 2024 North American Climate Criminals: Individuals we have identified who are actively engaged in “crimes-in-progress.”

The 2024 Climate Criminals include leaders of energy companies, major financiers of fossil fuel projects, insurance companies, think tanks and foundations that fund climate change denial, and communications firms that spin disinformation and distraction.

A new project called the Climate Accountability Research Project (CARP) received over 300 nominations for climate criminals and prepared extensive dossiers on over 150. In selecting the 2024 Climate Criminals, we identified 40 individuals recently involved in jeopardizing our shared future. A committee of activists and researchers narrowed the list down to 24.

Most of the 2024 Climate Criminals, unlike their recent predecessors, do not deny the existence of human-created climate change. They leaped from outright denial to distracting delay in a nanosecond. Today’s climate criminals exercise their considerable clout to deflect responsibility, block meaningful action, and promote “greenwashed” solutions. They have staked their future on unrealistic, expensive, and unscalable technological fixes to distract us for a few more years while they squeeze riches from the fossil fuel stone.

The 2024 Climate Criminals have been personally enriched by their climate crimes. Their combined wealth is at least $29.8 billion, with an average of $1.7 billion. Three are billionaires: Kelcy Warren (worth $7.1 billion), Jamie Dimon ($2.3 billion), and Harold Hamm ($18.4 billion). Their combined annual compensation is $232 million, with an average of $11 million.

Even those at foundations, think tanks, and national lobbying associations are paid hefty salaries. Michelle Bloodworth, CEO of America’s Power, has been paid over $4 million since 2017 to lobby on behalf of the moribund coal industry. She hopes a Trump administration will declare coal plants as “critical infrastructure” and keep them spewing. Brian Hooks was paid over $5 million between 2020 and 2022 by one Koch-funded organization—and millions more through decades of work at the Koch Foundation and other Koch-funded climate-denying and action-delaying organizations.

Several 2024 Climate Criminals were involved in writing the environment and energy sections of the Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership,” a public policy blueprint spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation that dismantles environmental protection and reduces investment in renewable energy while expanding Arctic drilling and Western coal mining. It would remove the U.S. from international climate change agreements.

In April 2024, four of our 2024 Climate Criminals attended a dinner at Mar-a-Lago of fossil fuel executives, organized by climate criminal Harold Hamm. Trump allegedly asked for $1 billion in campaign donations in exchange for rolling back U.S. President Joe Biden’s regulatory policies. Chevron CEO Mike Wirth, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods, and American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Sommers were reportedly also at the dinner. Hamm also co-hosted another fundraising luncheon for Trump with climate criminal Kelcy Warren on May 22, 2024.

This Climate Criminals educational campaign aims to shift the national conversation about who is responsible for climate disruption. We want the public to learn the names of these climate criminals and understand how they are largely to blame for the devastating climate impacts happening all around us. During the next heatwave, name the climate criminals out loud. Next flood or wildfire smoke in your eyes? Damn those climate criminals.

We support nonviolent protests against the climate criminals when they show up to be recognized at a charity gala or speak at a conference. We urge people to take public action at www.climatecriminals.org with a petition urging the International Criminal Court to investigate and prosecute these climate criminals.

When we understand the role of Climate Criminals in narrowing our options as citizens and consumers, we won’t tolerate insults like those dished out by Exxon CEO Darren Woods. Woods recognizes that our societies are failing to meet climate change mitigation goals, but instead of taking responsibility for his company’s leading role in causing climate change, he blames consumers. “The dirty secret nobody talks about is how much all this is going to cost and who’s willing to pay for it,” Woods told Fortune in March 2024. “We have opportunities to make fuels with lower carbon in it, but people aren’t willing to spend the money to do that.”

The real dirty secret is that it’s Darren Woods and his fellow climate criminals who’ve been running out the clock, engaging in denial, and blocking the development of the green technologies that we need to preserve a livable planet. They are responsible, and they need to be held to account.