Allen Myers was preparing to visit his parents in his hometown of Paradise in November 2018 when the community was hit by the deadliest wildfire in California history. As he traveled home, Myers experienced the devastation in real time.

“I saw the chaos unfold live, as friends drove through the flames and my godparents were surrounded by fire,” he recalls.

Myers’ childhood home was destroyed, and his parents and neighbors lost everything, he said. And while the local utility, PG&E, pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter, Myers said another culprit went unnoticed: the fossil fuel industry, which exacerbated conditions like drought and drought, fueling increasingly devastating fires.

Myers is now among more than 1,000 survivors of climate disasters and some 10,000 signatories of a letter calling on the U.S. Justice Department to investigate fossil fuel companies for climate-related crimes.

A small group led by the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network delivered the letter to the DOJ Thursday morning. It’s the latest in a growing trend of legal action aimed at holding the fossil fuel industry accountable for the human costs of climate change, and a newer effort to put companies and industry executives in criminal courts.

“The people who get injured or lose their homes or [are] killed in [climate-driven disasters]“These are not just tragic accidents,” said Aaron Regunberg, a senior policy advisor at Public Citizen. “They are the result of specific reckless or deliberate behavior by certain corporate actors who generated a substantial portion of all the greenhouse gas emissions that caused climate change and who engaged in this massive campaign of deception and delay specifically to stop the actions that could have mitigated or prevented these disasters.”

The Public Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Justice declined to comment on the letter.

Calls for a day of judgment for big oil companies

As the devastation from climate-related disasters like wildfires, hurricanes, floods, and extreme heat becomes more frequent and severe, and as the public becomes more aware of the fossil fuel industry’s misinformation, calls for compensation from the industry are growing. This year, Vermont became the first state to pass legislation requiring fossil fuel companies to pay for climate damages, and a parallel bill in New York is awaiting the governor’s signature. Lawyers have also increasingly turned to taking fossil fuel companies to court.

Since 2016, the Center for Climate Integrity has tracked more than 30 climate accountability lawsuits against fossil fuel companies in the U.S., with claims ranging from consumer protection violations to allegations of racketeering and fraud. While most of the lawsuits are civil claims, some legal scholars are now pushing to criminally prosecute the industry, hoping for rulings that would force the companies to phase out oil, gas and coal and shift profits to renewable energy, for example. Other legal experts have said that proving criminal liability will be an uphill battle.

Patrick Parenteau, a climate policy fellow and professor emeritus of law at Vermont Law and Graduate School, said the surge in legal action stems from the acute financial burden of the climate crisis and the “desperation” to find money to fund adaptation.

According to Parenteau, civil cases seeking compensation for financial damages are practical, but criminal cases, where the burden of proof is much higher, are more challenging.

“How then can you break down global emissions down to an individual company and try to hold that company responsible for the damage caused by that event?” he asked.

In May, eight victims of extreme weather in France filed a criminal lawsuit against executives of global energy giant TotalEnergies, arguing that the company’s top decision-makers are criminally liable for human deaths and damage to biodiversity. The European lawsuit, currently being considered by a prosecutor, came as Public Citizen conducted its own investigation into how to prosecute the industry in the U.S., said senior policy adviser Clara Vondrich.

“This wild idea suddenly became concrete,” Vondrich said. “It was really just a confirmation that we were on the right track.”

Michael Gerrard, a professor of climate and environmental law at Columbia University, said proving criminal liability will be a “steep mountain to climb,” and said the tactic of criminally prosecuting the industry could be more useful as a campaign tool than a legal one.

“Attribution science is getting stronger, and [it is] “It is increasingly likely that part of the magnitude of a heatwave will be attributed to fossil fuel emissions, but there is still a significant gap between that and holding fossil fuel companies criminally liable,” Gerrard said.

Regunberg said Public Citizen is working with criminal justice scholars, former prosecutors, climate researchers and criminal justice reform advocates to develop a concrete legal path to holding oil and gas companies criminally liable for climate damages. In June, the organization published a 50-page report outlining a blueprint for pursuing manslaughter charges for heat-related deaths in Arizona’s Maricopa County, which saw 645 such deaths in 2023.

Thursday’s action was aimed at bringing the voices of those most affected by the climate disaster to the Justice Department, Regunberg said, adding that the Justice Department taking the lead on an investigation could open the door for public safety officials across the country to explore options for prosecuting the industry.

‘These polluters must pay’

In the first five years after the Camp Fire of 2018, Myers devoted himself to rebuilding Paradise. During that time, he had to evacuate the area three times, twice because of wildfires and once because of extremely hazardous air quality. As he watched the drought spread and wildfires increase in size and intensity in California, he and his partner sought a safer place to live and settled in Portland, Oregon.

“We were told … that these fires would get bigger because of the climate crisis, and we know that the fossil fuel industry is causing the climate crisis,” Myers said. “They are directly responsible, and yet they continue to act with impunity.”

“These industries are making billions of dollars off our backs, and all they give us is poison, pollution and the killing of our babies.”

The signatories of Public Citizen’s letter come from across the country, including Louisiana activist Roishetta Ozane, who is continually impacted by climate disasters and environmental injustice. Ozane has been displaced by hurricanes three times in the past 20 years. In April, a tornado severely damaged the offices of The Vessel Project, Ozane’s mutual aid and disaster relief organization in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Ozane has spearheaded national movements to fight the expansion of liquefied natural gas terminals in the Gulf South and to take on financial institutions and the insurance industry to cut off the viability of the fossil fuel industry. She said signing the letter to the DOJ is just one of many tactics she is using to take on the fossil fuel industry from all sides, seeking reparations for the harms her family and community have suffered.

“These polluters need to pay … for the climate crimes that they’ve committed,” Ozane said. “These industries are making billions of dollars here on our backs, and all they give us is poison and pollution and the killing of our babies.”

In the coming weeks, Ozane’s 18-year-old son will undergo tests including video-electroencephalography (EEG) in preparation for a possible brain operation to treat his epilepsy, which he was diagnosed with last year. He has frequent seizures, which specialists say are likely linked to long-term exposure to industrial pollution.

Ozane and her children live in southern Louisiana, in a community with some of the highest pollution levels in the country. Her son has trace amounts of mercury in his system, and her other children suffer from asthma, eczema and other health problems.

“As a mother, I try to protect my children as much as possible from everyday dangers,” Ozane said. “But now I have to protect them from industries that commit crimes.”