Arnold Schwarzenegger Joins ‘Sue Big Oil’ Bandwagon, Charge Is ‘First-Degree Murder’

With the rise of renewable energy and information with regards to the environmental impact of fossil fuel becoming more readily available, Big Oil is constantly being bombarded by threats from all sides. Most recent of these are the lawsuits being filed against major oil companies, with Hollywood action star and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger piling on with his first-degree murder charges.

The actor-turned-politician made his intentions known in a speech at the South By Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, Politico reports. Schwarzenegger is accusing big oil companies of “knowingly killing people all over the world” by essentially continuing with their business while being aware of how much damage their industry was causing.

“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 in his speech. “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.”

Schwarzenegger likened the act to first-degree murder, saying, “If you walk into a room and you know you’re going to kill someone, it’s first degree murder; I think it’s the same thing with the oil companies.”

The Hollywood icon also wants to take the movement against the fossil fuel industry further by pushing for the labeling of all products that were produced using the dirty power source of this fact, Futurism notes. Since practically all of the items on any given grocery store were made or transported with the use of fossil fuel, these labels are going to be everywhere.