Arnold Schwarzenegger Planning To Sue Oil Companies To Force Climate Policies

A spokesman for Arnold Schwarzenegger said the former governor and famous movie actor is still pursuing his options to sue oil companies for “first degree murder.”

“We’ve had consistent meetings with a team of legal experts who focus on environmental law and ways to sue for pollution, so we have continued those meetings and we’ve definitely made progress,” Daniel Ketchell, a Schwarzenegger spokesman, told Axios on Wednesday.

The statement comes about a year after the moderate Republican governor of California said he hoped to sue fossil fuel companies for contributing to climate change and “killing people” all over the globe.

“I don’t think there’s any difference: 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,” Schwarzenegger said in March 2018. The famous bodybuilder, who has publicly called on President Donald Trump to do more to promote clean energy, expressed interest in treating fossil fuels like tobacco, forcing them to include a warning label. “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,” he said.

Although a lifelong Republican, Schwarzenegger has become an ardent environmental activist and fossil fuel critic since leaving his gubernatorial post. The former bodybuilder founded the R20 Regions of Climate Action, an environmental organization that aims to increase the use of renewable energy sources and reduce the world’s carbon emissions.

Schwarzenegger’s activism has led to clashes with the White House, which has organized a wide-scale deregulation effort and made attempts to revive the country’s coal industry. The famous movie actor publicly rebuked Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the international Paris climate agreement.

In his most recent climate change project, Schwarzenegger announced he is teaming up with California Democrat Kevin de León in an effort to reduce emissions from cars and trucks. The two prominent politicians are launching an initiative alongside activists and researchers that will study how local governments can more quickly adopt cleaner transportation options.