Arnold Schwarzenegger, former governor of California and best known for his starring role in movies like The Terminator and Total Recall, is steaming mad at oil companies and he plans to do something about their reprehensible, irresponsible behavior that has put billions of people at risk around the world. During an interview with Politico, he said he is personally going to take them to court “for knowingly killing people all over the world.”
“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.”
Arnold did not mince words. “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.” We here at CleanTechnica have long suggested the conduct of the oil industry borders on criminal behavior but Schwarzenegger is the first public figure to say so in clear, unambiguous language.
“We’re going to go after them, and we’re going to be in there like an Alabama tick. Because to me it’s absolutely irresponsible to know that your product is killing people and not have a warning label on it, like tobacco,” he 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.”
Schwarzenegger declined to discuss when his lawsuit might be filed, saying only that he is in consultation with several private attorneys about suing the oil companies. But Politico points out that he is scheduled to host what is being billed as a major environmental conference this May in Vienna.
Arnold had one lighthearted moment during the interview when he spoke about a new Terminator movie he is about to make. “The T-800 model that I play, he’s traveling back in time to 2019 to get Trump out of prison,” he laughed.
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