Who gets arrested for climate crimes?
Vietnamese climate activist Hoang Hong, who was supposed to give a TED talk about the need for climate protest at the TED Countdown Summit in Detroit last week. Source: TED
People protesting the climate crisis are getting arrested around the world while actual alleged climate criminals walk free.
by EMILY ATKIN and ARIELLE SAMUELSON
Last week, HEATED was in Detroit, Michigan for the TED Countdown Summit, which debuted dozens of new TED talks on how to accelerate climate action.
(We already published one dispatch from Al Gore’s presentation. We’ll have even more takeaways for you later this week).
One of the new talks we were most looking forward to was from Vietnamese climate activist Hoàng Thi Minh Hồng. It was supposed to be about the need for climate activism in politically hostile environments, and strategies for how to execute it safely and effectively.
But when the time came for Hong’s presentation on Tuesday, TED science curator David Biello announced she would not be able to attend. Holding back tears, Biello said Hong had been detained by local authorities in Vietnam.
Biello then played Hong’s submission video, where she spoke about the risk she and others around the world face for protesting the corporations, governments and people who profit at the expense of our planet.
Hong said:
It was a prescient topic, and not just because of Hong’s own arrest. In recent weeks, as deadly heat and flooding has wreaked havoc across the world, more and more people have taken to the streets to protest climate inaction—and found themselves arrested and jailed because of it.
These protesters are now at the center of a maddening, often unexamined reality of the climate crisis: that around the world, governments dole out more consequences for the people who protest climate injustice than they do for the people who perpetrate it.
Imagine what the planet would look like if we treated real climate criminals this way.
Who gets jailed for climate crimes?
A tweet from Ketan Joshi shows the front page of the Guardian, which has news of climate disasters and climate protesters getting arrested. The tweet reads, “Arresting the people protesting the people causing the problem, rather than the people causing the problem. Store this image down in the climate history textbook, folks.”
We can learn a lot about a society from who it chooses to jail during a planetary emergency, and who it allows to walk free.
Take, for example, some of the people who have been recently arrested for protesting environmental injustice—and compare them to the people who haven’t been arrested in one of the most egregious anti-climate corruption cases of the decade.
Not Arrested: Charles Jones, former CEO of FirstEnergy
Last month, Ohio’s former Speaker of the House Larry Householder was sentenced to 20 years in prison for accepting $61 million in bribes from the electric utility FirstEnergy in exchange for passing HB6, one of the worst anti-climate laws in the nation.
Charles Jones, FirstEnergy’s former CEO, was revealed to be the architect of the plan when lawyers for FirstEnergy said Jones and a colleague “devised and orchestrated FirstEnergy’s payments to public officials in exchange for favorable legislation and regulatory action.” Jones hasn’t been charged with any crimes.
Arrested: Bob Barigye, Mutesi Zarika, Naruwada Shamim, and Nalusiba Phionah
Four climate activists in Kampala, Uganda were arrested last week for peacefully protesting the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). Barigye, Zarika, Shamim, and Phionah, who have now been released on bond, were charged with inciting violence.
“The arrests of these activists are a clear attempt to silence dissent and suppress opposition to the EACOP,” said Zaki Mamdoo, StopEACOP Campaign Coordinator, in a statement. EACOP is operated by TotalEnergies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation.
Not Arrested: Michael Dowling, former FirstEnergy lobbyist
Dowling is the colleague who helped former FirstEnergy CEO Charles Jones allegedly plan the bribes. Despite being one of the main executives behind the payments to Householder, Dowling also hasn’t been charged with any crimes.
Arrested: Abigail Disney
The philanthropist and great-niece of Walt Disney was arrested on Long Island last Friday for protesting the use of private jets at East Hampton Airport. Disney was part of a climate action drawing attention to “the immense carbon emissions from private air travel.” “The last thing this planet needs is billionaires spewing greenhouse gases to get to their palatial beach homes. Just so wrong,” Disney tweeted.
Not Arrested: Ohio Governor Mike DeWine
According to court documents in the FBI’s case against Householder, FirstEnergy also paid $3 million to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine—but DeWine has not been charged with any crimes. The sentencing memorandum for Householder said that evidence suggested that “those in power knew about Householder’s and FirstEnergy’s corruption and did nothing while it was happening.”
Arrested: Alex Cochrane, Sarah Krischer, and others
Nine people were arrested last week in a multiple-day protest against the INEOS oil refinery in Grangemouth, Scotland, according to Climate Camp Scotland. Extinction Rebellion Scotland told HEATED that Cochrane and Krischer were among those arrested; along with other protestors whose names were not publicly released. The activists were charged with disturbing the peace, among other chargers. Climate Camp Scotland, which staged the five-day climate protest camp, says INEOS is Scotland’s biggest polluter. According to the Scottish Environment and Protection Agency, INEOS’ five Grangemouth sites released around 3.2 million tonnes of CO2 in 2019.
Not Arrested: Sam Randazzo, former chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO)
FirstEnergy admitted to paying Randazzo $4.3 million in bribes for HB6. Not only was Randazzo never charged, but last year he successfully appealed a judge’s order that would have allowed the Ohio attorney general’s office to seize up to $8 million in assets. But that’s a small sum in the scheme of things: over the last 10 years, FirstEnergy admitted to paying Randazzo more than $20 million in bribes.
Arrested: Hoàng Thi Minh Hồng
Hong, who founded the environmental group CHANGE, was recently arrested by the Vietnamese government on charges of tax evasion and faces up to seven years imprisonment. Hong is the fifth prominent climate activist to be arrested in Vietnam for tax evasion in the last two years. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights isn’t buying that tax evasion is the reason, though: A spokesperson put out a statement calling the arrest and trend “troubling,” and called on Vietnam to “review relevant laws to ensure their full compliance with international human rights standards.”
What can you do?
We asked David Pomerantz, the executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, what readers should do if they want to change the system that lets fossil fuel wrongdoers go scot-free.