Nobody will go to jail. The gubmint will give them trillions of dollars for carbon removal (PR campaign that the benevolent oil companies and Govt are working for them). They will give themselves awards for saving the planet and everyone else.

The captured carbon will be used for Enhanced Oil Recovery. Fossil fuel companies add a few trillion dollars in govt money, in addition to the $7T dollars in subsidies today (yale).

Carbon capture tech a 'complete falsehood', says Fortescue Metals chairman: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39373538

Honest Government Ad | Carbon Capture & Storage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSZgoFyuHC8

So this 1000 metric ton CO2 DAC plant could offset the activities of 100-400 vehicles in a year... minus the activities of the employees to get to the plant. That's what I wanna know. When are the workers going to stop driving 60 miles round trip to work? And how many need to be at work everyday at the plant? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38237920

Out of the 27 commercially operational CCS projects worldwide, 21 inject carbon dioxide into oil reservoirs to force out petroleum: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36970085

Big Oil Helped Shape Stanford’s Latest Climate-Research Focus. Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability recently unveiled its first institutionwide research focus: greenhouse-gas removal. Taking tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere will be “essential” to limiting global warming, as a news release last month explained, and ideas will be marshaled from across the school to get it done. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35829500

More importantly, when will the common folk stop delegating critical thinking to these corporations?

It's really important uphold the law, but nothing really happens if the collective attitude won't change.

These people doomed humanity to make a buck. Jail would be too good for them.

The current party which holds 3 of 3 branches of the government that would be responsible for prosecuting such a crime is entirely behind the idea that climate change is a hoax.

That’s one reason, but also just the impracticality of jailing everyone who was a shareholder at the time. Diffuse responsibility is also a very strong insulator.

It's entirely possible that candidates who are not promising real consequences will be unelectable in the next democratic primaries.

History says it's like this for decades, centuries... Until it isn't. And then it's guillotines and chaos.

I fear the Children of Men style future we're stepping into.

I wonder if governments will sue to recover climate mitigation costs

We're already in jail. Nobody is getting off this rock.

Oil, the old AI.

Ideally, at least the board would do time and lose any rights holding such positions for a long time.

I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but the number of politicians and other officials who would benefit from a successful case against one of these companies or even one of their executives is a mile long.

I don’t mean generic “throw someone in jail because we all agree they’re evil amirite” posturing, but actual cases against someone based on evidence of breaking a law. Any law. It doesn’t even have to result in jail time to be a political career builder. Saying you’ve pursued and won cases against a “bad” company or executives is a huge boon to anyone in this current political environment that is highly against establishments. It’s universal, from Elizabeth Warren campaigning on her actions against Wall St to the entire “drain the swamp” phenomenon.

Reading the actual memo, not the journalists trying to make articles out of it, reveals a little more about why there isn’t the classic smoking gun here, which is a much simpler explanation for why nobody is going to jail than assuming that money has bribed, paid off, and outlawyered everyone in the country who stands to benefit politically from going after a real crime.

Aren’t they claiming companies are people?

Doesn‘t Texas still have the death penalty?

1+1=…

Its time to finally bring in the corporate death penalty.

In what contexts is lying to the public a crime? The closest are laws against lying in police investigations or official proceedings, but otherwise it's not a jailable offense.

And all of this is before you get into the question of whether they lied or were engaging in motivated reasoning. During COVID we had anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, seemingly without clear commercial reasons to lie. Should those people be thrown in jail as well?