Schwarzenegger Goes Off the Deep End: He’ll Sue Big Oil for ‘Murder’

Former California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, known for his acting and bodybuilding success, has taken on a new task — and it’s not hosting another low-rated season of “The Celebrity Apprentice.”

On Politico’s “Off Message” podcast on Sunday, Schwarzenegger announced he is working with several private law firms to sue “Big Oil” for “first-degree murder.”

Schwarzenegger said he believes the oil industry has knowingly deteriorated the environment, which has resulted in adverse health effects for people — and he believes they should be held accountable for it.

On the podcast, Schwarzenegger made a comparison between oil and tobacco, a product that kills 480,000 people per year in the U.S., according to the CDC. Schwarzenegger did not offer any comparable death statistics related to oil, but he proposed that every gas station, car and fossil fuel product should have a warning label on it — just as with tobacco.

“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 on the podcast. “Then eventually they were taken to court and had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars because of that. 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.”

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He later said, “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’s left-wing environmental views should be no surprise. He has always been closer on environmental issues to folks like Al Gore and Barack Obama than he was with the rest of the GOP.

In 2012, he told the BBC that “the future is green energy.”

Just last August, the star of “The Terminator” created the “Digital Environmental Legislative Handbook.” In doing so, he gave 50 state legislators information as to how they could pass climate change legislation. The former governor said he did so in response to President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.

It may be difficult for him to find massive amounts of support for this extreme initiative.

If Schwarzenegger has a cheaper, mass-produced fuel option that he considers safer than oil, perhaps he should let the world know. If he has a better way to get around that will save people significant amounts of money, then certainly he could get people to stop using oil.

Until then, it may be difficult for him to find massive amounts of support for this extreme and seemingly wasteful initiative.

Tom Joyce is a freelance writer from the South Shore of Massachusetts. He covers sports, pop culture, and politics and has contributed to The Federalist, Newsday, ESPN, and other outlets.