Climate change and criminology

Abstract

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the concept of Climate Change Criminology. Climate Change Criminology rests upon the four pillars of crime and harm; global connectedness and ecological justice; causes and consequences; and power and interests. These are separate but inextricably linked domains of analysis, interpretation, and critique. Each area demands novel ways of thinking about the problem, employing methods and approaches that necessarily push the boundaries of contemporary criminological theory and the purview of modern criminal justice institutions. In several important respects, Climate Change Criminology parallels work which focuses on ‘social harm’ as a constitutive concept. What makes a social harm ‘social’ is the fact that it does not stem from natural causes; it is intrinsically caused by humans. Analysis and response to this is central to the project of Climate Change Criminology.

Criminology: Some lines of flight

“…A significant development in this line of flight has been the emergence of 'green criminology', and more recently 'climate change criminology', as a criminological response to the harms associated with the Anthropocene (Lynch, 1990;South, 1998;R. White, 2018b).…”

Criminal Business Relationships Between Commodity Regions and Industrialized Countries: The Hard Road From Raw Material to New Technology

“…The environment means life for the local population—as will be shown. The concept of horizon scanning (White & South, 2013), therefore, can be useful as a possible instrument to be applied not only with respect to the environment but also to the affected populations. Natali (2016) has also shown, through potentialities of the visually qualitative approach and contact with the affected people at a narrative level, that the environment is of interest because people are living there.…”

“…It has provided interesting results on the severe impact of those crimes on the life and rights of the most marginalized segments of the world’s population and the conflicts of interest related to natural resources such as minerals, water, oil, and gas as well as to surfaces ideal for the production of energy (rivers, wind) and primary food (grains, soy; Brisman, South, & White, 2015; Hall, 2014, p. 103; Jarrell & Ozymy, 2014; Walters, 2006), and in particular, on the life and rights of indigenous people (Boekhout van Solinge & Kuijpers, 2013, p. 202; Brisman et al, 2015, p. 2; Carrasco & Fernández, 2009). Furthermore, this subdiscipline adds an interesting look at infractions committed by complex offenders against widely dispersed victim groups and spatial areas—which often remain diffuse (Spapens, 2014, p. 224; White & South, 2013).…”

Rolling Back Climate Regulation: Trump’s Assault on the Planet

“…This article expands on that analysis by giving particular attention to how the Trump administration’s organized denial of global warming and its political omissions concerning the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions are designed to affect a significant rollback of government regulations designed to confront the growing climate crisis. This climate criminality is explored through the lens of the concept of state–corporate crime (Michalowski & Kramer, 2006), a concept used by a number of green criminologists to analyze environmental harms (Bradshaw, 2014; Kramer & Michalowski, 2012; Lynch et al, 2010; Strestesky et al, 2014; White, 2018; White & Heckenberg, 2014).…”

“…They note that the current rollbacks of government regulations by the Trump administration are “part of a long story of the tensions between capital, labor and the state that reach back to the latter part of the 19th century,” and the start of a “project to help a struggling neo-liberal political economy regain vigor” (Michalowski & Brown, 2019, p. 94). Second, the Trump administration’s efforts to deny climate science and undermine specific policies to mitigate carbon emissions are foregrounded in a 40-year history of political omission and government failure on the critical issue of climate change undertaken on behalf of the fossil fuel industry (Kramer, 2020; Rich, 2019; White, 2018).…”