Carbon Criminals, Climate Crimes

by Ronald C. Kramer, Rob White (Foreword by)

Overview

2020 Choice​ Outstanding Academic Title

Carbon Criminals, Climate Crimes analyzes the looming threats posed by climate change from a criminological perspective. It advances the field of green criminology through a examination of the criminal nature of catastrophic environmental harms resulting from the release of greenhouse gases. The book describes and explains what corporations in the fossil fuel industry, the U.S. government, and the international political community did, or failed to do, in relation to global warming. Carbon Criminals, Climate Crimes integrates research and theory from a wide variety of disciplines, to analyze four specific state-corporate climate crimes: continued extraction of fossil fuels and rising carbon emissions; political omission (failure) related to the mitigation of these emissions; socially organized climate change denial; and climate crimes of empire, which include militaristic forms of adaptation to climate disruption. The final chapter reviews policies that could mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to a warming world, and achieve climate justice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781978805583
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	04/17/2020
Series:	Critical Issues in Crime and Society
Edition description:	None
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

RONALD C. KRAMER is a professor of sociology and former director of the criminal justice program at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. He is the co-author of State-Corporate Crime: Wrongdoing at the Intersection of Business and Government (Rutgers University Press).

Table of Contents

Foreword Rob White ix

1 "This Was a Crime": Climate Change as a Criminological Concern 1

2 "Beyond Catastrophic": The Climate Crisis, Carbon Criminals, and Fossil Capitalism 27

3 "When Did They Know?": Climate Crimes of Continued Extraction and Rising Emissions 58

4 "The Politics of Predatory Delay": Climate Crimes of Political Omission and Socially Organized Denial 84

5 "Slowing the Rise of the Oceans?": Obama's Mixed Legacy and Trump's Climate Crimes 125

6 "Blood for Oil," Pentagon Emissions, and the "Politics of the Armed Lifeboat": Climate Crimes of Empire 154

7 The "Climate Swerve": Hope, Resistance, and Climate Justice 189

Acknowledgments 231

References 235

Index 273

Editorial Reviews

"Kramer has written a tightly constructed and compelling narrative, providing a historical overview of global warming and climate change, of environmental science, of the development of Green Criminology, of the problems of fossil fuel extraction and rising emissions, of the case for four specific types of crime/criminality, and of environmental movements for social justice."

Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books

"Kramer's book should motivate widespread actions against climate crimes, both through social movement and the criminal justice system. Multiple strategies are needed to win the war for our families’ health and welfare."

World Medical & Health Policy

"Community Conversations," WWMT-TV interview with Ron Kramer
https://wwmt.com/news/local/community-conversations-professor-studies-the

" WWMT-TV "Community Conversations

An important contribution to the literature and to the fight for climate justice more generally. Its relevance can hardly be overstated….[This] book encourages us to bring climate change to the centre of criminological curriculum. Carbon Criminals, Climate Crimes will be on my students’ reading list this year.

State Crime Review

"This is a book of the very first importance, one that historians (assuming there are some) will refer back to in a century as they struggle to understand  the worst thing that ever happened on earth. It's well-proved thesis rests in the title: climate change was not an accident, and not something caused by 'everyone.' It was the work of a handful of greedy men, who were entirely conscious of their crime even as they committed it."

author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? - Bill McKibben

"Art Beat," WMUK interview with Ron Kramer
https://www.wmuk.org/post/art-beat-carbon-criminals-climate-crimes#stream/0

" WMUK "Art Beat

"At the heart of Ron’s argument is the observation that climate disruption does not happen by chance, accident or simply because of human activities in general. Rather, it is corporate-state collusion that is mostly to blame for perpetuating global warming and for delaying action to prevent or forestall further climate change."

author of Green Crimes and Dirty Money - from the foreword by Rob White

"Carbon Criminals is a fantastic and immensely compelling and readable-yet-thorough account of the ongoing climate crisis from a criminological perspective. And we should make no mistake about it: climate change is not going anywhere. While the covid-19 pandemic might have, for now, eclipsed Australia’s Black Summer, the sure money is on climate change taking back the headlines sooner or later. Green and other critical criminologies will continue apace in a world that is irreparably harmed and wholly configured by climate change, and books like Carbon Criminals will tell us why, how, and by whom."

Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime

"With a laudatory foreword by leading green criminologist and climate change expert Rob White of the University of Tasmania, this is all in all a must read. Essential."

Choice