Reviews:

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

Description:

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.

Contents:

Foreword by Rob White

1. “This Was a Crime:” Climate Change as a Criminological Concern            

2. “Beyond Catastrophic:” The Climate Crisis, Carbon Criminals, and Fossil Capitalism

3. “When Did They Know”? Climate Crimes of Continued Extraction and Rising Emissions

4. “The Politics of Predatory Delay:” Climate Crimes of Political Omission and Socially Organized Denial

5. “Slowing the Rise of the Oceans”? Obama’s Mixed Legacy and Trump’s Climate Crimes

6. “Blood for Oil,” Pentagon Emissions, and the “Politics of the Armed Lifeboat:” Climate Crimes of Empire

7. The “Climate Swerve:” Hope, Resistance, and Climate Justice   

Acknowledgments

References  

Index

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).

Target Audience:

People interested in the moral and ethical aspects of environment and climate changes.