Carbon Criminals, Climate Crimes

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).

"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"Art Beat," WMUK interview with Ron Kramerhttps://www.wmuk.org/post/art-beat-carbon-criminals-climate-crimes#stream/0— "Art Beat," WMUK"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"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"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"Community Conversations," WWMT-TV interview with Ron Kramerhttps://wwmt.com/news/local/community-conversations-professor-studies-the— "Community Conversations," WWMT-TV"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"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?

• ContentsList of TablesForewordPrefaceList of Abbreviations  1. "This Was a Crime:" Climate Change as a Criminological Concern                          2. "Beyond Catastrophic:" The Climate Crisis, Carbon Criminals, and Fossil Capitalism3. "When Did They Know"? Climate Crimes of Continued Extraction and Rising Emissions4. "The Politics of Predatory Delay:" Climate Crimes of Political Omission and Socially Organized Denial5. "Slowing the Rise of the Oceans"? Obama's Mixed Legacy and Trump's Climate Crimes6. "Blood for Oil," Pentagon Emissions, and the "Politics of the Armed Lifeboat:" Climate Crimes of Empire7. The "Climate Swerve:" Hope, Resistance, and Climate Justice       References     Index