Criminology and the Anthropocene by Cameron Holley Clifford Shearing

Author:Cameron Holley, Clifford Shearing [Cameron Holley, Clifford Shearing]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367192303
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2020-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

Discussion and conclusion

Ultimately, the analysis above illustrates the potential opening up of discursive contest and change through bracing ecological goals to non-ecologically oriented regulatory regimes. What is less clear is how this activism, centred on legal and normative bases, might transform into what could be seen as ‘ecological regulation’, given the scale and complexity of the task. Whilst a full discussion of this is beyond what is possible within this chapter, we can draw from the analysis above a few lessons that might guide us in future work. The use of symbolic action to name certain conduct as criminal, indeed ‘ecocidal’, by utilising the plurality of specific legal and regulatory strategies as braces might consolidate into a pervasive respect for ecological limits throughout regulatory structures; that is, the dotted lines in Figure 4.2 would become solid, indicating a legislative boundary (see Figure 4.3). This would mean that every individual regime or strategy would need to take account of all activity that breaches those limits: current criminal harm that crosses ecological limits would need to be addressed. Arguably, here regulators would have some mandate to act from their current legal regimes, since both activities are already seen as unacceptable. However, regulators would accrue further responsibilities by being required to redirect previously ‘acceptable’ market competitive behaviour that breaches ecological limits. In addition, they would need to monitor their own behaviour to ensure their regimes do not resolve business harm in a manner that pushes the business to breach ecological limits (e.g., by requiring greater levels of fossil fuel–intensive air conditioning in retirement homes to prevent increasing levels of heat stroke), and also to ensure that ‘beyond compliance’ behaviour, previously viewed as desirable, does not breach those limits. Finally, new areas for regulation would emerge where there is interaction between ‘acceptable’ market competition and social well-being (see Figure 4.3). Specifically, new regulatory activity emerges where competition had a beneficial impact on social well-being (e.g., new mining ventures, utilising new fossil fuel–intensive technologies that generate jobs and revive local towns), but where that trade-off now breaches ecological limits. In a more positive light, new regulatory activity also might emerge as necessary, where market competition that undermines well-being is found and where that impact was previously unregulated. Overall in this scenario, at least initially, ecological concerns act in addition to competition concerns as the metric by which business behaviour, and by extension business regulation, is judged.

This chapter has shown that green criminology helps us analyse the role that criminalisation can play in the shift required for contemporary societies to face multiple pressing environmental challenges and live sustainably within ecological planetary boundaries. This scholarship points to the significance of criminalisation as both a normative strategy, centred on its social and symbolic properties, and also as an authoritative legal strategy, expressed most strongly through the call for the creation of a crime of ecocide, which would apply to states and businesses at the international and national levels. Regulatory scholarship complements green criminology by teasing apart the way

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