Introduction

Global warming continues to radically transform the world as we presently know it. These changes encompass multiple social and ecological dimensions; among these are species extinctions, major shifts in wind and water currents, reductions in the pool of fresh water reserves worldwide, and the migration of human and non-human populations around the globe (IPCC, 2014). Specific ecosystems are being fundamentally altered and the Earth as a whole is entering a new period of unbalance and rebalance. In this process, there are many casualties.

This chapter defines and describes the concept ‘ecocide’ (which refers to destruction of ecological systems and habitats). This includes the everyday activities that contribute to climate change and thus to ecocide on a larger and small scale. As part of this discussion it introduces the notion of state–corporate nexus by examining how industries (such as the energy, food and tourism industries), supported and abetted by governments, contribute to global warming.

The chapter also discusses denial and the use of techniques of neutralisation in regard of public debates over climate change, and the specific nature of ‘contrarianism’ as a conscious self-interested resistance to needed mitigation and adaptation strategies. It concludes by exploring the concept of ‘paradoxical harm’ – those harms that emerge because of the adoption of measures that from the very beginning, were never designed to address the essential causes of global warming.

Ecocide as a crime

Anthropocentrically driven changes in climate that negatively affect humans, eco-systems and non-human species (plants and animals) can be conceptualised criminologically as a specific sort of crime. Justice in this case is defined not so much by how we respond to harm, but by how we broadly define it to begin with. In this instance, the harm manifests in ways that differentially, unequally and universally affect the non-living but sustaining systems of Planet Earth and its inhabitants.

The term ecocide is used to conceptualise this harm-defining process. Ecocide has been defined as ‘the extensive damage, destruction to or loss of ecosystems of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished’ (Higgins, 2012: 3). Where this occurs as a result of human agency, then it is purported that a crime of ecocide has occurred.