Abstract
Responding to Clifford Shearing’s discussion of the criminological significance of ‘the Anthropocene’, this article elaborates on the development of a ‘green criminology’ and the concept of ‘environmental (in)security’. It then begins a debate with Shearing about the extent to which the insurance industry, itself a cornerstone of the finance sector, can effectively regulate corporate risk-takers as a means of reducing environmental harm. The article argues that consumerism and insurance both encourage ‘de-responsibilization’ and hence risk-taking and anthropogenic damage to the environment.
Introduction
As Clifford Shearing suggests, a criminological imagination for the 21st century should certainly be engaging with the challenges of climate change and harms to the environment. It should also find it stimulating and relevant to think about employing the concept of ‘security’ in a broader sense than usual. For these reasons and more, I welcome Shearing’s essay and his aim to assist in the ‘reinvention’ of criminology in order to respond to the Anthropocene. Here I will take the opportunity to agree with and amplify a few points touched on by Shearing, and then, in the spirit of debate, inject a little scepticism regarding others.
A Little More on Green Criminology and Environmental Insecurity
Shearing is generous in his referencing of the contribution that a green criminology has already made to discussion of the topic he introduces and an additional criminological viewpoint that complements and adds to the message about the importance of our environment can only be helpful. But he also acknowledges that – understandably – he has covered green criminology in a ‘sweeping’ way that overlooks some of its ‘more nuanced conceptions’. I take this as an invitation to say a little more on the subject. 1
Green criminology encompasses many approaches and may also draw on and engage with other disciplines (South and Brisman, 2013); its concerns range from the local to the global, and a primary principle is that we share the planet with other species (Benton, 1998). I would also emphasize, not least because it is also important to Shearing’s view of how we need to proceed, that green criminology focuses on the study of ‘harms’ as much as, if not more than, the study of crimes (Beirne and South, 2007; Wyatt et al., 2014). Distinctions and overlaps between crimes, civil violations and harms reflect a longstanding issue and challenge for criminology: whether to concern itself only with legally defined offences or also embrace those activities that lie within lawful practice but would seem to have harmful consequences that might or should merit legal proscription and response. On a comparative and global basis, what may be illegal and prohibited in one place may not be so categorized or regulated in another and this is particularly pertinent to the matter of environmental justice. Furthermore, the effects of environmental harms may be suffered in different ways by different populations (women, men, young and old, different cultural and ethnic groups, non-human species).
Shearing is also generous in noting my argument that although the concept of ‘security’ (public, private or hybrid) is by no means new in criminology and has been explored in various ways, because the ‘study of environmental harms and green issues is fairly new to criminology, the idea of “environmental security” has hardly been discussed at all in the criminological literature’ (South, 2012: 105, emphases in original). My main point here is to offer wholehearted agreement that in developing this approach what we do not need is a parochial, anthropocentric or American-centred focus of the kind promoted by Kaplan (2000) and similar commentators, who have identified environmental issues as matters of concern primarily because of the threats that they may pose to the ‘national security’ of the United States and the advanced economy nations of the global north (Hartmann, 1999; South, 2012: 107). Regrettably this kind of perspective already has leverage and in a future where climate change begins to impact significantly, it is likely to become more influential (Fussey and South, 2012; White, 2014).
The Anthropocene and Environmental (In)Security
As Shearing argues, we are moving into a new geological epoch – now widely termed the Anthropocene and caused by human reshaping of the environment and the consequences of increased carbon emissions. McKibben (2011: 22–23) provides an example: ‘2010 was the warmest year on record, and according to insurers – the people we task with totting up disasters – it demonstrated the unprecedented mayhem this new heat causes.’ According to one insurance giant, global warming was ‘the only plausible explanation’ for the ‘drought, heatwave and fires across Russia, and the mega-floods in Pakistan, Australia, Brazil and elsewhere … They were, that is to say, not precisely “natural disasters”, but something more complex; the human thumb was on the scale’ (McKibben, 2011: 22–23).
Robert Agnew (2012: 37) has issued a ‘dire forecast’ about the future impact of climate change on crime and society but notes in dismay that corporations and nation states continue actively to engage in ‘efforts to ensure that many of the harmful acts that they commit remain legal’. Climate change is expected to be criminogenic, damaging infrastructure, making resources scarce and leading to displacement of peoples (Abbott, 2008: 6–7; Farrall et al., 2012; South, 2012; White, 2012). In a future world beset by the consequences of climate change there will be implications for legislation and law enforcement, for the security of borders and for the ways in which human communities act. These implications might be predicted to include the continuing rise of anti-immigration politics and a retrogressive environmental insecurity, driving an increase in domestic policing and border security, and encouraging a ‘drawbridge mentality’ (Taylor, 1999) that will create insider/outsider boundaries. The global mobility of corporate wealth will be increased and continue to be off-shored from the everyday worlds of ordinary urban and rural populations (Bauman, 1998; Urry, 2014). Those likely to be most significantly affected by environmental damage caused by climate change are the already poor and powerless (OECD, 2003; Revkin, 2007). The processes of ‘land-grabbing’ in the interests of food profiteering by the agro-industry corporations, or food security by China, the USA and others (Borras and Franco, 2012; Cotula, 2012), are already creating new forms of dispossession and impoverishment.
Shearing and colleagues adopt a stance that holds that ‘significant action intended to enhance “environmental security” has been, and is, taking place within contemporary forms of capitalism’ (Shearing, this issue,
A little scepticism: Regulation, consumerism, risk and insurance
To add a little scepticism here will be no surprise, as Shearing predicts that the position he and colleagues take will place them ‘at odds’ with many ‘who question whether businesses operating within a capitalist economy can fundamentally shift their relationship to earth systems, given their established, and it is argued necessary, practices of externalizing the costs of resource extraction and waste’ (Shearing, this issue,
The approach set out by Shearing and colleagues involves looking at networks of influence, the regulatory reach of key or ‘fulcrum’ institutions and the incentivization of institutional change. One such change might be avoidance of risk of environmental hazard because this may cause harm and/or cost money, and a key fulcrum institution might therefore be the insurance sector – as Shearing and colleagues suggest and are currently exploring. At one level this makes great sense and effective change that can promote more environmentally friendly and less harmful business practices must be encouraged. Shearing follows the important work of Ericson et al. (2003) on insurance as an ‘institution of governance beyond the state’ with an ‘extraordinary regulatory reach’. So a major focus of the research reported is to see how insurance companies as commercially based regulators can ‘enrol clients in managing’ the drivers of environmental risks. By this, I take it the aim is to encourage adoption of methods of business that do less anthropogenic damage and reduce environmental risk.
Regulation and its promise and weaknesses have been studied by green criminologists but from a critical starting point (South, 2011; Stretesky, 2006). This view would see environmental harms following from the constant demands of dominant systems of production and consumption (Brisman and South, 2014). This does not mean that we should argue there is no possibility of change or dismiss lightly the exercise of ‘pressure-from-below’, enlightened consumerism or the power of NGOs. However, we do need to retain an awareness of the context and limits that shape such action. In Dauvergne and Lister’s (2010) analysis of the contribution that eco-consumerism may make to the tempering of excessive and destructive consumption, the authors adopt a co-regulatory approach inspired by new governance literature. This stresses ‘the importance of cooperation among business, government, NGO and research institutes so as to facilitate greater coordination – and hence greater effectiveness – in the development and delivery of environmental management, policy, advocacy, and research efforts’ (Dauvergne and Lister, 2010: 146). The authors note that overestimating the potential of eco-consumerism ‘to produce global change can leave consumers overconfident in the power of their eco-purchases, thereby releasing pressure on governments and corporations for more fundamental changes in the industrial use, marketing, and valuation of the world’s natural resources’ (2010: 146). Hence, from their point of view, eco-consumerism needs to be part of, and supported by, the wider mix of co-regulatory actors - and I would agree with this. However, the really important point here is that Dauvergne and Lister are right about what consumerism is very good at – that is, giving comfort and reassurance and thereby undermining urgency – and the rise of ‘green consumerism’ is a striking example (Brisman and South, 2014; Pierre-Louis, 2012; Smith, 1998; Szasz, 2008).
Consumerism, in general, provides the basis and motives for a repertoire of denials and claims of ignorance about climate change and environmental problems (Norgaard, 2006). It acts as a valve releasing pressure on powerful economic and cultural forces; it sells us reminders of desire and representations of the desired; and it encourages us to take risks and think of the short term not the long term, (literally) buying-into processes of ‘adultification of the young’ and ‘infantilization of the adult’ with implications for our sense of ‘responsibility’ (Barber, 2007; Brisman and South, in press; Hayward, 2012; Lasch, 1979). These developments have also brought a changed relationship with ‘risk’ which is now less about serious apprehension and more about incidental contingency. Reiner et al. (2001: 176), writing of the emergence of a ‘casino culture’ that celebrates superficial success, celebrity and risk, noted that what was once a ‘riskophobic culture has clearly been replaced by a riskophiliac one’. So, the question is – whether it is realistic to believe that the regulatory power of the insurance industry can significantly reduce the environmental misbehaviour of their clients?
Djelic and Bothello (2013: 592) have noted that the central idea underpinning insurance as a core-support of capitalism is ‘moral hazard’. That is, essentially, the provision of insurance or other forms of protection, ‘creates a disincentive to exercise caution with person and property, while increasing the proclivity to engage in careless or risk-seeking behavior’ because another person or body will carry the cost burden of risk (2013: 592, emphases added). The implication is not that insurance can provide a brake on environmental disregard but that it financially underwrites and encourages it. Historically, the insurance safety-net developed alongside the maturing and extension of the legal protection afforded to companies by the idea of ‘limited liability’ which has also ‘encouraged risk-taking … because it created a situation of expanding de-responsibilization. Individuals would take more risks precisely because they could reap rewards without having to bear the full costs’ (Djelic and Bothello, 2013: 607, emphasis in original). This takes us back to the ‘want-it-now-consumer’ and multiple ways in which ‘responsibility’ for so much – including anthropogenic damage to the environment – is denied.
Conclusion
However, disagreement with some of the assumptions and theoretical orientations that Shearing sets out should not overshadow the welcome that his article deserves. The call to respond to the challenge of the Anthropocene needs to be heard. And criminology should take very seriously Shearing’s concluding thoughts on the future direction it must take if it is to rise to this challenge.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.