The book Green Crime does something new: It explores environmental crimes through a true-crime lens.
Author and criminal psychologist Dr. Julia Shaw forensically analyzes the motives of each group involved in crimes like wildlife trafficking, pollution, and the murder of environmental defenders using six psychological pillars: ease, impunity, greed, rationalization, conformity, and desperation.
Along the way, Shaw examines case studies like Deepwater Horizon and “Dieselgate,” in which she reveals the psychology that underpins the individuals and entities that commit large-scale environmental destruction, and the environmental defenders fighting them, offering insights on how to prevent future ecocides.
The Revelator spoke with Dr. Shaw about the origins of Green Crime, how it helps shed light on the worst (and best) of human nature, and how this can lead to psychologically proven protections for the planet.
Let’s start at the beginning of this journey for you. When was that “Aha!” moment, or the moment you connected your interest in the environment to your expertise in criminal psychology?
When we think about environmental issues, there’s a tendency to label all environmentalists as activists. I am definitely not an environmental activist. However, I am someone who cares deeply about social injustice and crime. So I spent a lot of time thinking about why people do bad things and how we can stop them from doing those bad things.
The “Aha!” moment started when I was standing in front of my recycling bins for the millionth time saying to myself, “which one of these bins does this piece of plastic go into? Can this item actually be recycled?” I couldn’t find the answer, I couldn’t figure it out. And I thought, if this is so hard for me as someone who’s highly motivated to follow these rules to protect the environment, then there’s something else going on here: That the existing system is psychologically and practically flawed.
That got me thinking about those who want to do the right thing, psychologically wanting to do the right thing, and not being able to. And the people who choose to do the worst possible things to destroy the environment. Those who know the consequences and do it anyway.
When we talk about environmental issues, there’s a tendency to think that we’re all environmental criminals. Culpable because of actions like not recycling, overconsumption, choosing to eat meat, or whatever it is that one wants to blame. But we aren’t.
It is important to make a clear distinction between people who commit environmental crimes, from everyday people who are environmentally well-meaning but whose actions result in harm.
From a criminal psychology standpoint, I think the realization that there were people committing actual crimes with intent while we focus disproportionately on the little things that probably make almost no difference on the grand scale was the “Aha!” moment. So, I set out to discover who the serious perpetrators of green crimes are, examine what’s going on through an investigative criminal psychology lens, and suggest what we can do to stop the most egregious violations of our environment.
In each chapter of Green Crime, you carefully present true environmental crimes such as “Dieselgate” and the Deepwater Horizon disaster and apply criminal psychology science to explain the motivations of the criminal perpetrators. Tell us more about making the case that society should no longer consider these criminals “too big and powerful” to be legally prosecuted for their crimes.
I find it infuriating when people discuss environmental harm and blame either ‘the system’ or greedy CEOs who make piles of money as the world burns. These tropes are stereotypical, unhelpful characterizations of whom we’re fighting.
It’s much more useful to point out individuals within very specific roles: Yes, CEOs have a role, but who else in an organization is making these decisions? The CEO rarely directs staff to illegally dump waste or harm an environmental defender. But they can create the financial and social expectations that make these crimes happen, and fail to make sure their staff are complying with environmental laws.
But CEOs are not the people who build the tech or implement the systems. The question for me in the Volkswagen Dieselgate case is, who are the specific individuals that did this? Who was creating the defeat device software that cheated the regulatory emissions test and made it possible to sell millions of dirty diesel cars, polluting our environment with nitrous oxides (Nox) and harming human health? Who was lying? Why were they lying? Why did they do it? What are their motivations?
That is more useful than saying that it’s simply “the corporation.”
I want to understand why a specific person did it, because that person is relatable as an individual. In true crime, we don’t accept that “the system” is responsible for violent crime, we are more specific to contextualize crime. “The system” as a singular concept, or reason for crime, cannot explain it. We like true crime because it explores the motivations and narratives of individuals: Why did this person do it? Is it because that individual is a psychopath? Is it because this person uses the tropes of childhood trauma to excuse behavior? Is it because of the person’s unique situation? What is it?
We try to crawl into their minds. And what I do in this book is study and analyze the minds of the perpetrators, because that makes them graspable, real people whom we can hold accountable.
More importantly, it makes them relatable, because when we can understand what’s going on in their minds.
As a result, we can find ways to bring them to justice.
Let’s talk about the three groups of people who are critical to safeguarding our wildlife and environment in your book: The Watchers, the Investigators, and the Enforcers, who make the case that environmental crime is crime.
It is critically important to say over and over again: environmental crime is real crime.
We can tie ourselves in knots arguing about environmental harms, but we need to be careful that we don’t lose sight of the existing legal frameworks we can use to catch the serious perpetrators.
For example: We need to eat. So, what should we eat? What is least harmful? We also need to travel, to work, school, running errands. How much harm do we cause when we travel? How quickly should we be accelerating sustainable practices in food and travel? It’s easy to get tangled up in these philosophical, subjective, and abstract discussions about harm.
But there are already acts that are classified under environmental laws, and if we break them we can be held accountable. There are consequences for green crime, just like other crimes like violent crime, theft, and fraud.
In writing Green Crime, I started out with the common idea that we need a lot more laws to protect the earth. I also thought that we were way behind in regulations. But, actually ,we have many regulatory directives, and many laws already in place. In addition to purely environmental laws like the Clean Air Act, or laws protecting endangered species, there are other long-established laws that can be applied. Like laws around fraud. You can’t just lie about what you’re making and selling to people.
The best way to start tackling environmental offenders is not to add lots of new laws, but to implement and enforce those we already have. That way we catch the most egregious offenders, right now.
In the conclusion of Green Crime, you talk about “Capable Guardians”. Who are they?
I consider there to be three broad groups of people who are critical to safeguarding our environment: the Watchers, the Investigators, and the Enforcers.
Watchers report on illegal activities and measure the environmental destruction that is happening. In the book, I describe a journalist who boards ships track, and report on, illegal fishing vessels. Or the scientist who was involved in exposing the extent of the Deepwater Horizon case, tracking the oil flowing from the exploded rig.
Investigators include those who document and collect evidence of specific crimes. For example, in Green Crime I spoke with an Interpol agent who tracked down specific evidence that exposed international wildlife crime syndicates.
The Enforcers are those who make sure there are consequences. Including the police who make arrests, and judges who hand out appropriate sentences to those who break environmental laws.
Will you continue to expand this direction of study to include these people and groups in order to make green crime a reality in law enforcement and prosecution?
We need to have environmental laws that protect ecosystems. And I’m on board with concepts like ecocide, which places the rights of nature alongside the rights of humans, but I don’t go as far as equating them. Often, there is an increasing and considerable overlap between human rights and the rights of nature. In order to protect humans, you have to protect nature.
That is sometimes immediate, like in cases when nature is being destroyed where people live. And then sometimes it’s a more long-term endeavor, preventing the overall demise of our earth.
I am hoping to work with the European Commission on how to use social science to help nations to implement the new Environmental Crime Directive. As of this year, I am also going to be a ‘future steward’ for the Environmental Investigation Agency. The EIA does incredible undercover work that exposes all kinds of environmental crimes, and I hope to help them spread the results of this work to a wider audience.
Tell us more about “Writing A Letter from Our Future Selves.”
Throughout the book, I kept returning to psychological research and the ways in which, as a scientist, I look at things that affect all of us. So, concepts like environmental grief [eco-grief] or how we react to injustices in nature [eco-anger], how we feel about animals in relation to ourselves, why we do or don’t eat meat, and issues like temporal discounting and psychological ownership.
I also keep returning to specific studies on behavior change. One I came across that different ways in which you can motivate people to care more and behave more proactively for the environment. The researchers found that writing a letter from your future self was one of the most effective ways to get you invested in nature. I like it because it involves projecting yourself into the future. From that standpoint, I imagine where I might be in the future. What will the world actually look like? And then going backwards in time to the now and thinking about what I wish I would have done today for the environment through the eyes of my future self.
I think people conceptualize the future in this very abstract way and it allows them to focus on it and make it personal. What would it feel like to be in that future? How and what do I want that future to look like? And then, in reverse, what does that mean I need to do now in order to make the future I actually want to live in more likely?
If you watch or read Cli-Fi [climate fiction], you might already be thinking about some of that when fictional characters are taking you through these thought experiments of what the future could look like for better and worse. This allows you to then think differently about the present because of those futures you have lived in in your imagination. That’s a powerful psychological catalyst for change and for your own understanding of the environment and your relationship with it.
And what’s in your future, Dr. Shaw? Will we have Green Crime 2 book or perhaps an expansion of the ideas in this first book?
I always try in my work to write books as the foundational platform, and then from there, expand the work to a variety of platforms that reach different audiences across the world. I’d like to be able to put what I wrote in Green Crime into a podcast or TV series, something that reaches a wider audience.
Is there anything else you would like to add for our readers?
Research studies have found that humans tend to underestimate how much other people care about the environment. The most recent UN climate survey found that, around the world, most people think about climate change every week or every day.
But reaching people can still be difficult because these issues are seen as boring or depressing. It’s urgently time for us to rebrand environmental storytelling. It can be just as intriguing and exciting as other kinds of stories.
I hope that more people use true crime as a way of telling environmental stories. I have found that it is an incredible way of getting people engaged and inspired to act.