Green Crimes or ecocide : a new vocabulary for a very old threat to our planet. Julia Shaw examines six different forms of ecocide: emissions fraud, the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, the ivory trade and the killing of elephants, illegal fishing in Antarctica, illegal mining in Africa, and oil spills. As a criminal psychologist, Shaw tries to understand why humans are capable of destroying their own planet without necessarily feeling guilty about it. She explores the roles of ease, impunity, greed, rationalisation, conformity, and desperation, showing how people at the top of the food chain and those at the bottom can both become trapped in these spirals of environmental destruction. What I particularly liked is that the book doesn’t only focus on the perpetrators. Shaw also brings forward the many people fighting these crimes and shows how, sometimes, they manage to make a real difference. It is a depressing book, inevitably, but not entirely without hope. There are a few small windows onto the possibility of change – and that is what makes the book worth reading.
“If we accept Bentham’s argument, then we might run into problems in our own minds. For example, many people who eat meat also love animals. This can make people suffer from what is known as the meat paradox. The fact that so many people who feel this way continue to cat meat is something that psychologists have been trying to understand for years. Researchers have found that it is mostly because people are excellent at morally disengaging from issues of animal welfare.
Moral disengagement is a psychological mechanism that reduces the discomfort of behaving in a way that contradicts a person’s own moral standards. It’s when we decide not to think about something too hard. When we choose not to care.”