Green Criminology for Social Sciences: Introduction to the Special Issue

Brisman, Avi

The immediate aftermath of Earth Day 1970 ushered in a host of environmental legislation: in the United States alone, the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, National Forest Management Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and Toxic Substances Control Act were all passed with bipartisan support in the 1970s. [...]in 2020, we are bearing witness to disappearing Arctic ice, dying coral reefs, floating plastic garbage patches, floods, greenhouse gas emissions, intensifying storms, raging wildfires, a precipitous sea-level rise and searing summer heat—as well as mourning the loss of human and nonhuman life in the Deepwater Horizon explosion off the coast of Louisiana, which occurred ten years ago this April (on almost the exact day of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day) and set into motion the biggest oil spill in the history of the United States (Editorial Board 2020). The result has been an area of scholarship which has blossomed to encompass and speak to a diverse range of interests and concerns, including air and water pollution, climate change, deforestation, the extraction and metabolization of natural “resources,” harms to animals other than human animals, environmental (in)justice and relationships between “nature” and “culture.” Continuing the theme of nonhuman animals, James Gacek and Richard Jochelson, in “Animals as Something More Than Mere Property: Interweaving Green Criminology and Law,” further probe the edges of human–animal relations by discussing and describing the development of laws governing human ownership and management of nonhuman animals, arguing that the studies of law and green criminology, when interwoven, “have the potential to reconstitute the animal as something more than mere property.”