Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2020 -

Climate crisis, climate catastrophe, and climate emergency are some of the rallying cries that have been used to describe the most pressing concern of our era, which Kramer (Western Michigan Univ.) explores in this timely and important book. His aim is to identify, describe, and explain "climate crimes": acts and omissions that deny climate change is real or caused by humans, that fail to mitigate greenhouse gases, or that adapt to climate disruptions in militaristic or unjust ways. Following a helpful introductory chapter, the next six chapters deal with several specific forms of state-corporate climate crime: extractions and rising emissions, political omission, socially organized denial, and climate crimes of empire, including wars for oil and military greenhouse gas omissions. The last chapter ("The 'Climate Swerve'") thankfully chooses optimism over despair as Kramer demonstrates how societies can and should decarbonize, cultivate public opinion, and expose and resist state-corporate climate crimes. With a laudatory foreword by leading green criminologist and climate change expert Rob White of the University of Tasmania, this is all in all a must read.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.