Crit Crim (2010) 18:279293 DOI 10.

1007/s10612-010-9118-4

Criminalizing Ecological Harm: Crimes Against Carrying Capacity and the Criminalization of Eco-Sinners
Dennis Mares

Published online: 17 September 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract This article examines how a broader class of environmentally harmful behavior can be examined from a criminological frame of reference. By using examples of soil degradation and anthropogenic climate change, it is argued that environmentally damaging behavior is similar to many other types of crime. Particularly when taken from the standpoint that environmentally harmful behavior is ultimately detrimental to human social organizations by undermining carrying capacity, outright criminalization might strike many as a valid option. Nonetheless, there are also some fundamental differences that will ultimately prevent a strict legalistic perspective from being successful in minimizing ecological harm. Instead, this article argues that criminologists need to emphasize the importance of shaming and status rewards in pursuing a greener future.

Introduction One of the best examples of willful ecological destruction can be found around the Aral Sea in the former Soviet Union. Soviet leaders decided that the two rivers feeding the large lake ought to be used for irrigating new elds in the desert region surrounding the lake. The irrigation canals, constructed in the 1940s, are not efcient and leak profusely. Irrigating the desert is not efcient to begin with, due to the high levels of evaporation. Nonetheless, the Soviets aimed to develop more land for export products that could be exchanged for foreign currency. The ultimate result is a 90 percent reduction of what was once the fourth largest inland body of water in the world. While agriculture initially ourished in the newly irrigated desert, the gains were offset by the collapse of a once thriving shing industry that employed *60,000 people. Furthermore, as the lake shrank and became increasingly saltier and contaminated with polluted runoff, marine life became increasingly rare. Aside from the economic impact of the collapse of the shing industry, the rapidly contracting lake also had serious health consequences for the impoverished residents residing in the old
D. Mares (&) Sociology and Criminal Justice Studies, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, Peck Hall, Box 1455, Edwardsville, IL 62026, USA e-mail: dmares@siue.edu

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shing ports (which now lie miles from the shoreline). Dust storms frequently pick up the salty polluted sands from the dry seabed and have been linked to high infant mortality rates in the region and a growth in respiratory ailments (Whish-Wilson 2002). Furthermore, the irrigated elds are now suffering from a change in the local climate (Pearce 2006). The Aral Sea once provided a check on the local climate by promoting clouds and rainfall which tempered hot temperatures in the summer and acted as insulator in the winter. With the lake all but gone, the harsher local climate has shortened the growing season and reduced agricultural output. While the Aral Sea example is one of the most glaring examples of willful destruction of nature, it also illustrates how interconnected humans remain to their environment (South 2008, pp. 195196) and how human changes to this environment can bring a substantial human cost. Since the dawn of mankind humans have struggled for independence from the constraints and dangers of nature (Diamond 1999, 2005; Elias 2000; Fagan 1999, 2000, 2006, 2008; Goudsblom 1992). In doing so, they transformed the planet into a new conguration of interdependencies, part social, and part ecological. Three large transformations have taken place during the course of human history: (1) the control of re; (2) the development of agriculture and husbandry; and (3) industrialization. By domesticating re, developing agriculture and ultimately industry, humans have increasingly shifted the balance of power from nature to humans, but in doing so created more complex social institutions that ultimately are highly dependent on ecological stability (Goudsblom 1992). Even though humans see this transformation of the planet as a testimony to their ingenuity and independence, the reality is that humans have created a large degree of their social organization on this presupposed ecological stability, which may prove to be problematic in the near future (see Ruddiman 2005; Catton 1980, 1993; Goudsblom 1992). For example, growing emission of CO2, itself an outcome of growing human cooperation (globalization) and dependence (market economies and states), is threatening to create climatic instability which may undermine human security through mass migration, and crop failures (see Abbot 2008). Whereas legal systems have traditionally attempted to guarantee the stability and continuity of specic forms of social organization, they have failed to address our continuing dependence on ecological processes. As a consequence, criminalization of behaviors that are considered harmful to social stability is the norm but behaviors that are harmful to ecological stability have not received similar formal (legal) recognition (South 1998). Even though criminologists have been expanding our view and understanding of what crime is, and despite the fact that some environmental crimes are now considered as heinous as traditional street crimes, ecologically harmful behavior continues to be largely viewed as an economic issue (see for instance, White 2009; Halsey and White 2009). This article takes a closer look at ecologically harmful activities and in particular seeks to examine if, when, and how these activities should be criminalized. This will be done by rst examining the key problems in protecting environmental stability, or the issue of carrying capacity. The human carrying capacity of the planet indicates how many people the planet can comfortably and sustainably support (Catton 1993). Furthermore, a discussion will follow that examines what-if anythingcan or should be done to limit behaviors that undermine carrying capacity. In this latter context the relevance of Norbert Elias ideas will be discussed. Elias (1982, 1996, 2000) has argued that socially harmful behavior is often increasingly controlled as societal complexity and social interdependencies grow. This control, however, often occurs most effectively through informal means.

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Carrying Capacity The term carrying capacity has been used by biologists, geographers, anthropologists and historians for quite some time (Catton 1980, 1993, 2009; Ponting 2007; Read and LeBlanc 2001; Sayre 2008; Wilson 2002). In the social and earth sciences the term generally refers to the amount of biological units a given ecosystem can sustain over the long run (see Sayre 2008; Wilson 2002). The human carrying capacity of the earth is not easily calculated, as carrying capacity is not xed. An ecosystems carrying capacity depends on the state of nature at a given moment, combined with the structure of dependency relations between humans. The latter is often expressed by the level of technological development and the degree of social organization (Catton 1993; Goudsblom 1992). Generally, the more interdependent humans become on each other and their social institutions, the better they are able to overcome the natural limits of ecosystems and raise the carrying capacity of the planet. According to Goudsblom (1992), human interdependencies are themselves an outcome of a historical process in which humans seek to control and regulate ecological processes to suit their needs. As a more complex division of labor emerges, humans are able to produce more goods (including food and shelter) and technologies (plow) that help protect them from ecological uncertainty and loosen their dependence on environmental constraints. There is, however, a ceiling at which point the human investment in land and interpersonal cooperation results in too much stress on ecosystems and thus leads to declining returns as the underlying ecological stability is undermined. The ecological sociologist Catton (1980, 1993, 2009) describes this as a state of overshoot. Where this ceiling lies is probably dependent on the sensitivity of specic ecosystems and the amount of human pressure on these ecosystems. An oft used example is Easter Island (Catton 1993; Diamond 2005). Easter Island was a once thriving island with a high degree of biodiversity and able to support close to 10,000 people but as a result of too much population pressure resulting in extensive deforestation and soil erosion, the carrying capacity today is smaller than at the peek of human development on the island. Carrying capacity can thus not just be expanded by humans, but contracted as well. Human activities often have unforeseen consequences that can create negative feedback loops and become triggering events for a reduction in carrying capacity. As the Easter Island case illustrates, deforestation is a good example. While reducing forest cover in itself need not be a problem, it is often paired with high levels of erosion, which ultimately undermine the reason for clearing woods: agriculture. If done carelessly the end result can be the total loss of productivity of an area, far lower than when woods were in place (for examples see: Fagan 1999, 2008; Diamond 2005; Wilson 2002). Overall, the earth is still able to support most of its six billion residents, although one might argue that the quality of that support has been declining. As humans have grown in number, the habitats of many other life forms have been reduced, critically endangering many plant and animal species (Wilson 2002). The question that is arising in multiple disciplines is how much longer the earth can support us. In other words: a good deal of skepticism has arisen about the earths future carrying capacity and the degree to which we will be in overshoot mode. This is in part because of continued (but leveling) population growth, which will put additional stress on ecosystems across the globe. In part, concern has also arisen about the realization that we are already dipping into long-term sustainability and have started to reach tipping points beyond which ecosystems are irreversibly damaged (such as the salinization of agricultural land, see Postel 1999; Reisner 1993; Wilson 2002).

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While it is difcult to calculate with any degree of certainty the actual carrying capacity of the planet, humans have expanded the number of people that could be fed from a couple million at the dawn of agriculture to over 6 billion in the twenty-rst century (Catton 1980; Goudsblom 1992; Montgomery 2007; Ponting 2007). This indicates that there is quite a bit of exibility in carrying capacity and that this exibility is largely achieved by human cooperation through forms of social organization and social control resulting in technologies that lead to greater efciencies in production and distribution. As humans have created longer and more tightly interwoven chains of interdependencies and created a complex division of labor, the expansion of carrying capacity has become increasingly articial, or temporary, particularly since the dawn of the industrial era. Catton (1980, p. 3) uses the term diachronic competition to describe the process in which humans borrow from the future to expand current carrying capacity. The problem is that this results in drawdown (Ibid., p. 28), the exhaustion of resources that may be needed later, and thus reducing future carrying capacity. No other issue illustrates this better than the use of fossil fuels in agriculture and its impact on world population. Since the advent of the industrial age humans have relied on fossil fuels to extend human carrying capacity (Clark and Foster 2009; Foster 1999). By powering tractors and combines it became possible for farmers to cultivate more land, more effectively, and cheaper than would be possible by human power alone. Furthermore, as this increased effectiveness rapidly depletes soil nutrients, fertilizer made from these same fuels allows farmers to economically increase their output, as many sources of natural fertilizer have already been depleted (Clark and Foster 2009). By 2000, almost 140 million tons of inorganic fertilizer was used, a 300-fold increase from a century earlier (Ponting 2007, p. 240). Transportation reliant on fossil fuels allows for rapid distribution of farm products, making food supplies more reliable and less wasteful (another good example of the ways in which growing chains of interdependency can increase carrying capacity). All combined, more people can be fed with less human effort. By the close of the last millennium, almost a third of land capable of sustaining vegetation was brought into agricultural production (Ponting 2007, p. 263; Wilson 2002). The problem is that fossil fuels are non-renewable. Already in the 1970s humans extracted 10,000 times as many tons of fossil fuels as the earth naturally replaces (Catton 1980, p. 52). John Bellamy Foster (1999) points to capitalist modes of production and its reliance on fossil fuels that have created a metabolic rift between sites of production and sites of consumption. Drawing on Marx and Liebig, Foster argues that as modern industrial agriculture emerged we increasingly drew nutrients from the soils (in the form of produce and fossil fuels) and transported them into urban centers, where these nutrients are turned into waste that is no longer reused but rather ends up polluting water resources and landlls. The drawdown of soil nutrients in conjunction with the exhaustion of a limited supply of fossil fuels means that we have allowed a growth in the human population to the point where we are dependent on that limited supply of fossil fuels to sustain ourselves at current levels. When these resources run out, we would have to reduce our population, our consumption, or both. The criminological question that arises is whether it is acceptable to articially and temporarily inate human carrying capacity in order to support a growing population on nite resources. In other words, in our attempts to shake our dependency on the unpredictable natural circumstances (local crop failures, disease, local climate and so forth) we nd ourselves in, we have created dependency relations between humans which have ultimately allowed the existence of so many people at such high levels of consumption that it undermines our ultimate goal of human cooperation: human security. Should we consider

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it a crime for people to consume so many ecological resources that it undermines the current or future existence of other humans (or other species for that matter)? Evidence from past civilizations points to catastrophic collapse for some societies that stretched their carrying capacity by relying on drawdown. One example is the collapse of many Mayan cities around 800 A.D. (Diamond 2005; Fagan 1999, 2008; Tainter 1988). Between 550 and 750 A.D. Mayan cities grew rapidly as relatively wet conditions allowed for greater agricultural returns. Cities grew in size as careful water management helped alleviate most seasonal water variation. Overall population densities in the area grew to as much as 600 per square mile (Fagan 2008 p. 149). As long as the agricultural products exceeded the needs of the farmer, surpluses could be extracted to grow the ranks of the nobility and craftspeople in the cities, which further helped increase the efciency of the agricultural system. The problem in Mayan societies as Fagan (2008) sees it, is that population had grown so much that during lean times there was nowhere for the population to go; all available land was already in production. While it must be pointed out that the prolonged drought that lay at the basis of the Mayan collapse was not the only factor in this societys demise, it was certainly one of the most important factors (cf. Tainter 1988). Knowing the potential consequences of what we are doing to our carrying capacity makes us responsible for those consequences. The Mayans probably did not have the same level of foresight that we do today. In the following section I will discuss two of the most serious forms of ecological harm and how they negatively impact human organization and security.

Resource Depletion, Climate Change and Their Potential Harmful Impacts Soil Degradation and Harm Annually the world loses about 24 billion tons of topsoil (Montgomery 2007, p. 4). While this sounds and is a lot, public discussion of ecological harm continues to focus mostly on climate change. Nonetheless, soil is critically important to ecosystems and thus humans. Without good soil, plants are less productive and less food can be produced per acre. There is ample historical evidence that some previous civilizations literally ran out of dirt and collapsed (Catton 1993; Diamond 2005; Fagan 2008; Foster 1999). Montgomery (2007), for instance, attributes part of the demise of Mediterranean societies to their poor soil management practices, in particular over-use of irrigation (Mesopotamia) and exhaustion of nutrients and erosion (Greek and Roman). Medieval European societies almost shared a similar fate but they were able to export their surplus population to colonies and thus ease the pressure on this resource (Foster 1999). Nonetheless, growing population pressure during the late Middle Ages led to the utilization of increasingly marginal (often sloped) land (Catton 1993). The resulting deforestation and erosion contributed to the persistence of famines in Europe, leading to starvation, but even more so to epidemics that invariably followed (Bray 1996). Even in the twentieth century modern farmers continued to show their disregard for sustainable practices as the US government opened up the Western states for settlement (Reisner 1993). While farmers in Western societies have recently adopted practices that have slowed the deterioration of soil loss this is typically not the case in developing nations where soil loss continues to take a large annual toll. Particularly as nations become interwoven in the global market economy, monetary incentives drive both native and foreign conglomerates to take advantage of cheap land and labor in developing nations (Clark and York 2005;

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Foster 1999; Moore 2003). This is particularly tough on soil in tropical and semi-tropical areas where soils are generally thin and sensitive to weathering and erosion (Montgomery 2007; Wilson 2002). Since so much of our easily accessible soil is already under cultivation, the loss of agricultural land will be problematic, and can lead to both direct and indirect human harms in the future. Already in 2008 food riots erupted across the globe when food prices were driven up by the high cost of oil (CNN 2008). Certainly if the cultivatable land per person declines through population growth, the fertility of land is reduced and articial fertilizers become more expensive, then food riots may become a more persistent problem as supply and demand diverge. The continued overuse of soil is therefore not a private matter but one that impacts social organization and stability across the globe (Abbot 2008). Soil conditions therefore can interact with market and state mechanisms in creating an inequitable distribution of food resources. This may lead directly to violence over soil but also trigger widespread and violent protests against governments as their legitimacy is undermined by not adequately protecting its citizens from these social upheavals. Harm also results from the clearing of native vegetation for agriculture. In some instances land can become more vulnerable to landslides during storms. In 1999, for instance, hurricane Mitch killed at least 6,500 people in Honduras and 3,800 people in Nicaragua (NOAA undated). Many of the dead were buried in mudslides that were caused by agricultural expansion on steep hillsides that are not suitable for such intensive farming. Particularly as food becomes scarcer, people will take greater risks in cultivating marginal land on hills and mountains, increasing the likelihood of high casualties during extreme weather events. In developing nations where food security will likely be threatened rst, governments will not be able to stop such marginal cultivation, putting residents of these nations at highest risk of death and injury. Aside from these direct harmful effects of food insecurity, clearly the most pressing social issue is the degree to which we can feed the worlds population in the future. If we continue on our current course, we may expect food shortages, particularly in the most vulnerable parts of the world. This in turn can have deleterious consequences for human societies as war over remaining resources and large scale migration may seriously undermine human security and social organization (Abbot 2008). In short, the exhaustion of soil resources across the globe has great potential to create substantial future human insecurity and harm. Most of the negative effects are likely to be found in poorer, developing nations. In the past, soil was typically seen as a communal good (Fagan 2000; Foster 1999; Goudsblom 1992). Growing commodication has meant that food production is now a forprot enterprise in which nancial returns, not feeding people, are the overriding objectives. Criminologists have a duty to focus on this topic because of the potential harm and violence that breakdowns in this eld of social organization can produce. In particular, the consequences of food insecurity may trigger a decline in institutional legitimacy, undermining formal social control in many settings (LaFree 1998). Global Warming, Direct and Indirect Harms Global warming, or anthropogenic climate change, is not a simple warming of the earths surface. In fact, most scientist agree that they do not know exactly how mans impact on the planet will play out; some areas will get warmer, some might get cooler; some areas will become drier, some wetter (Broecker and Kunzig 2008; Flannery 2005; IPCC 2007; Pearce 2007). Until the 1970s humans assumed their presence was too insignicant to

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cause any major changes to the earths climate. The rst clear evidence of a human imprint on the planet was the thinning of the ozone layer, caused by pumping CFCs and other noxious gases into the atmosphere. While this event has little impact on the planets climate and more on the health of humans, animals and vegetation alike, it did signal that humans couldand indeed did- change something in nature. Even though gases such as CO2 and methane have been known to act as insulators in the atmosphere since the nineteenth century, it was only in the 1980s that researchers started to think more about the impact of a growing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Researchers that examined millennia old ice-cores, found a strong relationship between the amount of CO2 and temperature (Alley 2000; Ward 2007). Humans have introduced a growing amount of CO2 since the dawn of agriculture over 5,000 years ago, as people cleared forests (which releases carbon from trees) and irrigated dryer regions (which releases methane). Some researchers even suspect that humans averted plunging into a new ice age because of the gases released as a result of these human actions (Ruddiman 2005, pp. 7983). What is certain is that the exponential growth of greenhouse gasses since the industrial age eclipsed all previous human interference and is setting us on a path of signicant climate change. Because of feedback loops, such as the thawing of the northern tundras, which will release more methane and thus likely speed up the release of greenhouse gases, it is unclear how the process will unfold for specic localities (Broecker and Kunzig 2008). What climate scientists do agree on is that the earth is warming, and it appears that much of this warming is taking place in northern latitudes (IPCC 2007). The IPCC panel on climate change estimates that temperatures in the twentyrst century may see an average rise between .6 and 4.0 degrees Celsius (1.2F to 8F). Aside from temperature change, scientists also predict changes in precipitation patterns, with dry areas generally getting drier, as well as a rise in sea levels (Broecker and Kunzig 2008; Flannery 2005; IPCC 2007). Even more problematic is the economic and human cost of the rise in sea levels, exposing some 300 million people to increased risk of ooding. With sea levels rising between one and three feet over the next century, many nations will either have to adopt expensive coastal defenses, or simply abandon their coastal areas as increasing storms and hurricanes are forecast to claim more lives. Although the link between storms and hurricanes and global warming is not clear, we do know that with a rising ocean level, low lying coastal areas will become more vulnerable to ooding, increasing both the economic and human costs of such storms (Abbot 2008). The rise in temperature and the growth in CO2 in the atmosphere will also have an impact on marine life, and the amount of resources that can be extracted from oceans. As the water becomes warmer and more acidic (as CO2 is sequestered in water), crustaceans and sh alike will see a decline in their habits and consequently humans will see a decline in the maritime economy (Wilson 2002). Fishing grounds are also likely to shift away from the equator to the poles, adding additional pressure to impoverished nations in tropical zones and increasing the pressure on food production reliant on shrinking soil resources (Fagan 2006). One of the key features of anthropogenic climate change is that it will likely disrupt prevailing weather patterns, possibly delaying monsoon seasons in places like India, and reducing rainfall in already dry places like the Southwestern US, the Sahel and the Mediterranean (Pearce 2006). This may very well be one of the most signicant impacts of anthropogenic warming as it has the largest potential for affecting human lives and social organization. Agriculture dependent on predictable rainfall patterns feeds a substantial proportion of the world, and if that pattern were to be disturbed, the consequences could be

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disastrous. Ward (2007) suggests an even greater harm that might come from our interference with ecological processes: mass extinction. He has found historical parallels between previous mass extinction events and a strong rise in greenhouse gases. In the case of the largest extinction event, the Permian extinction 200 million years ago (larger than the Jurassic-Cretaceous extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs), 90% of the species on earth and 97% of living beings were eliminated as a result of a massive atmospheric injection of greenhouse gases that had been sequestered in the worlds oceans but were unleashed as a result of changing oceanic currents (Ward 2007, p. 129). For criminologists one of the key challenges in studying the impact of climate change liesas in the case of soil depletion- with the impact that these processes have on governmental legitimacy. As local climate becomes less predictable governments will be less able to protect their citizens from the outfall of climatic change. Whereas one could discuss many more harms resulting from human interference with global climatic patterns, it should at least be clear that the human dependence on stability and reliability in ecological processes and resources (water, soil and weather) has become signicant, and that human interference with ecological processes can be sufcient cause to create harm to individuals and societies alike (not to mention non-human life forms). While the exact outcomes of these processes may be difcult to forecast, it is clear that human social organization aimed at securitizing social and natural conditions is, in fact, undermining the security of natural conditions and thus ultimately the relative stability of social organization (Barnett et al. 2010). Changing human migration patterns, malnutrition, the spread of infectious diseases, deaths from extreme weather events, can all be expected to add to the costs of human societies as a result of our collective and individual actions (Abbot 2008).

Undermining Carrying Capacity as a Form of Crime: A Legalistic Perspective? Crimes are generally seen as specic instances of harm inicted by some specically identiable people on other identiable people. Even many ecological crimes often have identiable actors such as the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Generally these crimes are dealt with as economic crimes. The damage to the environment, human livelihoods and ecological diversity is treated as a numerical equation that can be estimated in some monetary equivalent. It is generally not seen as an act of violence, even though people, animals, and ecosystems often sustain irreversible damage. When humans work together in social organizations and societies and undermine the sustainability of the earth (with respect to its people, and/or ecosystems) culpability of individual actors or organizations is not necessarily obvious. If we drive our cars, which chug CO2 in the atmosphere, which in turn could affect our climate, culpability for the harm is fuzzy at best. It could be the drivers of the vehicles, the corporations that provide us with vehicles and gasoline, and even the governments that enable us by paving even larger swathes of land into roads. In this sense, everyone that allows, facilitates, or engages in behavior or actions that undermine our (future) means of existence carries a degree of responsibility for reducing the earths carrying capacity and therefore engages in a crime against both the planet and humanity at large. Before one can speak of criminalization of these behaviors, however, there has to be a clear understanding as to what damage is done to ecosystems by which actors. Since the natural environments we live in are inherently complex it is usually not until damage occurs that we start to discover how our actions created the damage (Wilson 2002).

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Other more complex legal questions also emerge. It is difcult to assume there is a degree of culpability on the part of humans when they are simply doing what they are taught to do. Wilson (2002), for instance, argues that the human exploitation of the environment is a matter of biological survival that is part of our make-up. Nonetheless, consider a farmer who degrades his soil so badly that it will eliminate a patch of land that could have otherwise fed 1,000 people. Is this person committing some type of future manslaughter by simply exerting his/her personal right to use private property? What about a religion that encourages people to procreate where the additional people in a particular nation will exhaust its resources; is the religious doctrine responsible for any future famines? Modern legal systems do not recognize the harm done to human carrying capacity as a broader criminal class. Most legal systems have highly specic laws that regulate only the most severe forms of ecological damage (toxic dumping, illegal logging practices, selling unsafe foodstuff, depriving people of food), but none recognize the harm done by individuals or human societies to the future sustainability of the earth. This is glaringly obvious when examining actions that are considered critical to the economic and social wellbeing of current residents. Whereas Marxist ecological sociologists like Foster and Moore have argued that the ultimate blame lies with our capitalist system, this is too simplistic a view. Throughout human history humans have overextended themselves, and it almost seems that humans are innately predisposed to engage in such behavior when the benets of environmentally destructive behavior exceed the costs to individuals (Diamond 1999, 2005; Fagan 2006, 2008; Wilson 2002). In most cases, overshoot is the outcome of economic needs that are supported by governments and their peoples. Nonetheless, it is ultimately a states responsibility to protect us from ourselves. Governments therefore ought to assume a parens patriae attitude. Without assuming such level of responsibility, the future legitimacy of states could be severely undermined. Throughout most of humankinds history the legitimacy of states was based on a monopoly on the use of force that served to protect its citizens from harm (Elias 1982, 2000; Giddens 1990; Tilly 1992). In the near future that monopoly of force should be used to protect the carrying capacity of a states territory. The relation between nation states and capitalism is now at a threshold. Capitalism is currently one of the largest driving forces in the destruction of ecological resources. Based on never-ending growth, the economic system is stretching the earths future viability and thereby the security of human societies (Foster 1999; Clark and Foster 2009; Moore 2003; York et al. 2003). Particularly as the promise of a growing standard of living is drawing increasingly large players (India, China, Brazil, and Russia) into the game, the demand for earths resources is expected to grow exponentially. Meanwhile, the US and Europe continue to consume a disproportionate share of planetary resources to pacify demands for a decent standard of living. Because many governments are afraid to lose afuence and create political resentment among the populace, many are hesitant to restrict their citizens consumption patterns enough to moderate the impact of ecological harm to any signicant degree. A case in point is the recent move of many governments to gradually phase out incandescent light bulbs. In the US the law is hidden under greater efciency requirements. The program was not particularly welcomed by residents. In a recent Rasmussen poll, seventy-two percent of people felt that the government had no business telling them what light bulbs to use (Rasmussen 2009). Even Europeans, more used to government control, went on a buying spree before incandescent bulbs were permanently taken off the shelves (Shafer 2009). While this minor legislation is not likely to stave of the worst effects off climate change or

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depletion of fossil fuels, it is clear that popular opinion is not favorable to any type of legislation that curtails private consumption of limited resources. The key issue with assigning blame and culpability with regard to matters of ecological harm is that most modern legal systems are anthropocentric and a-historical in focus. Particularly in the Western context they focus on immediate human interests only, and recognize the earth in as far as it relates to immediate economic interests, something to be used for gain (Foster 1999). This is not odd, given that since the dawn of agriculture humans have treated land and natural resources as innite and therefore of little intrinsic value (Elias 2000; Wilson 2002). Humans also regard their use of natural resources as a right with no obligations attached. Directly or indirectly the exhaustion of resources and the changes we create in our environment lead humans to being harmed in multiple ways. This may even include harm to the standard of living described above. However, to proceed onto a strictly legal path is unlikely to be very fruitful given some of the political and economical obstacles sketched above.

Why Ecological Harm is a Crime What binds almost all activities currently dened as crime is that they emerged to safeguard relations of interdependency between humans and between humans and their social organizations (Elias 2000; Mares 2009). Laws serve as reminders that social organization is fragile, and that individuals and society need protection from peoples natural impulses. While the specic content of laws and the behaviors targeted are highly localized and often rife with conicting claims and power relations, the justication for their existence is almost always similar: to protect civilization and to protect social organization and order, in other wordshuman security. Since humankinds existence, ecological interdependencies have been overlooked by formal law. Perhaps the reason for this is that nature has only recently become viewed as something that can be serene and peaceful, and that for most of our history, nature was feared (Elias 2000, p. 419; Goudsblom 1992). As chains of interdependency between humans have lengthened and the resulting division of functions brought some aspects of nature under human control, nature became a resource that could assist in building new social interdependencies, distancing humans even further from natures unpredictable forces (famine, disease, oods and so forth). Natural resources until recently- were seen as limitless, and humans never worried about the impact they had on nature; if a piece of land was worn out and unfertile from overuse, people would simply move on and clear another stretch of woods. The limitations of over-using natureand thus ultimately reafrming the continuing dependence of humans on nature- only occasionally became clear. Most often these were highly localized scenarios in which population grew faster than resources could provide for, or when overreliance on one source (such as the potato famine in Ireland) proved fatal. Two possible solutions were most often employed: emigration, or technical innovations that raised the carrying capacity of the land. The growing complexity of social organization is at the very least a partial outcome of human struggles to escape nature but its outcome, a global network of social interdependencies, has created a potential time bomb as it is exactly these interdependencies that require the continued overuse of resources and create conditions under which our climate might destabilize and our soils become sterile. Ecologically harmful behavior therefore is a strong potential threat to human security and should be more actively recognized by states as such.

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Solving Ecological Harm Through Shaming It remains to be seen whether criminalization of ecological harm is a fruitful avenue in anything but the clearest and most outrageous cases. Part of the problem is that the connection between offender (human) and victim (nature) is not clear cut; the human damages to carrying capacity are simply too complex. Furthermore, individuals can easily claim that governmental entities and corporations enabled them and condoned their behavior, while being fully aware of the consequences. Legislating individual and private behavior (such as energy consumption, or reproduction) is therefore not likely to be very successful if it is not connected to a more fundamental cultural shift in thinking about the environment. Rather than relying on strict criminalization of behaviors harming our carrying capacity, I would suggest that we emphasize both collective and individual responsibility for our actions and that we underline their negative impact by employing a shaming approach (Braithwaite 1989). This would require a cultural shift in thinking about the environment and take the form of a civilizing offensive, or civilizing spurt (see Elias 1996; Schmidt 1993). Civilizing offensives generally seek to shame and embarrass individuals into compliance with more acceptable standards of conduct, the ultimate goal being the creation of both social and self-control. Interpersonal violence is an example of a behavior that has been reduced in Western societies since the Middle Ages as a result of these processes (Elias 2000; Spierenburg 1994; Mares 2004, 2009). The key reason why violence has dropped over the centuries is not because of the seriousness of the penalty, or the growing certainty of apprehension, but rather because violence is increasingly seen as distasteful conduct. Today the accusation of being violent pollutes ones social status. Violence was reigned in because it was dysfunctional in modern societies and undermined relations of interdependence, but a great degree of social control was achieved by social rewarding of people who abstained from violence. Like Elias, the sociologists Pierre Bourdieu (1984) pointed to the importance of distinction and the higher status that can be conferred on people engaging in socially distinctive behaviors. Through adoption of distinction lower status groups can acquire a higher degree of social status. If environmentally sound behavior is practiced by higher social status groups, that behavior is likely to become attractive to lower status individuals seeking to boost their cultural and social capital. This idea clearly rests on informal social control of behavior. If Elias and Bourdieus ideas are correct and ecologically sustainable behavior were to be adopted by people of high social status, this ecologically distinctive behavior could trickle down the status ladder. In other words, once this process takes hold, people will want to abandon their cars and switch to renewable energy sources to heat and cool their homes; they will want to eat produce grown in a sustainable manner, and they should not feel the need to sprinkle their lawn ve times a week. Just as non-violent courtiers rose quickly in the ranks of the nobility in the French courts (Elias 2000), eco-conscious citizens should derive some benet from their pro-social actions. Unlike Braithwaite, who sees a more active ofcial role in punishing offenders through shaming, I suggest that ecooffenses can be managed more effectively by social rewards of pro-ecological (and prosocial) behavior, which will ultimately result in people refusing to engage in eco-crimes because it is distasteful to their habitus. Once pro-ecological behavioral norms spread, the push for formal laws should meet with far less resistance. The problem with such Eliasian civilizing processes is that they generally progress very slowly, and in the case of ecological harm that may not be fast enough.

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Elias (1996, 2000), however, recognized that civilizing processes do not all advance at the same pace, and in some cases distinct civilizing spurts, or civilizing offensives can be observed. These usually emerge when there is a distinct (perceived) threat against social order, but there is no reason to assume that they could not develop for threats against ecological stability. Adler (2001), for instance, saw such a civilizing offensive at work in the calls for the expansion of the categorization of homicides to include vehicular homicides and infanticides in early twentieth century Chicago. This civilizing offensive was a direct response to intense fear of recent immigrants, whose perceived immoral behavior was threatening to the more powerful social groups. Similarly, the growing distaste for foxhunting in Britain can be seen as a civilizing spurt, in which the original need for the sport became replaced with feelings of shame and embarrassment (Fletcher 1998, pp. 109110). More recent examples in which a quick change to the thresholds of shame and embarrassment led to increasing formal and informal controls are the changing attitudes toward domestic abuse, sexual predation, drunk driving and bullying. The process is in some ways similar to the development of moral panics (Cohen 1973) but does not necessarily need to be supported by ofcial lobbying groups or need to result in the enactment of formal laws. Formal laws would probably emerge after the bulk of the population was already convinced of the illegitimate nature of behavior. A more systematic example of how civilizing spurts could be initiated with respect to ecological crimes is illustrated by an experiment conducted in Perth, Australia (Kantola and Syme 1984). Residents with similar levels of energy use, who had previously indicated they thought conservation was important, were sent three different letters. One-third of respondents received a letter with conservation tips, one-third received a letter with tips and an estimate of how much they could save by implementation of the tips, and the nal third received a letter in which they were told in no uncertain terms that their actual energy use showed that they were among the most intensive energy users in Perth (Kantola and Syme 1984, p. 418). A follow-up on the actual changes in energy use of the three groups revealed that only the third group reduced its use (by about 20 percent). The effect was temporary, however, which suggests that sustained shaming efforts are needed to instill a greater degree of ecological self-restraint in the habitus of people. Shaming without incentives to reward pro-ecological behavior is not likely to prove a fruitful avenue. One of the key ways in which a sustained effort could take shape is if elite groups more openly engage in what I call eco-conspicuous consumption. I believe we are already seeing a growth in such behavior among some high status groups. New versions of extremely fuel efcient cars are often bought and displayed by celebrities. The days of showing up in giant SUVs or Hummers at award shows are all but gone. Even Californias governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, modied his two remaining Hummers to run on biodiesel and hydrogen. Devoted car collector, Jay Leno, was only the second person to receive a hydrogen power BMW 7 series, after SNL legend Will Ferrell took delivery of the rst (celebrity car blog 2010). In the US, celebrities and to a lesser extent prominent business people are seen as trendsetters. People from lower status groups feel they can gain status by mimicking the behavior of these highly regarded groups (think about the spread of cosmetic surgical procedures, for instance). As eco-conscious behavior becomes seen as a status enhancing activity it will trickle down to lower status groups, aspiring upward mobility. This type of distinction gives people an incentive to align their behavior with that of elite groups and may lead them to exert more self-restraint with regard to ecological harm. Throughout most of history signicant changes in the social control of behavior and how this behavior is socially valued has emerged bottom up, rather than top down

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(Black 1998; Cooney 1998; Elias 2000). Nonetheless, we should also realize that the primary drivers of change are individuals who are entangled in various congurations of power and dependency relations, and that informal social controls can be more powerful than the best crafted laws in breaking ingrained behaviors. What is more, laws need some degree of popular support to be enacted and enforced. It is therefore very likely that legal measures will not become effective until a critical mass of people is already convinced that certain behaviors are damaging to ecological and social stability.

Conclusion This article explored how broader ecological harms (such as global warming and soil degradation) should be seized by criminologists as a serious topic of study. Through several case studies I explained the similarities of ecological harm and traditional crimes. In particular the concept of carrying capacity is important in understanding how humansthrough their environmentally destructive behavior- undermine ecological stability and thereby ultimately social stability which has traditionally been used as a standard for formal criminalization of behavior. The examples of soil degradation and anthropogenic climate change both illustrated how human actions have limited the carrying capacity of the planet. The potential human/societal harms that may evolve from the reduction in carrying capacity include new migratory patterns and violence over scarce resources to name but a few. This article argues that formal mechanisms of social control are unlikely to succeed in bringing about behavioral change. Instead, I argue that more informal processes of shaming and status rewards are likely to be more successful. Particularly instructive in this regard is Norbert Elias idea of civilizing spurts, which helps illuminate the development of social and self restraints through processes of social distinction.

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