ABSTRACT
The theme of this volume, state crime and resistance, suggests the following question: do criminologists have a professional responsibility to assist in the identification, analysis and prevention of state (and corporate) actions that have the potential to cause great physical harm to the biosphere and enormous social harm to large numbers of people around the world, even if those actions are not illegal? This chapter takes the position that criminologists do in fact have such a responsibility, particularly with regard to the existential threat of anthropogenic global warming that is causing catastrophic climate change. I argue that criminologists have a professional obligation to engage in a public criminology on this issue, speaking in the prophetic voice and participating in social and political actions concerning this potentially devastating form of state-corporate crime (Michalowski and Kramer 2006; Kramer and Michalowski 2012).
