ABSTRACT
This chapter examines patterns of environmental crime among the largest multinational corporations, both in the United States and around the world, as well as the environmental deviance committed by the federal government. Government is frequently a major environmental polluter and, at times, engages in acts of environmental deviance in consort with major industrial corporations. Environmental inequality research must include the role of government, both nationally and globally. Environmental crime is part of an entire pattern of criminal behavior in which many of these industrial giants engage with alarming frequency. Aside from the government's own abysmal record of polluting the environment, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) itself has demonstrated an alarming degree of corruption, misfeasance, and malfeasance. The chapter describes a set of institutionalized deviant behaviors among some corporate fields that are environmentally related. It argues that such firms use a variety of political and media influences to persuade the public that they are actually environmentally concerned.
