ABSTRACT
This chapter examines climate change and the Anthropocene from the point of view of the key perpetrators of global warming. This entails an exploration of the systemic reasons for climate change since industrialisation. It is argued that capitalism as a specific mode of production is intrinsically linked to the causes of global warming (in part, through the impetus to continually expand production and consumption), as is the key institutional form through which this occurs, the transnational corporation (the actions of which are based upon private profit rather than the public interest). The chapter considers the question of responsibility for carbon emissions, finding that both nation-states and corporations must be held to account for global warming. With foreknowledge of the problem and the harmful consequences of climate change, contemporary policies and practices can be considered criminal, and its perpetrators therefore as ‘carbon criminals’.
