Green Crime: Criminal Psychology, Environmental Destruction, and Prevention

New Scientist explores how criminal psychology applies to environmental crime, arguing that environmental offenders share patterns with organized crime and that understanding these patterns can help prevent harm. The discussion covers the six pillars of environmental crime, the role of memory and false memories in investigations, and real world cases such as ivory trafficking, the Deepwater Horizon spill, and VW Dieselgate. The interview also addresses regulation, messaging, and the emotional landscape around eco-threats, offering a hopeful view that with proper funding, enforcement, and strategic communication, green crime can be disrupted and prosecuted more effectively.

Overview and Approach

The interview reframes environmental crime as a field suitable for criminal psychology, drawing parallels to gangs, drug syndicates, and human trafficking. The guest emphasizes that evil is not a fixed state, but a pathway that people can be guided toward or away from. The central goal for psychologists is crime prevention by understanding how individuals move through doors that lead to harmful actions, recognizing that circumstances influence which doors are more likely to be opened.

The Six Pillars of Environmental Crime

The speaker identifies six recurring factors that shape environmental wrongdoing: ease, impunity, rationalization, conformity, greed, and desperation. Each pillar shapes decisions at different levels of wrongdoing, from foot soldiers to senior executives. The analysis highlights how organized crime models translate effectively to environmental harm, where cross-border smuggling and supply-chain dynamics create a structure that can be studied and disrupted.

From Heat of the Moment to Long-Term Planning

Environmental crimes tend to involve longer timeframes and less impulsivity than street crime. Investigators describe a process akin to building an organizational road map, where awareness of networks, bribes, and cross-border logistics becomes crucial to preventing and pursuing offenses. This contrasts with more instantaneous violent crimes and implies different intervention strategies focused on networks, markets, and governance rather than just individual acts.

Memory, Evidence, and False Memories

The interview touches memory science, including how witnesses can implant or construct memories. The psychologist explains that memory reliability is central to historic cases and motivates careful evaluation of testimony, sometimes supported by undercover work and corroborating evidence. The emphasis is on separating genuine recollection from imagined or motivated forgetting to ensure justice and accurate historical records.

Environmental Crime Case Studies

Three major cases frame the discussion: ivory trafficking, the Deepwater Horizon spill, and the VW Dieselgate scandal. Ivory trafficking is analyzed as part of wildlife crime networks with undercover operations revealing how poaching and illegal trade are embedded in broader ecosystems. The Deepwater Horizon case is used to illustrate negligence and the dangers of disregarding negative information, showing how corporate decisions and risk perception interact with environmental harm. Dieselgate demonstrates greenwashing, regulatory gaps, and the consequences of deception in consumer markets.

Policy, Enforcement, and Prevention

The conversation emphasizes funding regulators and improving enforcement as critical levers against green crime. It argues for treating environmental criminals with parity to other serious offenses and for sanctions that deter executives as well as foot soldiers. Messaging, choice architecture, and reducing decision fatigue are discussed as practical tools for steering individuals and organizations toward sustainable choices and compliance.

Emotions, Motivation, and Hope

Eco anger is framed as a mobilizing force that can drive action, while eco-anxiety can be mitigated through exposure to success stories where investigations and prosecutions led to positive outcomes. The interview closes on a note of tempered optimism, highlighting that five of six featured cases show prosecutable channels and that frontline workers, regulators, and journalists are making tangible progress against environmental crime.