Rolling Back Climate Regulation: Trump’s Assault on the Planet

Abstract

The Donald Trump administration has engaged in a number of crimes related to climate change. This article examines these climate crimes, in particular, the administration’s organized denial of global warming and its political omissions concerning the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions that result in the rollback of existing regulatory policies related to the climate crisis. This criminality is explored through the lens of the concept of state–corporate crime, a concept utilized by a number of green criminologists to analyze environmental harms. The Trump administration’s rollback of climate change regulations is first located within its historical, political, and social contexts. Then, the specific actions and political omissions that constitute these rollbacks are described and analyzed as state–corporate environmental crimes.