Julia Shaw: Without understanding rationalization—and that all of us can talk ourselves into or out of acknowledging that our actions can be harmful—we will fail to understand the motivations for environmental crime. Rationalizing bad behavior is deeply human.

We need to create ways to celebrate people who come forward about harmful actions by their organizations or others. In organized crime that may mean going to the police; in personal situations it can be different. We should put safeguards in place.

At what point do I take stock and ask, “What am I doing? Is this still ethical?”

Mike DiGirolamo: Welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. I’m your co-host, Mike DiGirolamo, bringing you weekly conversations with experts, authors, scientists, and activists working on the front lines of conservation, shining a light on pressing issues facing our planet and holding people in power to account. This podcast is edited on Gadigal land today.

On the newscast we speak with Julia Shaw, a criminal psychologist at University College London and a TV and audio presenter. Her expertise lies in understanding the criminal mind, and she has applied investigative and interviewing skills to learn why people commit environmental crimes. Shaw documents her findings in her latest book, Green Crime: Inside the Minds of the People Destroying the Planet and How to Stop Them.

In this conversation, Shaw describes the commonalities she observed while investigating six major environmental crimes, summarized in six pillars. She shares her views on preventing future crimes: increasing support for environmental regulators and international law enforcement, and driving cultural shifts so environmental crimes are seen in the same light as violent crimes. Legal conventions such as ecocide can help, she says. Shaw also stresses the need for better ways for whistleblowers to come forward.

Mike: Julia Shaw, welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. It’s great to have you with us.

Julia: Hi. Great to be here.

Mike: The first thing I think we should talk about, Julia, is your impetus for writing this book. You described feeling dismayed about the polycrisis—its effects on biodiversity, climate, and pollution. That’s a lot to cover, and we’ll talk more about it, but I want to ask about the urgency behind it. Also, what was a takeaway from researching this book that could help pinpoint that urgency? Is there space for criminalizing nature crime with things like ecocide?

Julia: Definitely. I wrote the book because I was what you might call “eco-depressed.” Psychologists are unpacking eco-emotions more and more. Eco-depression is when we feel overwhelmed and saddened by the triple planetary crisis. Compared with eco-anxiety—stress in the body about what’s happening—or eco-anger—anger is the most mobilizing eco-emotion that pushes people to protest or take action—I was in the depression phase. All I could see was doom and gloom. My feed was filled with negative news and the message that nobody’s doing anything and we’re all doomed.

As a criminal psychologist, I asked: is there anything I can do to help? I’d heard the term “ecocide,” and about campaigners trying to define it. I realized something interesting was happening in that conversation. As part of writing the book, I met the person who originally coined the term in the 1970s—who has now fallen a bit out of love with it. I joined a debate about whether we should have new language for how we relate to the environment and how we criminalize or legally address environmental harm.

There is room for this conversation. I like the term. Calling it “ecocide” places the destruction of biodiversity at scale in the same category as crimes against humanity, like genocide. That helps us understand—globally and profoundly—what’s happening and what we need to protect.

Mike: It’s an interesting term. I’ve thought about it a lot. You highlight six pillars of crime in the book: ease, impunity, greed, rationalization, conformity, and desperation. Is there a common denominator behind environmental crime? If so, why?

Julia: While writing, I looked for patterns across about a thousand cases. I focused on six major environmental crimes: the Dieselgate case; illegal logging in the Amazon and the murder of environmental defenders; wildlife crime syndicates and trafficking; illegal fishing—including one of the longest sea chases ever, which involved Interpol; illegal mining in South Africa; and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which is about negligence.

The six pillars emerged from these cases and many others. My goal was to understand the minds of the perpetrators. We focus a lot on what’s going wrong—which is critical—but we spend less time on why people do these things. When we do, we often jump straight to the system—capitalism, big structures. That’s important, but not enough, and it can be overwhelming. We don’t need to wait for capitalism to change before addressing the triple planetary crisis. What can we do meanwhile? Understand individuals.

As a psychologist, I asked: what if we create psychological profiles of the people involved in these big crimes? That’s how I came to the Six Pillars, adapting a criminology model—Situational Crime Prevention Theory—used widely in UK policing. I turned it toward psychological factors and saw them everywhere, especially in big cases:

• Ease: People commit environmental crimes because it’s easier than not to. Think of complex recycling or waste rules: “I could do this properly for long-term benefit, or I could just mix things.” At scale, corporations doing that becomes a crime.
• Impunity: Believing you’ll get away with it—or actually getting away with it. That can be a lack of laws, enforcement, or perceived risk: “My friends got caught for illegal fishing, but I’m clever; I won’t.”
• Greed: We rush to this one. I literally have audiences chant, “It’s not just greed,” to dispel the stereotype. Money isn’t automatically greed; we earn to survive. Greed is taking too much, more than needed, and taking it from someone else.
• Rationalization: “It’s not that bad,” or “Others do worse.” In the Volkswagen case, some said, “I could be doing worse things as an engineer.” That’s not the point; faking emissions harms our air.
• Conformity: “Everyone else is doing it; I’d be an idiot not to.” That feeds corruption: “Everyone at work or in my community exploits this resource or loophole.”
• Desperation: Feeling trapped—psychologically or financially. A boss demands the impossible, or you’re poor. In illegal logging, wildlife crime, or illegal fishing, those holding the chainsaws, lines, or traps are often extremely poor and exploited. Without them, much of this would end.

I like the Six Pillars because they’re practical and human. If we’re dealing with humans—not fictional monsters—we can stop them.

Mike: I’m interested in why rationalization showed up everywhere. I want to come back to that, but first, the individuals fighting back. You said learning about them encouraged you. Who are some of the most compelling environmental defenders, in your view? We cover defenders a lot at Mongabay. From your professional perspective, who felt most compelling or effective?

Julia: I structured Green Crime through the eyes of investigators, applying a true-crime approach to environmental storytelling—by design. People like true crime, and I’m a true-crime presenter. Could we make these cases as compelling? Could we meet the “detective” equivalents?

Who does this work? Yes, police—but many others too, especially because these are transnational issues: Interpol; agencies catching corporate offenders. I spoke with the regulator who helped expose Volkswagen’s cheating—Alberto Ayala—then at the California Air Resources Board (CARB), now in Sacramento. He was part of the team that realized VW was lying by using a “defeat device” in diesel cars—marketed as “clean diesel.” Many remember the greenwashing campaign, which brought lawsuits. VW lied for a year, but CARB showed the emissions were 10–40 times legal limits. Ayala couldn’t talk for years because he worked with the FBI; only recently could he tell the full story.

I developed a real love of regulators—unsung heroes we should celebrate. Without them, no one ensures our water is drinkable, our air isn’t wildly polluted, and our products don’t explode.

I also highlight the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). They’re an NGO that works undercover, infiltrating organized crime to gather evidence for local police—covering wildlife crime, F-gases, timber trafficking, and waste crime. Their website has excellent reports. The United Nations also does incredible work—with learning modules on individual laws that help people understand their rights and how to fight back.

Mike:  Hello listeners, and thanks for tuning in. During this podcast, you’ll hear references to an earlier conversation I had with Luke Kemp. And if you want to check that out, you can find a link in the show notes. You can also pre-order green crime now, but you’re encouraged to shop at your local bookseller. If you’re enjoying the Mongabay newscast, please do leave us a review and subscribe to us on the platform of your choice. Back to the conversation with Julia Shaw.

Yes, the EIA is an organization we’ve spoken with as well, particularly on pangolin trafficking. We have articles and material I’ll link in the show notes. I want to go back to Dieselgate and rationalization. I listened to your interview with Maryam Pasha and Ben Hurst. Your psychoanalysis of Dieselgate and the perpetrators struck me. The big takeaway you alluded to was that it’s not just greed—there are other components, and rationalization seemed prominent. Why was it so prominent, not just in Dieselgate but in other cases?

Julia: I found all six pillars in all the cases. Initially, I hoped to find one case per factor—one for ease, one for greed—but that wasn’t possible. These factors recur and reflect complexity. Crimes have levels:

• At the top in business, a CEO or leader drives direction. In organized environmental crime, there’s a boss—often family-linked, like mafia structures.
• Then senior management—reporting upward and managing others.
• Then junior management—recruiting poachers in wildlife crime, or managing engineering or coding teams at VW.
• At the bottom, foot soldiers—implementing code in VW, or poaching elephants or pangolins, or cutting trees.

Different factors map to different levels: desperation at the bottom, greed at the top. In VW, rationalization was striking partly because of insights from Jack Ewing of The New York Times, who covered diesel, emissions, and engineering. For a long time it wasn’t clear how VW cheated—only that they did in testing, then emitted far higher NOx on the road. As he investigated, whistleblowers or anonymous VW insiders would meet him—late at diners, flashing documents. He said 90% of the time they insisted they were “good people.”

People who are truly secure don’t usually need to declare they’re good. Perhaps they were trying to convince him—or themselves. Notably, many weren’t expressing remorse about environmental harm.

Without understanding rationalization—how we talk ourselves into or out of acknowledging harm—we’ll fail to understand motivations for environmental crime. Rationalizing bad behavior is human.

We need ways to celebrate people who come forward about harmful actions by their organizations or others. In organized crime, that can mean going to the police; in personal situations, safeguards help. When do I stop and ask, “What am I doing? Is this ethical?”

For organizations, create solid whistleblowing methods—not just hotlines, but reliable mechanisms—and ensure there are trusted people who care. They shouldn’t respond, “You did really bad things and will be punished immediately,” but take a nuanced view: “You did a bad thing, but thank you for coming forward so we can stop it.”

Mike: It’s interesting, because whistleblowers often seem punished when they come forward. That can disincentivize others. How do we fix that? What clear steps should global society—or individual nations—take so higher-level managers, who should know better, either stop the behavior or come forward before it goes too far?

Julia: Whistleblowers are important—but so are regulators. Alberto Ayala said it often takes someone from the outside to start asking questions so people feel they have someone to tell, and someone saying, “This isn’t okay.” At conferences years later, engineers from other companies were shaking his hand, thanking him for exposing tactics in their own organizations, so they no longer had to be complicit.

Regulators provide an avenue: “Talk to me. Here’s what’s wrong. Here are the consequences—you could go to jail.” That’s powerful.

We also need societal influence—to treat environmental crimes like violent crimes. If people can rationalize emissions crimes, wildlife crimes, or forest crimes as “less bad” than hurting a human, they’ll downplay harm. An Interpol agent told me that in one part of Spain there was a widespread view that illegal fishing isn’t real harm, the fish are for everyone, and there shouldn’t be catch limits—classic “red tape” arguments.

Historically, we let people do what they want until catastrophe—then we make laws. Think of the Great Smog in London or deadly pollution episodes in the U.S.; only afterward did emissions laws come. Interpol must ensure cross-border information sharing so laws can be applied. In that Spanish community, people didn’t see illegal fishing as the same kind of crime as violent crime; they’d go home and be praised for “going fishing.” That must change. If someone tells us they’re committing these offenses, we should react as if they confessed to assault—because that social response affects cost–benefit calculations.

Mike: I recently spoke with Cambridge researcher Luke Kemp about individuals and corporations dominating natural resources—he called them “Goliaths.” One solution he proposed is citizen juries: randomly selected people sitting on corporate boards for big decisions that affect their lives. He used the Manhattan Project as an example—if a citizen jury knew all the risks, including the (theoretical) risk of igniting the atmosphere, would they have approved detonation? He thinks probably not.

Julia: I think they would have. People are really keen on… anyway, go on.

Mike: Let me add this: he said those randomly selected people would undergo an education process with experts on the topic before deliberation. I didn’t mention that earlier, so your response is understandable. Here’s that soundbite for reference:

Luke: These are usually a random selection or lottery system of citizens from a particular country or area—you can do it at a global scale if you want. You brief them with experts. It’s not people walking in uninformed; they undergo a thorough education process about the problem, then deliberate.

Mike: Given that, do you think this is a viable solution to some environmental crimes?

Julia: Absolutely not. I understand the desire for external accountability and outside help to improve decisions—that’s why I like regulators—but a randomly selected jury is not something I want for basically anything.

For crimes, public opinion is often swayed by question framing. In the UK, if you ask about the death penalty in certain ways, many say yes. There’s a tendency toward “tough on crime” approaches, which aren’t evidence-based. Harsh sanctions don’t reliably deter violent crime; people still commit murder where the death penalty exists. If your goal is stopping behavior, harsh sanctions aren’t the answer.

People also hold misconceptions about crime and its causes. Random juries could make bad decisions. An informed board around specific issues makes more sense. With nuclear risk, for example, we must avoid overestimating tiny risks—but also accept some short-term risk to save the long term. Short-termism masquerades as claiming sustainability blocks development or wealth. In truth, sustainability supports long-term prosperity—call it long-term capitalism.

I don’t think asking random non-experts about emissions risks is the answer. You’ll get misconceptions, poor statistics, and weak grasp of existential risk.

I want to talk to Luke now.

Mike: He’s great. I think you’d enjoy speaking with him. His book is interesting, and I did an interview you can listen to. He’s at Cambridge if you want to contact him. If I may: it seems you’re a fan of regulation. I am too. What are your thoughts on the abundance movement? In the U.S. and Australia I hear, “Regulations get in the way of building more housing or improving society.” Experts push back: environmental regulations exist for a reason—to protect water and air. Ideally, we strengthen but fine-tune them to meet infrastructure needs. Thoughts?

Julia: We should constantly re-evaluate whether regulations are right. Most regulatory bodies are always adjusting standards; most standards are getting more stringent, as they should, because we’re better at building. Lean manufacturing aims for less waste and fewer externalities. So when organizations say, “There are more regulations now,” yes—because there should be, and we should strive for better.

We also need regulations for new domains—like data center energy consumption as AI grows. But above all, we need more people in the jobs. I’ve never met a regulator who says they’re well-staffed or well-funded. They’re treated like the “annoying cousin” of law—“give them a little money.” That’s the wrong approach.

In the UK there’s been a major conversation about water pollution and contaminated rivers. I read a judgment about a dairy company repeatedly releasing untreated waste. The second time, the company said, “Why are you picking on us?” The judge replied, “Why do you keep doing it?” That “picking on us” perception comes from inconsistent enforcement. With five inspectors for 500 companies, enforcement looks random. Staff enough people to test everyone and you catch most offenders.

Perceptions of fairness and impunity correlate less with severity of punishment and more with the likelihood of getting caught. If you get caught every time, you change your behavior—or never offend. The answer lies in reframing sustainability (it isn’t the enemy of making money) and fixing inconsistent enforcement by funding regulators—not by having fewer of them.

Mike: Nature doesn’t have much time for us to act. I get that businesses need to meet the bottom line, but we don’t have a lot of time to protect the planet for future generations. It seems corporations and governments don’t take the urgency seriously enough. How do we get them to act swiftly?

Julia: There’s a misunderstanding about who works in companies. We often assume people in big polluting industries don’t care about the planet. That’s not true. Look at the UN climate survey: most people in most countries—except the U.S., which is an outlier—think climate change is happening, it’s human-made, and many think about it weekly or daily.

We no longer need to convince the majority that climate change is real; that was the fight a decade ago. Now the questions are how to act and how politicians should act. I wouldn’t spend time trying to convince the unconvinceable right now.

People who care work inside these companies too. In corporate talks, I meet many who are trying to change. Unlike other crimes, destroying the environment harms the offender’s own home. It’s self-harm, and most people realize that. The barrier is often short-termism and conformity: “Others aren’t meeting targets; why should we be the fools who do?” That’s a race to the bottom.

Research shows we underestimate others’ biospheric values—how much they believe nature has inherent worth. We think highly of our own values and undervalue others’, then adjust our behavior downward—fearing we’ll be called performative or accused of greenwashing. We should assume others care more than we think and act accordingly—without downgrading our ethics.

Mike: Julia, where can people find more information about your work or buy the book?

Julia: You can find me at drjuliashaw.com for my work in general. The book is available at all major retailers—please support local bookshops if you can. My final message: I’m optimistic that most people care. Many are doing the work. Psychologically, we need to stay angry and hopeful to have a chance. Understanding who’s fighting for us—and how—is one way to feel encouraged and mobilized.

Mike: Julia Shaw, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you for joining me today.

Julia: Thank you for having me.

Mike: If you want to find out where to get Green Crime (released on November 11th), you can find a link in the show notes. As always, if you’re enjoying the Mongabay Newscast or any of our podcast content and want to help, please spread the word by telling a friend and leaving a review. Word of mouth is the best way to expand our reach.

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