One - Climate change and criminology

Summary

Introduction

This book is the first to describe its subject matter as Climate Change Criminology. As part of this, it brings together existing research and scholarship on climate change from a criminological perspective, while forging a blueprint for further work in this area. In terms of overall orientation, the project reflects a critical criminology perspective since its approach places power and social interests at the centre of the analysis. Issues of social and ecological justice, and inequality, feature highly, as does the intent to ‘study up’ (that is, to examine the rich and powerful) as well as consider the consequences of global warming for the vulnerable and less powerful. The project is also firmly located within a green criminology framework, one that understands ecojustice (and, indeed, climate justice) as involving transgressions against humans, ecosystems, and animals and plants. The scope is global, the literature international.

While providing an overview of literature in this area, the book is more explicitly critical in both content and approach than some previous work undertaken in this area. However, it is not polemical. The intent is to provide an interesting, considered, thought-provoking and passionate account of Climate Change Criminology in a way that will invite others to follow suit. The overarching message is ‘join us in the fight for climate justice’. The book provides some of the reasons why this is urgent and important.

This chapter explains key terms such as ‘global warming’, ‘climate change’ and ‘weather’, and provides a brief summary of the main characteristics and consequences of global warming. The chapter discusses the silences within criminology about climate change (itself, arguably, a form of denialism), and its rising importance within the field. It then outlines the main features of Climate Change Criminology as an emerging perspective.

Climate change, the Anthropocene and criminology

Global warming describes the rising of the earth's temperature over a relatively short time span. Climate change describes the inter-related effects of this rise in temperature: from changing sea levels and changing ocean currents, through to the impacts of temperature change on local environments that affect the endemic flora and fauna in varying ways (for instance, the death of coral due to temperature rises in sea water or the changed migration patterns of birds).