Book review: Rob White, Climate Change Criminology
| Author | Reece Walters |
| Date | 01 August 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480618791101 |
| Published date | 01 August 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
500 Theoretical Criminology 22(3)
from political theory, lacks precision and specificity and perhaps could have been used
with more scepticism throughout the collection.
Otherwise, the editors of this compendium are to be congratulated for the immense
effort they have undertaken to correct the blind spots of northern criminology. Several of
the chapters were translated from Spanish into English and another from Portuguese into
English. De Sousa Santos (2014: viii) argues there cannot be social justice without cog-
nitive justice. The chapters in this volume contribute to the huge ongoing project of de-
colonizing the theoretical toolbox of social science to render visible that which
Eurocentric thought silenced for centuries. Not only should this book be read widely, but
it should be seen as an example for others to follow when contemplating how to glo-
balize edited collections in criminology.
References
Beirne P (2014) Theriocide: Naming animal killing. International Journal for Crime, Justice and
Social Democracy 3(2): 49–66.
Carrington K, Hogg R and Sozzo M (2016) Southern criminology. British Journal of Criminology
56(1): 1–20.
De Sousa Santos B (2014) Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. Boulder,
CO: Paradigm.
Sozzo M (2017) Beyond the ‘neo-liberal penality thesis’? Punitive turn and political change
in South America. In: Carrington K, Hogg R, Scott J, et al. (eds) Palgrave Handbook of
Criminology and the Global South. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 659–685.
Rob White, Climate Change Criminology, Policy Press: Bristol, 2018; 176 pp.: 9781447346562,
$80.00 (hbk)
Reviewed by: Reece Walters, School of Justice, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
The World Economic Forum’s 12th annual Global Risks Report places climate change
as the most pressing and significant problem facing humanity’s ongoing safety and
security. The threats posed by weapons of mass destruction, military dictatorships,
political corruption and civil war are deemed less dramatic than the perils presented by
global warming and its impacts on humans and non-human species alike (World
Economic Forum, 2017). Such warnings have been reflected recently by the Union of
Atomic Scientists’ decision to set the Doomsday Clock (a scientific symbol to represent
humanity’s extinction) to two minutes to midnight or two minutes to annihilation—its
gravest setting in its 71-year history due to the looming dangers posed by ‘nuclear war
and climate change, the making the world security situation […] as dangerous as it has
been since World War II’ (Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 2018). The United Nations
Secretary General Antonio Guterres has reaffirmed, at the R20 Austrian World Summit,
the accuracy of the Doomsday Clock’s current setting, by declaring that climate change
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