Climate Change from a Criminological Perspective

Few would dispute the power of climate change to lead to profoundly destructive weather events. At the same time, the possibility of climate change as a consequence-or even a cause-of criminal events is far less recognized. As the earth grows warmer, issues regarding land use, water rights, bio-security, and food production and distribution will continue to have far-reaching impact, and produce more opportunity for offenses by individuals and groups as well as political and corporate entities. In Climate Change from a Criminological Perspective, a panel of pioneering green criminologists investigates an increasingly complex chain of ecological causes and effects. Illegal acts are analyzed as they contribute to environmental decline (e.g., wildlife poaching) or result from ecological distress (e.g., survival-related theft). Regulatory and other interventions are critiqued, concepts of environmental harm refined, and new research methodologies called for. And while individual events described are mainly local, the contributors keep the global picture, and substantial questions about human rights and social relationships, firmly in mind. Topics featured include: Global warming as corporate crime. Climate change and the courts: U.S. and global views. Climate change, natural disasters, and gender inequality. The roles and responsibilities of environmental enforcement networks. A sociocultural perspective on climate change denial. PLUS: instructive in-depth chapters on criminological aspects of Hurricane Katrina and the Japanese nuclear disaster. A volume of considerable timeliness and vision, Climate Change from a Criminological Perspective will be read and discussed, and will inspire action, by researchers in criminology, criminal justice, environmental studies, and related disciplines, as well as policymakers.

Rob D. White is the Director of the Criminology Research Unit at University of Tasmania, Tasmania, Australia.  He is also the editor of Controversies in Environmental Sociology (Cambridge University Press), as well as author of Crimes Against Nature: Environmental criminology and ecological justice and editor of both Environmental Crime: A Reader and Global Environmental Harm: Criminological Perspectives, with Taylor & Francis.  His book Transnational Environmental Crime: Toward an Eco-Global Criminology is to be published by Routledge in 2011.