Introduction

On May 11, 2014, HBO, the cable television network, aired the third episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the late-night program that takes a satirical look at news, politics and current events. In this particular episode, entitled “Climate Change,” Oliver lampooned climate change deniers. In response to a poll conducted by Gallup, Inc., the American research-based, global performance-management consulting company, that found that “One in Four in U.S. Are Solidly Skeptical of Global Warming,” Oliver declared, “Who gives a shit? That doesn’t matter. You don’t need peoples’ opinions on a fact. You might as well have a poll that asks, ‘Which number is bigger: 15 or 5?’ or ‘Do owls exist?’ or ‘Are there hats?’” “The debate on climate change should not be on whether it exists,” Oliver continued, “but on what we should do about it.”

While the award-winning Last Week Tonight with John Oliver has enjoyed stellar television ratings (see Bibel 2015), we would hazard that this episode was likely not viewed by Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), author of The Greater Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future (2012). If Inhofe, who recently became chair of the U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee—the very committee charged with dealing with the issue of climate change—did see the episode, he either did not understand Oliver’s satire or dismissed it: in early March 2015, in an effort to lambast the “hysteria” surrounding climate change and to “disprove” claims that the Earth is warming, Inhofe brought a real snowball onto the Senate floor (Cosier 2015; Rubin 2015).

While fantastical instances of climate change contrarianism and denial continue to receive media attention and make the headlines, to their credit newspapers and various other media outlets have also devoted space and consideration to the current and anticipated environmental and human health impacts of climate change. Indeed, USA Today’s front-page article on May 31, 2013, under the headline “Climate change linked to more pollen, allergies, asthma” (Koch 2013)—a particularly prominent placement for a piece about climate change on one of the most widely circulated newspapers in the United States—and one known for its easy-to-read-and comprehend stories—highlights a shift in the willingness of the mainstream American media (and the American public) to recognize and engage with the problems associated with climate change. Yet, the attacks on both climate science and climate scientists continue unabated (see Brisman and South 2015).

In this article, we sketch the transformation of climate change discourse from an issue of derision to one of acknowledgment to one inciting a need for concerted response. While this transformation—we are reluctant to use the word evolution here given that many climate change contrarians and deniers also question the change in heritable traits of biological populations over successive generations—is not complete, as evidenced, in part, by media reports of Inhofe’s stunt above, we focus on a recent dynamic in the discourse that speaks of “doing battle” with or waging “war” on climate change. Although we are encouraged by heightened interest in climate change and its associated ecological, environmental, human health, and social impacts, we find this shift problematic for what it reflects with respect to humans’ relationship to the environment. Thus, the latter part of this article highlights the problematic dynamics regarding this new vocabulary. We conclude by offering a proposal for a new language/discourse surrounding climate change.

American Media and Climate Change: From Ridicule to Recognition

Although the scientific community has been sounding the alarm about climate change for decades, the American public has been slow to heed those warnings. This sluggish, unhurried response stems, in part, from “climate change contrarianism” (Brisman 2012)—an element of social discourse (originating from economic, political and social institutions which perceive themselves as threatened by proposed legal and regulatory responses to climate change) that has undercut the validity of scientific concerns and questioned the existence and extent of climate change, as well as levels of human culpability. Effectively turning climate change discourse into an ideological and politicized “debate,” such climate change contrarians have successfully slowed public recognition of and concern about climate change. But this was not always the case.

Throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, climate scientists and environmental groups fought an uphill battle for sustained media coverage of climate change. As scientific evidence grew stronger and as the public began to take notice of shrinking glaciers and extreme weather events (among other environmental effects) attributed to climate change—and as media accounts about climate change increased—climate scientists and environmental groups found themselves in a different battle. This time, the struggle was not for attention to an issue, but for narrative supremacy, with media representation and public appreciation of climate change seeming to follow the lines of partisan politics; political affiliation became the most consistent predictor of recognition of anthropogenic climate change (see e.g., Leiserowitz 2005). With media outlets fervently adhering to the journalistic duty to report “both sides” of any issue, those challenging the scientific evidence of climate change (frequently on economic and political grounds masked as scientific ones) succeeded in retarding the advancement of public acknowledgement of, concern about and action with respect to climate change (Brisman 2012, 2014; Brisman and South 2013, 2014).

Slowly—and fortunately!—climate change began to emerge from this impasse. While the issue of climate change continues to divide the American political landscape (see Gillis 2014; Light 2014b), there have been moments when it has been somewhat divorced from earlier partisan concerns. For example, in 2012, eleven short years after the rejection of the Kyoto protocol under then-President George W. Bush—a rebuff consistent with the Bush administration’s denial of harmful anthropogenic climate change—republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney acknowledged human-driven climate change, albeit an acceptance that took shape only after criticism focused on his initial efforts to make light of the buildup in emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from human sources. More recently, in April 2014, Republican Rep. Michael Grimm, whose Staten Island based district was rocked by Superstorm Sandy in 2012, become the first congressional Republican to admit changing his mind on anthropogenic climate change (Friedman 2014).

Although party affiliation is still likely to be a good predictor of acceptance of the scientific evidence regarding anthropogenic climate change (see e.g., Berman 2014; Cosman 2014; Davenport 2014; Farrell 2014; Kluger 2014; Light 2014b; Reilly 2014; Stein 2014; Zeller 2014), the point that we wish to emphasize here is that stories free of the contrarianism that proliferated in earlier media coverage now appear in regular rotation in major media outlets. In addition to USA Today’s coverage and treatment of climate change, noted above, People—the magazine devoted to celebrity and human-interest stories—found the space to run a story celebrating singer Sheryl Crow’s efforts to address climate change, tacitly signaling that the story’s author, editors, and audience had recognized that climate change was no longer a fringe environmental concern, but one that could share copy with celebrity gossip (Baker 2007). That media outlets so wary of political controversy—as both USA Today and People seem to be—now consider even superficial reporting on climate change a safe journalistic gambit is testament to changing times. But this shift in coverage and the increased willingness to acknowledge climate change as a serious problem (rather than just an issue) is not attributable to the spread of a non-instrumentalist belief in the intrinsic value of global ecosystems. The American public has not undergone a radical ecophilosophical transformation (Halsey and White 1998). Instead, recognition of the problem of anthropogenic climate change has developed, in large part, from increased efforts to bring issues of national security to the forefront of the climate change debate.

“Declaring War” on Climate Change

As evidenced by the USA Today headline, noted earlier in this article, the media no longer has to treat climate change as a back-page environmental issue, nor confine it to “debates” over scientific evidence of causation and impact. On one hand, this increased acknowledgement of anthropogenic climate change is heartening to those who have long held concerns about the environment and the future of the planet. We now appear closer to taking some of the macro, mezzo, and micro political, economic, and social steps needed to address climate change. But on the other hand, recent developments in the social discourse of climate change suggest willingness, even eagerness, to “do battle” with or wage “war” on climate change. For example, Dork Sahagian, director of Lehigh University’s Environmental Initiative and a contributor to three of four assessment reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which on October 12, 2007 was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, has asserted that “just as we declared war on terror following 9/11, the time is ripe for us to declare war on climate change” (eNews Source n.d.). Similarly, The Boston Globe has reported that “we’re in a war against climate change” (Lester 2013), while actor Mark Ruffalo, who has played the Incredible Hulk—invincible and green (and not at all like our planet!)—has gathered thousands of signatures for an online petition “demanding the White House declare a war on climate change” (Siegel 2013). To offer another example, Dr. Gary Ginsberg, a Yale toxicologist, has outlined some elements of the war on climate change, calling for “foot soldiers,” “war rooms,” and “military tactic[s]” to combat the “terror” of climate change (Ginsberg 2011). More recently, The Los Angeles Times reports that “Climate change is this generation’s [World War II]” (Los Angeles Times opinion 2015)—a “good war” that will unify the country and boost industry, much like the Second World War did for the United States in the 1940s.

There is no question about the threat that climate change poses to the health of global ecosystems, and, as such, we acknowledge that there is some utility to employing the language of battle, fighting and war in order to raise consciousness and inspire action. For example, the Human Development Report 2007/2008, published for the United Nations Development Programme, was entitled Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World (Watkins 2007; see Tuana 2014 for a discussion). Moreover, there is a lengthy history of climate change periods and how they induced or coincided with conflict (see Lee 2009), and the military may, as some have suggested play an important role in advancing technological solutions to the problem of climate change or in dealing with climate-induced conflict (see e.g., Lee 2009; Light 2014a, b; cf. Brisman et al. 2015). But what the approach advocated by Sahagian, Ruffalo and Ginsberg, among others clamoring for war or for “combatting” climate change (see e.g., Light 2014b, p. 1776), fails to consider is the ecological harm and human devastation caused by conflicts such as the Vietnam War, America’s ongoing “War on Drugs,” and military action undertaken in the Middle East (for the very oil that causes further environmental degradation (see e.g., Brisman et al. 2015; Coomber and South 2014; del Olmo 1987, 1998). What these calls for a new war against climate change reflect, and what we find problematic, is the desire to approach climate change from the position of an anthropocentric and utilitarian ecophilosophy that separates humanity from the broader natural world, ultimately treating the environment as “other” and recreating the very dynamic and relationship that has contributed to the negative effects of climate change.

While the “call to arms” has not been answered in the sense of any meaningful national or international agreements and policies on climate change, the language of a “call to arms” continues to reverberate. The anthropocentric philosophical position and its “solutions” to climate change were made strikingly clear in a speech devoted to climate change delivered on June 25, 2013 by President Barak Obama at Georgetown University. In speaking about climate change, President Obama not only adopted—albeit somewhat euphemistically—much of the language of those advocating “war on climate change”—such as calling for “a coordinated assault on a changing climate,” “international efforts to combat a changing climate,” and a “fight against climate change”—but also presented decidedly anthropocentric responses to climate change, such as calling for “market-based solutions” that hinge on providing “a secure energy future” through domestic energy production and the “[creation] of jobs” (The White House, Office of the Press Secretary 2013). What the president failed to mention are those victims of—and solutions to—climate change that are rendered invisible (or irrelevant) within and by an anthropocentric perspective (see generally Brisman 2013, 2014, 2015). In the address, which lasted over 35 min and consisted of over 6000 words, President Obama made no mention of the impacts anthropogenic climate change has had and will have on non-human populations and ecosystems, opting instead to describe and decry its impacts, both current and anticipated, on business, energy production, and national security (see White 2014a for a discussion of the ecological, economic and context within which preoccupations with environmental insecurity emerge).

Displays of an anthropocentrism willing and eager to “do battle” with nature are not limited to academics, politicians and entertainers. Those in the Global war industry—military chiefs and war entrepreneurs traditionally focused on producing war-fighting materials—have all jumped aboard the “war on climate change” bandwagon. In 2014, retired Rear Admiral David Titley co-authored an op-ed column for Fox News—a media outlet that some years ago would have been, it seems, reluctant to run coverage that even acknowledged the existence of climate change—in which the authors draw repeated parallels between climate change and the Second World War, ultimately calling for sustained “attacks” on climate change in the name of “national security” and stressing that the coming “war” on climate change is not a metaphorical one (Slayton and Titley 2014; see Holthaus 2014). In 2014, then-US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel visited Peru and spoke at length about the military challenges of climate change and the ways the problem could be approached militaristically (Pantsios 2014). Most recently, in March of 2015, it was reported that American defense and aviation giant Lockheed Martin was “develop[ing] climate change weapons” (New Zealand Herald 2015; see also Davenport and Jayakumar 2015). The war-making business has also left the confines of the US and the usual suspects of war profiteering; in the United Kingdom, billionaire businessman and public personality Sir Richard Branson has developed a “Carbon War Room”, a think-tank of sorts designed to “accelerate the adoption of business solutions that reduce carbon emissions…and advance the low-carbon economy” (Carbon War Room). While these developments may indeed signal some positive changes in the public imagination’s conceptualization and understanding of climate change and climate science, they again reflect a purely anthropocentric and capitalist philosophy fixated on weaponizing and marketizing solutions and bent on “making war.”

“Securitizing” Climate Change

To be clear, connections between environmental and security issues did not suddenly emerge as a competing or alternative discourse to climate change contrarianism. Indeed, in the 1970s—and even before then—the language and practice(s) of security came under criticism for failing to adequately account for environmental concerns (Brown 1977; Ullman 1983: 133; Matthews 1989; see generally Eman et al. 2013; Zedner 2009). In response, some in the security fields (academic, economic, political) began to engage analytically and materially in the development of an “environment-security nexus” that considered more seriously environmental issues as potential or realized security issues (Rodrigues de Brito 2012). Those linkages remained largely off the media radar screen (and hence outside public consciousness), however, while other dynamics of environmental issues took center stage (e.g., concerns over the status of the northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1980s and early 1990s due to loss of old-growth forest habitat by logging interests) and subsequently “debates” over the validity and certainty of climate science. Thus, few took notice of “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change”—a 2007 report produced by bipartisan public research firm Center for Naval Analyses (CNA)—in which several decorated military personnel and strategists voiced their concerns over the potential impact of climate change on the ability of the U.S. military, stretched thin by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to address future security concerns (including conflicts driven by decreased agricultural production, diminished access to water, and increased human migration) and to respond to disaster (such as Hurricane Katrina-like events) (see Light 2014b: 1798 for a brief discussion).

While the CNA report in and of itself may not have garnered significant media and public attention, it did contribute to the germination of a securitizing climate change discourse distinct from the dominant—and politicized—“debates” about climate science and scientific certainty. Between 2007 and 2009, Newsweek, Time, and The New York Times each ran multiple stories on climate change reporting on the potential threats that it could pose to national security. As the depiction of these threats became more refined, willingness to actively engage the dynamic of climate change seemed to increase.

In 2008, the U.S. Senate considered legislation that would mandate reductions in greenhouse gas output through a cap-and-trade mechanism. While a Democrat-controlled Congress certainly made the 2008 legislation possible, it was the shifting position of then-Senator John Warner (R-VA), who had previously been consistent in his votes against similar legislation, that most illustrates the growing significance of security issues in climate change discourse. Warner, who co-sponsored the bill with then-Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), said that he had, throughout his career, “focused above all on issues of national security” and that he saw “the problem of global climate change fitting squarely within that [national security] focus” (Walsh 2008). Warner’s support of climate change legislation in the name of national security—his treatment of climate change as a security issue, rather than an environmental one—opened the avenues for American media to report on and discuss climate change in qualitatively and quantitatively different ways.

While the new acceptance of climate change in mainstream American media and public discourses is a welcome one, in the sense that those concerned about anthropogenic climate change no longer face quite the same hurdle that they once did of establishing that it is a real phenomenon, the “securitization” of the climate change problem—and by this we mean the political and discursive process by which the language of security becomes the organizing principle of human–environment relations and climate change—is a troubling development. “Security” is, to put it mildly, a term loaded with significant conceptual, ontological and political problems (see Glover 2011; Huysmans 2011; Zedner 2009; see generally Eman et al. 2013). Aas (2013, p. 116) contends that “security,” along with “safety” and “insecurity,” are subjective phenomena often disconnected from objective probabilities of risk and victimization.Footnote 1 Along these lines, Huysmans (2011, pp. 371–372) observes that “insecurity” is not an environmental condition upon which one acts but… the discursive rendition of insecurities through security practice, while adding that “[i]t is not just the speech that matters but the circulation of security speech and its appropriation or refusal by those who are addressed.” For Glover (2011), “security” is “a social fact produced in discursive practices and social interaction. [It] can only be known in terms of the intersubjective social processes through which it is produced and reproduced.” While Glover (2011) stops short of defining “security” narrowly—as existing only within the speech act—he argues that “security” is constructed through processes of social interaction and that “discourses of security are bound by the historical and social structures in which they are produced.” That Aas, Huysmans, Glover and others reject objectivist approaches to and definitions of “security” in favor of perspectives that emphasize “security” as the outcome of social processes (see Zedner 2009) for a discussion of security as an “objective” and “subjective” state) does not diminish the fact that “security” is a term with a remarkable level of both salience and emotional attachment for the American public. Indeed, as Marx (1844) famously commented, “security is the highest concept of civil society.” Neocleous and Rigakos (2011) have extended Marx’s observation, asserting that “[i]n the …liberal tradition … liberty is security and security is liberty.” It comes as little surprise, then, that climate change has found its footing in the American imagination as a problem to be understood first and foremost as a threat to security. While not an entirely unexpected development, this securitization of climate change should raise critical eyebrows.

As we have suggested, both materially and discursively “security” is a tool and framework fraught with problems, and those problems persist wherever security is sought or undertaken, be it in the airport, the national border, or the natural environment. In the case of climate change—a problem with its roots firmly planted in industrial development and in the ongoing exploitation of humans and nonhuman nature required to feed consumptive capitalism’s voracious appetite—hegemonic and oppressive security seems a remarkably poor framework for addressing the issues, akin to prescribing the illness as the cure. After all, securitization is an essential component of and justification for pacification, which itself is inextricably linked to the production and reproduction of the same capitalist markets and social relations that have so negatively affected the earth’s climate (see e.g., Kienscherf 2014; Neocleous 2010, 2011; see generally Kienscherft 2011). As Neocleous and Rigakos (2011) demonstrate, “security” is a force that “de-radicalizes” discourse, capable of transforming events like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy from moments of radical devastation and suffering to moments of lapsed “environmental security.” Security, then, is (or has become) a commodity, one that “play[s] a pivotal role in exploitation,” (Neocleous and Rigakos 2011, p. 20) while mandating consumption and commoditization in place of revolution and liberation. As such, the bedfellow of security is a state of war. The securitization of climate change—and the war-making that follows, as described above—should not be unexpected. Rather, it is the predictable response of bourgeois ideology to the crisis of climate change. We find ample reason, then, to reject the popular securitizing framework of climate risk and climate change mitigation. Instead, we find some promise in the frameworks of peacemaking criminology, as conceptualized by Pepinsky (1991, 2006, 2013) and Quinney (1991, 2000), and “total liberation,” as suggested by Pellow (2013, 2014), which we discuss in the next two sections.

Peacemaking as a Response to Climate Change

As suggested throughout this article, it is precisely our anthropocentric and securitizing tendencies that have contributed to the climate change mess in which we currently and will increasingly find ourselves: the failure to consider non-human ecological impacts, the fetishization of growth and business, the obsession with national security goals, and the insatiable thirst for energy, ‘clean’ or otherwise, have exacerbated and accelerated global climate change. Does it make sense, then, that we would find the “solutions” to climate change in doubling down on growth, security, and energy production? Towards the end of his June 2013 speech, President Obama asserted that, “there is no peace treaty to sign.” We disagree.

Because the problems that contribute to anthropogenic climate change—and, as noted above, the favored responses to climate change—are rooted so deeply in an anthropocentric, securitizing and utilitarian understanding of human–environment interaction, we suggest that there is, in fact, peacemaking to be done through the reformulation of those interactions (e.g., Pepinsky 2013; Quinney 1991, 2000). For a vision of peacemaking, we turn to the critical spirit of peacemaking criminology, which at its core calls for “transform[ing] violent relations into good, constructive, and beautiful… relations” (Pepinsky 2006, p. 279). Peacemaking, then, is fundamentally concerned with transformations that turn away from violent conflict, and we find such transformative shifts a fitting prescription for the current social, geopolitical and atmospheric climate situation. Rather than declaring and waging war on climate change, we suggest waging peace on climate change by pursuing peace on the Earth via a philosophical position that rejects the temptations of anthropocentrism in favor of a more ecocentric philosophy—one that engages climate change with an understanding of the intrinsic value of ecological health and, given the inevitability of capitalism’s destruction of nature (Engels 1876; Speth 2008), stands in opposition to capitalist social relations. Because we are all implicated in the problems brought about by climate change (with those in the Global North more responsible than those in the Global South, who are more vulnerable to and least equipped to deal with the harm from climate change) (see Brisman 2014, 2015), we must all reexamine and reconfigure our relationships to the environment (see e.g., Agnew 2013; White 2014a, b).Footnote 2 What we must recognize is that the dominant worldview that constructs nature as inherently “other” than—and inherently under the dominion of—humanity is tragically flawed, and ultimately reflects and reifies problematic hierarchical relations of domination and exploitation (Engels 1876). By recognizing humanity’s place in nature, rather than above nature, we can in effect sign a peace treaty with the natural world.

What would this peace treaty look like? Such an agreement would need to reflect an ecocentric approach to human–environment relationships—one that acknowledges that humans and their activities are inextricably intertwined with the rest of the natural world and that recognizes that “the unique capacity for human beings to develop and deploy methods of production which have global consequences, means that humans also have an explicit responsibility to ensure that such production methods do not exceed the ecospheric limits of the planet” (Halsey and White 1998, p. 355). This would need to entail an about-face from the extreme consumption of global capitalism and its antagonistic and discordant framework of human–environment interaction towards a global consciousness rooted in alliance and partnership with nature. An ecocentric philosophy of human–nonhuman environment interaction, while rejecting notions of human superiority over nature, acknowledges the importance of human development and cultural expression, but emphasizes ecologically sustainable living (Halsey and White 1998). As Halsey and White (1998, p. 356) explain, “while there is an explicit recognition that human beings—as living, breathing components of the natural world—need to impact upon or utilize non-human nature in order to survive, there also exists the realization that human beings need—in the interests of future human generations and the well-being of non-human nature—to develop ecologically sustainable ways of satisfying their basic needs.” “Under ecocentrism,” they continue, “the idea that the destruction of non-human nature is, ultimately, the destruction of that which sustains human nature, is ascribed absolute validity” (1998, p. 356). Thus, a peace treaty could outline a commitment to social arrangements and socioeconomic systems that adopt the logics of bioregional production and consumption and that emphasize that community, culture, and economics are rooted in geographic places that require constant observation and protection.

While bioregional modes of production and consumption reduce and mitigate some of the material and biological causes and consequences of anthropogenic climate change, a treaty rooted in ecocentrism must also acknowledge and address the social factors at play in environmental harm. Recognizing that humanity and nature are inextricably integrated, and that dominant forms of social relations in an increasingly globalized world hinge on the exploitation of nature, an ecocentric philosophical position acknowledges that the answers and solutions to environmental devastation have an intensely social element. Indeed, as Halsey and White (1998, p. 356) elucidate, ecocentrism is “concerned with the way in which certain (human-induced) ecological problems impact on human well-being. [It] therefore considers issues of social justice to be as important as—and inextricably bound to—issues of ecology” (emphasis in original). A peace treaty with the Earth would seek a reformulation of not only exploitative and destructive relations between humans and nature, but also of abusive and unfair social relations—something more in line with traditional notions of peace treaties. In the words of Halsey and White (1998, p. 356), it might endeavor “to abolish not only those political and economic relations which lead to the domination and exploitation of ecosystems, but also those relations of production which are premised upon the domination and exploitation of human beings.”

Recognizing that “we are all of us interrelated—and not just people, but animals too, and stones, clouds, trees” (Quinney 1991, p. 8), the peacemaking perspective in criminology has already adopted an ecocentric position, and so it seems a fitting criminological inspiration for the formulation of an ecocentric transformation. As Quinney (1991, p. 4) describes, “crime”—for our purposes here, to be understood as both the causes and effects of climate change—“is suffering…and the sources of suffering are within each of us.” Certainly, this shared suffering is an evident dimension of both climate change and the unjust and abusive social relations mentioned above. What the suggested peacemaking framework calls for, then, is a radical transformation of social relations through the radical transformation of human behavior and ecophilosophy. Quinney (1991, p. 4) notes that without “radical transformation,” economic and political solutions to violence “inevitably fail.” Applied to climate change and the currently favored responses to climate change, Quinney’s framework gives us further reason to reject those solutions that rely on the economization and marketization of the problems of climate change (see generally Paterson 2010; Boyd et al. 2011) but that fall far short of calling for broad transformation of social relations and human–environment relationships.

Elsewhere, Quinney (2000, p. 103) suggests a “radically critical” philosophy capable of acting itself as a liberatory force. Applied to climate change—and applied in a manner that rejects the dominant and hegemonic anthropocentric philosophical framework of human–environment interaction in favor of a more inclusive and compassionate ecocentric philosophy—this radically critical philosophy may resemble what Pellow (2013, 2014) calls a philosophy of “total liberation,” wherein the focus is not simply humans (although, certainly, the liberation of humanity is a high priority), but a unifying conceptualization of life that includes humans, animals other than humans, and the broader natural environment. Quinney himself makes an abbreviated and simple case for seeking total liberation: “as long as there is suffering in this world, each of us suffers” (1991, p. 10). Taking Quinney and Pellow together, we assert that the complementary frameworks of peacemaking and liberation can be applied in equal measure to mitigate climate change and the exploitative and hierarchical social relations that give rise to climate injustice and broader forms of social injustice.

Peace, War and Liberation

To be sure, “peace” and “liberation” are not synonymous. Indeed, “liberation” is frequently offered as a justification for war (as is “peace”, discussed below), as in the case of the US wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Likewise, certain moments of liberation might not be moments of peace; slave revolts were often violent affairs, and the clandestine nighttime actions carried out by various animal liberation groups sometimes involve property destruction (see Best and Nocella 2004). Here we begin to find some of the uncomfortable complications in the peacemaking framework. It is necessary, though, to confront and understand these complications in order to work towards the development of a potentially liberatory peacemaking perspective on climate change.

A primary concern in applying a peacemaking framework to the criminological issue(s) of climate change is one of understanding and making clear the connections between not only “crime” and “war” (see Aas 2013), but also “war” and “peace.” As Pepinsky (1991, p. 301) describes, crime, punishment and war are all violence. Anthropogenic climate change, in this framework, can be understood as not only a crime (Kramer 2013; Lynch and Stretesky 2010; Mares 2010; White 2012) but as a form of violence with global reach. Following this, climate change can be understood as both a cousin and consequence of war-fighting: humanity’s ongoing war on nature has resulted in the extreme weather events and patterns and their attendant social effects of climate change. If we are to find an end to the war on/with nature, we must first make the decision to seek peace. In doing so, however, we must not forget that peace is itself a category of war. As such, “peace” can be conversely employed discursively to offer both a justification for and condemnation of war. In this sense, we must be mindful of the liberatory limitations of a dogmatically pacifist peacemaking framework, always recognizing that peace itself is “merely the continuation of war” (Negri and Alliez 2008, p. 54), and that peace both demands war and then acts as a confirmation of war (Prichard 2013).

While the peacemaking framework offers a thoughtful move to ecocentrism, it risks adopting the sort of dogmatic pacifism that Churchill warns of as potentially counter-revolutionary (rather than revolutionary or transformative). Churchill cautions against the “profession of principled pacifism,” calling instead for a continuum of revolutionary activity that does not exclude offensive conflict from the activist’s toolbox (Churchill 1998, p. 94). Churchill’s proposal of a “liberatory praxis” (1998, p. 92) evokes Pellow’s total liberation, and Churchill himself incorporates a similar sense of ecological concern and immediacy into his work. In a similar vein, Ryan (1998, p. 127), quoting Bertell (1984, p. 23), notes that, in an environmental sense, a “death process is underway, even if there is no catastrophic accident or holocaust”—an observation akin to description of climate change as (wreaking) “slow violence” (Nixon 2011). Ryan wonders “how bad conditions must become before we recognize…all forms of resistance” (1998, p. 127)—a position that seems to reflect a willingness to accept and perhaps engage in the types of conflict condemned by a more dogmatic adherence to peacemaking.

While mentions of war usually call to mind the foreign enemy, the wars on poverty, drugs, terror and now climate change challenge the notion that war-fighting is something to be done only outside of American borders (see Aas 2013; see also Swanson 2008). Indeed, conceptualizations of American soldiers as a force reserved for foreign lands have always been flawed, as Neocleous, noting and expanding Weber’s 1978 observations on a bureaucratically structured military, explains: military forces also provide the “permanent pacification of the internal territory” (2011, p. 200). Calls for both war and peace, then, are also fundamentally calls for increased pacification, and we find no reason to understand the mounting calls for a war on climate change as any exception. While peace appears on its surface to be an admirable goal, we are more suspicious of its etymological cousin—pacification—a force that seeks primarily to create capitalist social relations and assist in the never-ending task of capitalist accumulation, thereby reproducing the problems of inequality, hierarchy and oppression that have contributed so significantly to the current ecological climate crisis.

Although we find that the critical tradition of peacemaking within criminology—especially noting its focus on social justice, critical understandings of state power, and resistance to hierarchy and exploitation—has much to offer to the response to and mitigation of climate change moving forward, we only cautiously suggest the adoption of the framework. After all, the liberation of humans, animals other than humans, and ecosystems from the inextricably linked problems of global consumptive capitalism and climate crisis may necessitate, as White (2014b) notes, class-conscious conflict. Or, put more directly, it may be that the advancing climate crisis necessitates an element of conflict in response, but it is unlikely that the just choice is in the commodifying and securitizing wars of bourgeois consumptive capitalism, rather than in a sustained and conscious conflict against those very forces.

Conclusion

This article has argued that if we accept and agree to pursue an ecophilosophical orientation—one that includes bioregional production and consumption practices that satisfy basic human needs in more ecologically sustainable ways—and if we reject the domination, hierarchy, utilitarianism, and inequity of our anthropocentric myopia—we can in effect call off humanity’s industrial-scale war on nature. If, on the other hand, we continue down the path of war-making, we may well find ourselves on the losing end of that conflict. In other words, if we agree to more just interactions with the Earth and our fellow human beings, such as those described above, nature might, in turn, not unleash its fury in the form of floods, droughts, hurricanes, and interpersonal violence stemming from unequal access to social and material resources.