International Journal of Risk and Contingency Management
Volume 6 • Issue 4 • October-December 2017
Copyright © 2017, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
70
Climate Terror: A Critical
Geopolitics of Climate Change
Reviewed by Maximiliano E. Korstanje, University of Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina & University of Leeds, Leeds,
UK
Climate Terror: A Critical Geopolitics of Climate Change
Sanjay Chaturvedi & Timothy Doyle
© 2015 by Palgrave Macmillan
246 pp.
$100.00
ISBN 978-023024962-2
The Copenhagen accord, recently signed by representatives of most of the leading nations of
the world, even shortened the differences between the United States and BASIC countries, stipulated
some gas emission pledges that were limited according to the size of GNP (Gross national product).
As a result of this, the consensus envisaged a gap between developed and under-developed nations
in their respective margins to contaminate.
As the previous backdrop, it is not otiose that climate change posited as one of the main threats
for humankind, but no less true is that it accelerated the acceptance of a new irregular scheme for
greenhouse gas emission in order for nations to implement in the years to come. This suggests that we
are still thinking the environmental problems in economic terms. Hence some radical voices recently
suggest that beyond the urgency implemented by climate change underlies a discourse of fear, which
imposes a disciplinary mechanism to regulate the ebbs and flows of market. Such a point ushered
exactly Sanjay Chatuvedi and Timothy Doyle into a difficult dilemma, which is addressed through
the book Climate Terror: a critical geopolitics of climate change.
What happens to be common to both the war on terror and the securitization/militarization of climate
change is the speculative preemption of future threats and dangers to justify the manipulation of
socio-spatial consciousness and policy intervention by the powers that be in the name of a moral
economy that is heavily skewed in favor of the securing of future citizens (p. 13).
In such an excerpt above noted, the involving authors start from the premise that developed economies
should recognize the climate change as a real problem but paying a specific heed on the inflation
and manipulation of emotions, which leads to an interplay between fear and hope that is politically
manipulated to erode the critical thought. This movement, which is known as apocalipcism, not
only is not new because it was already used in several occasions but also after 9/11 it appeals to be
encrypted in a new geopolitics splitting the world in two: the damned and saved.
The common-thread argument in this book is organized along with eight chapters, which may
be read indistinctively, but with a common argumentation in mind. Beyond the concerns on the grim
future of humanity, which is paradoxically accelerated by climate change, still remains a manifest
intention to introduce the germen of anti-politics, -or following authors a post-political action.
Book Review