A Criminology of the Human Species: Setting an Unsettling Tone

The book sketches out how the criminological lens could be used in the climate change debate around possible human extinction. It explores the extent to which the human species can be considered deviant in relation to other species of the contemporary biosphere, as humans seem to be the only species on Earth that does not live in natural balance with its environment (anymore). It discusses several unsettling topics in the public debate on climate change, specifically the taboo of how humans may not survive the ongoing climate change. It includes chapters on the Earth’s history of mass-extinctions, on the global state of denial including toward the possibility that the human species could go extinct, on the inward extinction of humanity through "human enhancement" and artificial intelligence (AI)/singularity, and it considers humans' future as a deviant, fatal species - "a planet-eating people" - outside of Earth, in outer-space, possibly on other celestial bodies. It puts forward and enriches the critical criminological tradition by conceptualizing and setting an unsettling tone within criminology and criminological research on the human species and our extinction, by daring criminologists (and victimologists) to ponder and seek empirical answers to controversial imaginations and questions about our existence and possible extinction.