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This chapter discusses the role of energy production in the global capitalist economy and its relationship to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with particular focus on SDG 8 – ‘Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all’ – and SDG 12 – ‘Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns’. It achieves this by first introducing the Club of Rome report the Limits to Growth which utilised a system dynamics computer model to simulate the interactions of five global economic subsystems (population, food production, industrial production, pollution and consumption of nonrenewable natural resources) (Meadows, Meadows, Randers, & Behrens III, 1972), the results of which posed serious challenges for global sustainability, to better understand and contextualise unconventional (also referred to as ‘extreme’) and ‘renewable’ energy production as examples of the paradoxical nature of sustainable development in the global capitalist economy. Demonstrating that unconventional energy production methods are much less efficient, more carbon intensive, more environmentally destructive and just as unsustainable, and that renewable energy relies on the extraction of nonrenewable natural resources such as lithium that result in similar environmental and social issues, this chapter will interrogate this and ask the question – is the capitalist system in its current form capable of making ‘sustainable development something more than the oxymoron it appears?’.

This chapter introduces the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and considers how criminological research, policy and practice can advance this global agenda. It critically accounts for the complex geopolitical, institutional and ideological landscapes that gave rise to this agenda and the challenges this poses for implementing the SDGs today. The chapter also raises important questions about the viability and consequentiality of global efforts to govern the nexus between crime, justice and sustainable development on account of the gravest threat to humanity, climate change. We conclude that all of these issues highlight the need for scholars and practitioners with expertise on crime and justice to approach this agenda from a critical standpoint. At the same time, we acknowledge that the SDGs remain the best global framework that we have for promoting safer and more equitable societies.