We have known about climate change for decades. As early as 1992 the threat was sufficiently obvious, and the science sufficiently clear, to justify a UN treaty on the topic. Yet we’ve only even begun to get our act together in the last five or so years. Why?
As COVID-19 reminds us, global crises tend to amplify existing inequalities in society. The same is true of climate change. Its impacts have been felt disproportionately by people of colour, both in developing countries and minority communities within wealthy nations.
For many in these communities climate change has devastating effects. It intensifies floods in south Asia, drought in southern Africa, and extreme tropical storms from Mozambique to the Caribbean. And then there’s the pacific islands, literally swallowed by rising seas. But the fact that these have mostly impacted poor people of colour, not wealthy white westerners, has hindered global action.
