Climate Knowledge, Science Skepticism, & White Supremacy in Southern Africa

Historians have written extensively about the consolidation of white minority rule over the country’s Black majority in the first half of the twentieth century. But they have not recognized the way that debates over climate change and climate science shaped the path to apartheid, the system of radical racial segregation that defined South Africa for almost fifty years. Rural whites who farmed South Africa’s drought-prone drylands were convinced that the climate was changing and that rainfall was declining. Scientists disagreed, but their attempts to persuade white farmers that southern Africa’s climate was stable were met with derision. This talk explores the racial roots of science skepticism and climate science in southern Africa, and examines how skeptics and scientists ultimately made peace in order to sustain white supremacy.

Meredith McKittrick, Associate Professor at Georgetown University

Free and open to Columbia University ID holders; registration required.

Part of the History and Climate Change workshop series hosted by the Environmental Sciences and Humanities Research Cluster at the Center for Science and Society.

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