Get to work! New non-fiction books: Climate change hits women and the poor harder

class=”sc-cffd1e67-0 iQNQmc”>

In psychology, they are called “spatial illusions”: errors in estimating angles, areas or distances. I was once struck by a misconception in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York – looking around, I could have sworn I came from the opposite direction. And while hiking in the Black Forest, we climbed the hill on the left, and then supposedly walked back along the trail. But it was a parallel path on the other side of the hill, so we were going in the wrong direction.

To go and think the other way around is what the German physicist and philosopher Friedrich Otto (41) calls for in his current bestseller. “What if, following historian and activist Rebecca Solnit, we told the story in reverse,” she writes, “namely, that our present lives are full of hardship and hardship, but wealth and abundance are yet to come?” A difficult idea for us, the inhabitants of rich Switzerland, who care about our sinecures and suffer from the fear of loss.

But for the vast majority of people, smart action against climate change will bring a higher quality of life, better health, better homes, more butterflies and bees – of this Otto is convinced. A climate scientist from Imperial College London shows that it is the poor who suffer the most from heat, drought, floods and fires. For her research, Time magazine named her to its 2021 “100 Most Influential People of the Year” list.

Otto calls for a shift away from colonial, patriarchal and fossilized thinking, as this ultimately contributes to climate change, the effects of which particularly affect African states and women in particular. “What does climate disaster have to do with capitalism, racism and sexism” is why the scientist subtitles his book. And she cites the example of The Gambia, where women are responsible for obtaining food and are forced to work in the fields even in very hot weather.

Otto was amazed when she looked up data on weather-related disasters in the West African country. “Since 1900, The Gambia has experienced nine droughts, ten floods, six hurricanes and one forest fire,” the researcher said. “But not a single wave of heat.” If you look at Europe for comparison, then only since the beginning of the 20th century, 83 heat waves have been recorded there, which led to more than 140 thousand deaths.

It’s not that there aren’t heat victims in Africa, but no one is recording them. Otto finds the problem in the extreme databases run by corporations and research organizations in Western countries. And people there are simply not interested in Africa. “This is, of course, not a coincidence, but a consequence of the colonial history of fossils that shapes our world,” Otto writes. This largely reflects the arrogance with which Western society approaches the issue of climate justice.

Source: Blick