Friederike Otto

Climate Change in an Unequal World: Weather Catastrophes and Their Histories

Heat waves in North America and West Africa, droughts in South Africa and Madagascar, forest fires in Australia and Brazil, floods in Germany and Pakistan: these are fundamentally different meteorological events unfolding in societies marked by distinct political, economic, and historical conditions. Yet across these contexts, one pattern persists. Those who die, those who lose homes, livelihoods, and health, are overwhelmingly those with the least money, the least access to information, and the least political power. Extreme weather becomes catastrophe not because of atmospheric physics alone, but because of how societies are structured.

This talk shows, using lots of examples from my day job as identifying the drivers of weather and climate related disasters, that what we call “climate disasters” are best understood as the convergence of extreme weather with historically produced inequality. 

By situating recent extreme weather events within longer histories of empire, extraction, and inequality, I discuss that what we are witnessing cannot be understood if we just call it climate crisis, but it is a crisis of justice. Climate change does not act on a blank slate; it amplifies historical structures of power and extraction. Addressing it as a technical or purely physical problem therefore falls radically short. The challenge is not only to transform energy systems, but to transform the distribution of power: who decides, who benefits, and who bears the risk.

If we continue to treat climate change as a problem of carbon rather than a problem of inequality, we will misunderstand both its causes and its consequences. Extreme weather may be atmospheric. Disaster is political.

Friederike (Fredi) is Professor in Climate Science at the Centre for Environmental Policy at the Imperial College London. She leads World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international effort to analyse and communicate the possible influence of climate change on extreme weather events.