This essay explores the intersections of race, weather and climate. Earth science construes weather as the temperature and precipitation that impacts environments. Thinking about how this applies to bodies has come into vogue in trying to understand the disproportionate number of COVID-19 infections and deaths for Blacks and Latinx people. Arline Geronimus pioneered this in 1992 when she transposed the notion of “weathering” from its standard meaning of a process that decays wood onto the cumulative racism experienced by Black women resulting in excessive maternal death. Her “weathering hypothesis” tracks the assemblage of negative health outcomes for all African Americans caused by dangerous work environments and polluted neighborhoods. My essay shows how these embodied health effects are linked to larger histories of burning fossil fuels. We now know burning coal and oil transforms the climate by increasing the ratio of CO₂ molecules. We also know that this shifting climate determines specific weather outcomes. However, we don’t yet have a full picture of the racial dynamic undergirding this. As a corollary to weathering, this essay proposes a “climating hypothesis” to help expose the power that Euro-descendant whites have wielded for centuries to intervene in the earth’s climate.

本文探讨了种族，天气和气候的交汇处。地球科学将天气视为影响环境的温度和降水。在试图了解黑人和拉丁裔人群中不成比例的COVID-19感染和死亡人数时，人们就开始思考如何将其应用于人体。Arline Geronimus于1992年率先提出了这一点，当时她将“风化”的概念从其标准含义转变为“风化”这一过程，该过程使木材腐烂成黑人妇女经历的累积种族主义，导致孕产妇死亡过多。她的“风化假设”追踪了危险工作环境和受污染社区对所有非裔美国人造成的负面健康后果。我的文章显示了这些具体的健康影响如何与燃烧化石燃料的悠久历史联系在一起。_2个分子。我们也知道，这种不断变化的气候决定了特定的天气结果。但是，我们还没有全面了解造成这种情况的种族动态。作为风化的必然推论，本文提出了“气候假说”，以帮助揭示欧洲后裔白人多年来干预地球气候的力量。