Dark Laboratory: groundbreaking book argues climate crisis was sparked by colonisation

Tao Leigh Goffe says Europe turned the Caribbean islands into a ‘dark laboratory of colonial desire and experiments’. Photograph: © Elena Seibert.

We all think we know what is causing the breakdown of the planet’s climate: burning fossil fuels that release carbon dioxide, change the chemistry of the air and trap more heat from the sun, leading to rising temperatures.

But Tao Leigh Goffe, an associate professor of Africana, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at the City University of New York, wants us to visualise a far more specific cause: the shunting of a ship’s prow on to the sandbank of a paradise island in 1492.