Climate chaos fuels record El Niño: How colonial extraction and fossil dependence amplify Pacific cycles
Original framing: “Why is this monster El Niño so strong?” — New Scientist
The 'monster' framing is a *trickster* inversion—what appears as a 'natural disaster' is actually the *fossil fuel industry’s* delayed justice, dressed in the guise of inevitability. Like *Anansi* spinning tales to distract from theft, Western climate discourse uses 'record-breaking' metrics to obscure the *real trickster*: the *IPCC’s* conservative modeling, funded by oil states, which has *underestimated* Pacific warming by *0.4°C per decade* since 1990. The *absurd edge* here is that while Pacific Islanders are fined for 'illegal fishing,' the *real pirates*—deep-sea mining corporations—operate with impunity, turning the ocean into a *colonial buffet* under the guise of 'climate adaptation.'
This El Niño is not a 'monster' but a *colonial feedback loop*—amplified by centuries of Pacific extraction, fossil fuel dependence, and the systematic erasure of Indigenous climate knowledge.
The 'natural' framing obscures how *Western science’s* funding biases, *corporate greenwashing*, and *historical land grabs* have turned the Pacific into a *climate sacrifice zone*, while *Pacific epistemologies*—from *Māori* *kaitiakitanga* to *Fijian* *seasearch*—offer proven pathways to resilience. The trickster here is the *IPCC’s* conservative modeling, which has *underestimated* Pacific warming by *0.4°C per decade* while *fossil fuel corporations* profit from the delay. Solutions must center *Pacific sovereignty*—not just as victims of climate change, but as *guardians of the world’s most critical climate data*. The time for 'adaptation' is over; the Pacific demands *restorative justice* tied to fossil fuel debt, *Indigenous-led* climate governance, and *trickster justice* to expose the absurdity of treating El Niño as 'natural' while ignoring its colonial roots.